What's happening in this strange photo from World War II (6 photos)

On one of the foreign sites with photo archives of the Second World War, I came across this interesting photo. And I asked the logical question, what is going on here?





The intrigue was explained simply. The photo was taken in 1943.

British sappers train to clear mines blindly. The entire course for British sappers lasted four days.

It was assumed that the course would give sappers the necessary knowledge about enemy mines, minefield structures and how booby traps work. It was assumed that at the end of four days, sappers would master all effective methods of combating mines, including defusing them in the dark.

You won't envy these guys! After all, after such a short course they were immediately sent to the combat zone.

A special role was given to three German types of mines:

Teller mines. These are mines aimed at tanks and cars. They could disable the vehicle - tear off a wheel or part of the track.

It had a distinctive appearance with a side carrying handle:



The mine did not react to humans. To activate the fuse, a lot of pressure had to be applied.

The difficulty was that it was very difficult to neutralize. It was equipped with an ingenious mechanism that protected the mine from manipulation. And when trying to neutralize it using standard means, the mine instantly detonated.

Jumping Betty. In the USSR it was nicknamed “frog mine”. This mine was very insidious.





If stepped on, it would jump a meter into the air and explode, throwing out a deadly stream of shrapnel in all directions. Caused terrible damage in an area up to 20 meters. American documentation indicated the dangerous radius of destruction of the mine - up to 140 meters.

There was no way to react or take cover somehow. The fragments flew at speeds of up to 1000 m/s.



Mina had a terrible psychological impact. The Germans used these mines in the defense of occupied territories. Caused serious damage to the landing forces of the Allies in Normandy in 1944.



Usually, the disadvantage of mines of this design is the high cost and complexity of production. But the Nazis did not skimp, and during the war they produced about 2 million “frog mines.”

Wooden mine Holzmine 42. Yes, there was such an exotic one in the Wehrmacht arsenal. And it is by no means as harmless as it seems at first glance.



Anti-tank mine, packed in a wooden case. It contains a minimum of metal elements. Actually, this was the main goal - to save scarce metal.

However, this made the mine very difficult to detect using metal detectors. What saved us was that the mines were short-lived - they got wet and deteriorated. Their service life did not exceed several months, after which they became useless.

The mine is quite powerful. The front axle was demolished and the vehicle after that, as a rule, could not be restored. The tank was out of action for a while.

The sappers studied theory for three days, and they had one day for practice. It was believed that such training was quite sufficient.