Hehe, I like it. Mines are something the Germans made tons of different types of, and most were truly brutal.

One particular sneaky one, was the Holzmine 42. It was a wooden box, containing 11 1/2 pounds of HE. The box had a pressure block, which protruded from the top, and when 200 pounds of pressure pushed down the block, it would explode. Since it was wooden, it made this mine hard to detect by combat engineers.

As a frame of reference to the power of this mine, the Stielhandgranate 24 (potato masher), only had .365 pounds of TNT.

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34th SS-Freiwilligen-Grenadier-Division Landstorm Nederland

"Meine Ehre heißt Treue"

"One night a truck-load of Middlesex hit an anti-tank mine; the survivors, jumping clear, found themselves in an "S" minefield and were killed. During the night some Cameroons sent out a patrol to bring in the bodies; they were fired upon, took cover in a crater, and found it full of "S" mines - six of them were killed. Once more the Cameroons tried, but this time the Germans had attached "S" mines to the bodies, and three more lives were lost. That particular spot is said to have cost 36 lives before it was cleared."

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What is an "S" mine you may ask, good question, seeing as that story didn't actually explain it.

The "S" mine would be buried deeply so that only the detenation wires were showing above ground. When activated, an ejector charge would hurl the mine about 6 feet into the air, where the main charge would explode, scattering pieces of mine and ball-bearing over an area of about 150 feet!

I will continue to post one of these little topics once every day until someone asks me to stop, Why ?, I guess, as Wolfshook said " I just like talking about WW2"

hey Von Paulus

nice idea , maybe you should title it as the "VonP's ww2 fact of the day"

[This message has been edited by Polaris (edited June 25, 2001).]

Nasty little bastard of a mine that one is.

damn nazis