23-12-2009

Mark came up with this nice drawing of an old bounding mine.
The text "500gr Bris Spreng ladung" would indicate German made drawing, but who used this?
Is this ww2 or older? Do photos exist? Which nations used this mine?
Please send an e- mail if you have any information.

Francesco suggested that this might have been an Austrian and Italian used "ground torpedo" as used during ww1.

Martin came up with even more info:
This is a WW1 so-called "Minegrenade". It is a development of the norwegian engineer "Aassen" (who developed quite a few other items adopted by many countries, as for instance the Aassen riflegrenade adopted by the British) and it is called "Aassen Minegrenade". It was used in WW1 to plant large minebarriers, in 2 or even 3 rows all connected in one electrical circuit, so that the whole multilayerd barrier would be fired as 1 shot upon a massattack usual at the time. This is the grandfather of all later bounding mines.

11-12-2009

These items were marked as German flares. They are made of aluminum except for the one on the right which is bakelite.
Only markings on any of them are on the bakelite version, see photo.
The bottoms of all the pieces are thinner than the main body which might explain it was designed to blow out when the flare was ignited. The fuzes seem to be of the german ZZ42-mechanism, but integrated in the body.

Photos © Paul.

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This seems to be marked like a training mine from Poland, but the fuze looks like a Brit.
No markings at all.
Borsuk himself (© photo) thought it might be US made, and gave these sizes :
Mine sizes :
Total height with plug: 120mm , height without plug: 112mm
Diameter: 205mm

Fuze sizes :
Total height with detonator: 109mm , height without detonator 60mm
Fuze diameter: 42mm , Detonator is made of wood.

What is this type?

Please let me know by MAIL.

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I have placed this one with the US mines as it seems obvious that it's American, but how was it used and which fuze did it held?
It was recovered from a US training area together with M1 and M1A1 mines (trainers).

Photo © Mike

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