Dog Mines

I´m sure it did.

I can post the article I based my post on back then, if you wish. It´s from an old directory of WWII weaponry edited by Chris Bishop. I wont vouch for the accuracy of the article, but it might still be of interest.

 

That will be appreciated! Many thanks in advance!

 

Soviet Dog Mines, as published in WWII : The Directory of Weapons, 1990, edited by Chris Bishop :

In common with many other European armies, the Red Army maintained a number of 'war dogs' for various military purposes such as sniffing out explosives or even delivering messages and medical supplies in front-line areas, but there can have been few roles more bizarre for dogs to play than the Soviet dog mines that where used for a short period during World War II. Exactly how the idea of using dogs as mobile anti-tank mines came about has yet to be determined, but the idea was simple and seemed to offer great things for the hard pressed Soviet forces during 1942.

The basic idea of the dog mine was that the dogs were trained to dive under enemy tanks whenever they appeared. Each dog carried on its back a wooden box ( or packets secured to its body by a harness ) and from the top of the box ( or packets ) protruded a vertical wooden post. When this post was pushed backwards as the dog moved under the tank it detonated the explosives contained in the box ( or packets ) to the detriment of the tank and the unfortunate dog. Some accounts talk of wire sensors in place of the wooden post.

For all its simplicity the idea of the dog mine didn´t last very long. The Red Army soon discovered that there were two main disadvantages to the idea. One was that in order to train the dogs to dive under tanks they were always given food under a tank. This was all very well, but to most dogs the familiar smells and sights under a Soviet tank were very different to those under German tanks. Thus in a battlefield situation once they were released with the explosives attached the dogs often tended to make for the familiar smells and sounds of Soviet tanks rather than the intended German tanks, with obvious results. The second snag was that the Germans soon learned of the Soviet 'Hundminen' and spread the word through the efficient German military media machineri that all Soviet dogs likely to be encountered were rabid and were to be shot as soon as they were spotted. This alone caused the virtual disappearance of dogs all along the Eastern Front whitin a matter of days, making the further use of dog mines that much more unlikely. One other factor now seems obvious was that on any battlefield the noise and general chaos in progress would unhinge any normal dogs´ behaviour, making them run amok in any direction other than towards tanks of any kind, and so hazardous to anyone in their vicinity.

The Soviet dog mines did have a few successes, but their period of 'action' was short once their two-edged nature became apparent. The idea was not used after 1942, but there were some reports of the Viet Minh attempting to use dog mines during the fighting in Indo-China during the late 1940s. Some reports on the Red Army after 1945 still contained references to the dog mines, no doubt just in case they were used again.

 

Many thanks for your post Skua..the evidence piught to silence doubting Thomases...

 

Here is another article about the anti-tank dogs:



And this is the translation:

With dogs against tanks

Command post, east of Brjansk, in October war correspondent Fritz Lucke

The staff of our division did not want to believe the message. They rang the officer on duty early and asked whether 1 April had suddenly broken out. One would have some understanding for jokes, but was a military report nevertheless.


Each word of the message is true: On the narrow dirt road suddenly several dogs run towards the leading vehicles. Some meters away they turn off, run tail-wagging back, come back. On the back they carry strange boxes in stretcher racks. It is a strange, suspicious affair, which the soldiers don’t understand. The company commander takes the only possible action. With submachine guns, carbines and pistols the animals are shot. As the dead dogs to be examined - there are grey shepherd dogs and brown Dobermans - it turns out that in the stretcher boxes re filled with explosives. But the mines are not armed, the lever are not pulled out...


No doubt, the Soviets believed the trained mine dogs were a weapon against the German tanks! They even called the dog-units "destroyers". The POWs were drafted at the end of July to after Wischnjaki, 15 kilometers before Moscow. They assigned to the II. Army destroyer unit. Their strength amounted to approximately 235 men. Each man was equipped with a dog and a carbine. Two units were combined into a "destroyer battalion" of altogether about 500 men. First the dogs were trained with tractors. The dogs were lured under the vehicles with meat. In that

In the next "class" the animals were trained to creep under a standing tractor by putting little pieces of meat under it from the front to the rear end. These exercises lasted approximately five days. They were then repeated with a slowly driving tractor. In the course of the 40 days of training the tractor was then replaced by a tank. To get the dogs accustomed to the noise of a battlefield blank cartridges were fired.

They just forgot that dogs are as afraid of tanks as any other animal, the mine dogs of S. prove it. Also the prisoners confirm it. Two of the three companies of their unit were used here at the river section for the first time. Most dogs were however not reliably, only in rare cases they crept under driving tanks. Many dogs were afraid of gunshots ran away when the blanks were fired. They used all races, which were taken from their owners.

There are three beautiful dogs, which lie peacefully next to our feet and acknowledge tail-wagging each bit bread. They have no idea what their owners intended to do with them. We want to know which of the dogs the best student was. A prisoner points at a light-grey shepherd dog. We take this one with us and have a beautiful division dog.

Berlin Lokalanzeiger, 1. ll. 1941