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September 23

Landmines in Rugby

So Hillbrow School claims the windows were blown out in 1940 by a landmine (or two). That paragraph is completely unreferenced but the statement appears in several other sources, though with no further elaboration. Were there really Germans wandering around Rugby (central England) laying landmines during the war? If so how and why?--Shantavira|^{feed me} 17:28, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

They were parachute mines dropped on 14 November 1940 that blew out the windows of Overslade House. It was one of the worst days of the Coventry Blitz. refer https://www.rugbyschool.co.uk/rugby-Live/assets/File/Rugbeian%20Society/Publications/Floreat%202014.pdf for a story on the raid in a history of "Hillbrow Prepatory School" page 207. MilborneOne (talk) 17:56, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'm guessing that landmine is a misnomer then, and we should say parachute mine. They look very different to me.--Shantavira|^{feed me} 18:10, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"Regarding the parachute mines (which we referred to as land mines at the time)..." [1] They were naval mines dropped on land targets, not only because of the large blast effect, but also because the long delay fuses caused no end of disruption.

Death By Parachute - German Aerial Mine Warfare says that they were officially known (to the British) as "Parachute Landmines" (p. 2) and (being actually sea mines) had to be defuzed by Royal Navy teams, rather than the Royal Engineers who defuzed conventional bombs. The story was that Hermann Göring ordered them to be dropped on London in a fit of temper, but the fact that the first targets in the capital were the London Docks seems a better explanation. Alansplodge (talk) 18:20, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have added a hatnote (amongst all the others) to the Land mine article, which may help in future... Alansplodge (talk) 20:29, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The German development of, and failure to use, parachute mines is one of those typical stories of WWII where one side develops a weapon which the other side than makes rather more successful use of.

In the early part of the Blitz (the London Blitz), air-dropped naval sea mines were dropped by parachute against shipping in London. The same mines had already been laid in the Channel and the East Coast too, as far North as the Firth of Forth. Even HMS Belfast was badly damaged and out of action for about 6 months. These weren't dropped by the normal Luftwaffe bomber squadrons, but rather by specialist mine-laying groups, with different aircraft (the early German land bombers had bomb bays designed for much smaller bombs). They were though still Luftwaffe, rather than Kriegsmarine.

The Blitz targets were the Thames Estuary, also the narrower part of the River Thames and the London Docks. There's no clear record of whether this was an attack on shipping (more likely) or the "Angry Göring" claim. These were the Luftminen (LM) A and B and had sophisticated anti-shipping magnetic mine fuzes. Using these weapons inland, or in tidal areas, was a tactical mistake for the Germans: it allowed examples of that magnetic influence fuze to be recovered and countermeasures developed against it – a great tatical loss. One explanation put forward for this is that German mission planners trained in the Baltic just had no real comprehension of the expanses of mud involved in the large British estuaries, and the risk of dropped weapons being accessible there, if not often recoverable. These mines were extremely fragile and were dropped by parachute. They also had quite different clockwork fuzing to the usual distinctive German electric fuzes, and required whole different techniques both to drop them and to render them safe. So they weren't always attended by different bomb disposal teams, at least not later in the war, but initially they were. A particular feature was the infamous "17 seconds" delay on their impact fuze: they had two fuzes, a mine fuze and also an impact fuze to destroy it if they landed on land. This often jammed on impact, leaving the mine to be disposed of. If it started ticking, the operators had something unknown, but less than 17 seconds left to try and find cover.

It was noted by the British that these parachute mines, unlike the bombs (and "Minenbomben" was also the usual name for the typical mid-case thickness German SC- range bombs, such as the SC250), had a particularly effective blast effect on roofs and windows, because they exploded at ground level and hadn't buried themselves deep in the earth first as other German bombs of that weight did. When used in conjunction with small Brandbomben (fire bombs) they could be particularly effective, as the blast "opened up" roofs and the fire bombs could fall through and start fires inside. Fires always did more damage to civilian areas than the bombs themselves did.

Pretty soon the first Luftminen were replaced by the Bombenminen (BM). These were pure parachute mines, did not have the magnetic fuze, and were intended for use against land targets. They were large, 1000kg, like the LM-B. As they were intended for land attack, they also had a rather infamous anti-handling fuze based on a photocell. There was still a distinction between land-attack bombing and minelaying, and Luftwaffe organisation never really integrated the two (internal politics between arms of service in the Wehrmacht often limited their effectiveness). Even today, the standard text [Fleischer, Wolfgang (2004) [2003]. German Air-Dropped Weapons to 1945. Midland Publishing. ISBN 1-85780-174-1.] just doesn't mention either of the parachute mines! (or the air-dropped torpedoes).

Then Germany invaded Russia. The emphasis shifted to the Eastern Front. Heavy area bombing against Britain wound down and there was less use of the parachute mine. As the Russian targets had fewer large cities, and the army was overrunning many of them anyway, there was little use made of these Bombenminen on the Eastern Front, although Luftminen were used on the approaches to Leningrad.

The British though had learned, and the heavy RAF night bombing campaigns against Germany made great use of the same idea. Even smaller aircraft, like the Mosquito, could carry a single 4,000lb 'Cookie' and small incendiaries. The Cookie was twice the weight of even the largest parachute mine, thin walled so that nearly all this weight was explosive filling, and relied on aerodynamics and instant fuzing, rather than the expensive parachute. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:48, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Great detail Andy, would you be able to add any of that to the "parachute mine" article? I had a bash at expanding the "Luftwaffe" section with the source that I found above, but the "RAF" section is a one-liner. Alansplodge (talk) 16:28, 27 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'll see what I can find time for. They're still popping up:

"Navy divers destroy WW2 bomb found in 17th Century warship". BBC News Online. 28 September 2019. Andy Dingley (talk) 20:07, 28 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]