claymore mine

Tue, 09/23/2014 - 00:24
Date picture taken
1970s
Tags

Comments

In Vietnam when you have lots of cannon fodder foot soldiers and you want to attack a fortified position you send in body waves. The first lot get mowed down and the ones behind run over their bodies but go forwards, they get mowed down and the wave behind them run over their bodies moving onwards all the time until the attack is done. The USA came up with the claymore mine for use in Vietnam. Small lightweight easy to deploy, to use and totally devistating. Take a plastic tray and bend slightly into a curve, fill with 1 - 2 pounds of plastic explosive. On top of which place 1000 or 2000 steel ballbearings and cover with a plastic front with the words 'This side to the enemy' on it. Stick some detonators in it and place lots of these cheap to make units in a line behind each other. Then you have a defence to resist the body waves. As they come at you you detonate one and 1-2000 steel balls shoot out at about 5-7 miles a second in a controlled arc and ripping thro people about 12-18 deep. The next wave comes on so you det. another one and so on. Efficient as it saves so many bullets. Only problem was the USA pulled out of Vietnam quick and left a lot of stuff about the place which was quickly used by the Viets and sold onwards to Communists all over the place. This one together with others were found in HK but taken into our care before use. The little square box on top of the mine is a sighting hole so you can aim this thing at the item you want to take out, the legs so that you can anchor it in position and it even has a strap to hang it up by. Nice for the christmas tree.