Anti-tank dog

Training Soviet military dogs (1931)

An anti-tank dog , also known as a mine dog or dog mine , was an explosives- laden dog that was trained to run under enemy tanks . On top of the buckled explosive device was a fuse that detonated the charge .

Anti-tank dogs were trained by the Red Army during World War II to fight Wehrmacht tanks. They were trained to crawl under a tank by placing food under a tank. From a dog's perspective, however, the tanks generally all looked the same; In addition, because of their oils and fats, the Soviet tanks smelled differently than the Germans: The problem arose that during a battle the dogs' own tanks, on which the anti-tank dogs had been conditioned beforehand, and less often those of the Germans, were attacked by the dogs were. In addition, the anti-tank dogs were too fearful to venture in the direction of an active tank and mostly ran back towards their own ranks, becoming a threat to everyone on the battlefield. A study by the Soviet General Staff on the Battle of Kursk describes the operation as very effective. In the 67th Guards Rifle Division, 12 tanks were blown up by 16 dogs.

When the German army learned of the use of dogs as anti-tank weapons , the immediate killing of the dogs in the front area was ordered under the pretext of combating rabies .

Towards the end of World War II, more powerful and simpler methods of anti-tank defense (e.g. anti-tank handguns ) became available. Therefore it is unlikely that anti-tank dogs were still used. As part of the Syrian Civil War , dogs were bombed by the Islamic State and sent towards Iraqi troops.

See also

• Bat bomb

swell

• Pile, Stephen (1979) The Book of Heroic Failures, or the Official Handbook of the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain. Penguin Books.
• Dog Anti-Tank Mine , Soviet-Empire.com. Retrieved May 20, 2005.
• USSR LANDMINE, ANTITANK, DOG ( Memento of February 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Eric Chaline: Anti-tank dogs. In: Eric Chaline: 50 animals that changed our world , translated by Monika Niehaus and Coralie Wink, Haupt Verlag, Bern 2014, ISBN 978-3-258-07855-7 , p. 51.
2. ↑ David M. Glantz , Harold S. Orenstein: The Battle for Kursk 1943. The Soviet General Staff Study . New York 2013, p. 289.
3. ↑ Iraq Popular Mobilization Units Media - English: ISIS sends animal with bombs to Iraqi PMU position, PMU engineers save it. February 25, 2017. Retrieved February 26, 2017 .