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S.Mi.35 (Sprengen Mine 1935) aka the "Bouncing Betty"

Hambone

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Just picked up one of these from Russia from a good seller. All original paint and original condition. A little background:

 
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General pics and cross section:
 

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The design and manufacture is incredible really, particularly for a land mine. It's a scary thing. They were designed to be configured in a number of different ways, with different fusing types, such as the three prong pressure detonator, for trip wires, and for command detonation. There was even a variant that was electrically fired from discharges on the Tiger tank to clear hostile infantry from the tank.
 

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Landmines have always interested in me. I used to have a few, mostly antitank, but that was some time back. The S mine is just evil. Its so well thought out, versatile, easy enough to make. Just a killer all around. I'll bet that your mine was pulled off a battlefield in the recent past in one form or another.
 
That's amazing! I have wanted one of those for a while, but they really seemed to have dried up....

That one is beautiful!
 
Thank you. The source I got this one from has another couple nice ones I believe. The engineering and complexity of the manufacture in these is amazing really. That they would got to that trouble and manufacture with such tolerances, complexity of parts, and with such machining that was just going to get buried in the ground by the thousands to pop up in the air and spray people with shrapnel.....They make a nice heavy paperweight too.
 
Heard my dad talk of the bouncing betty many times it and the Shuemine that our engineers mine detectors wouldn't pick up (Wooden box) nice example Ham these are quite collectible and have went up a lot through the years. timothy
 
Very cool Hambone.Our troops called it the "de bollocker".As mines go these were and still would be a particularly nasty bit of kit.
 
A nasty bit of kit indeed. Of course you may know we were so impressed with it's 'abilities' we had to copy it. M16, M16A1 and consequently and not surprisingly the South Koreans and so the ROK have deployed millions of their own KM16A2. Still to this day ultra effective especially with trip wires, counter trip wires and anti-handling devices sprinkled throughout the minefield. Always one of those things you never wanted to encounter in the wild.
 
wonder how many original ones are still lurking

I've read that plenty of tellermines are hanging around in North Africa, lurking. The client has kept them in decent shape.

Another entertaining knock off of this mine concept is the US M-2. It uses an upside 60mm mortar projectile as the the killer, and it gets kicked up out of the tube when triggered. Weird idea, but an interesting spin on things.

Fig242.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_mine
 
I've read that plenty of tellermines are hanging around in North Africa, lurking. The client has kept them in decent shape.

I'd heard this also. By 'client', you mean client state? Supplied postwar by Soviets or one of her satellites? Interesting. Kind of crazy like the 10.5 cm leFH 18 turning up in Syria AND being used fairly extensively.
 
HM, didn't even know that. We still use it and derivatives evidently.

I can't say how much we currently use it, but it is in the inventory. The previous one begged us out of a lot of things we used to do routinely. I know the UN in particular hates land mines. Can't say I blame them much either.

In 1985 at Benning we trained with these a lot. Employ, recover and plan strategies for their most effective use. Mines were a pretty large piece of OSUT back then.
 
I'd heard this also. By 'client', you mean client state? Supplied postwar by Soviets or one of her satellites? Interesting. Kind of crazy like the 10.5 cm leFH 18 turning up in Syria AND being used fairly extensively.

I think he meant "climate". I've seen video of digging where they pop the ignitors / detonators on them. I wouldn't be out in an old S-mine field stomping about and digging.
 

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