Animals have been used as an instrument of war ince the invention of warfare. ,hey have been used as commuication devices, transport veicles, and as weapons themelves. Some outstanding exmples include flaming pigs used by the Romans, war elephants, and pigeons which were trained to pilot missiles during WWII. However, no example is more strange than the Dog Mine invented by the Russians in their 'Great Patriotic War" against the German invaders. The Russians invented the dog mine as a last ditch effort to combat the superior quality and numbers of German Armor. To build the device, the Russians designed a backpack which was strapped on any large sized dog. The apparatus included a detonating device attached to a 26-pound explosive charge set off by a simple tall stick trigger. The Russians used the devices by training the dogs to run under annor vehicles thus tipping the stick trigger setting off the mine at the weakest point of the tank's armor, it's soft underbelly. Although an interesting concept, it was a failure for two major reasons. In order to train the dogs to seek out tanks, the Russians housed and fed the animals under their tanks. The dogs became familiar with the sights and smells of soviet vehicles, and if any were present on the attlefield, they sought out Russian tanks first. The results were predictable. The second reason for failure was because dogs are a rare sight in combat, especially ones wearing a back pack. It only took one or two experiences with dog-mines to convince the Germans to kill any dog they spotted. There is no current model of the Soviet dog-mine; although there are scale examples of dogs. Both Historex and Tamiya produce livestock kits which include dogs. Scratch-building this bizarre weapon is possible to modelers with minimal scratch-building skills and opens up some interesting diorama possibilities. Back to Dispatch July 2001 Table of Contents Back to Dispatch List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 by HMGS Mid-South This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com