Mine anti-tank: technical characteristics. Types and names of anti-tank mines

Mines are simple robots designed to destroy the enemy's offensive potential. Their device may be different, but the essence is one. Without the participation of a person or with their remote activation, they explode, creating damaging factors, the main and most common of which are the shock wave and the flow of damaging elements (or a cumulative jet). What is the difference between anti-tank mine and anti-personnel mine? This will be the story.

History of Mine Weapons

This type of engineering weapons is known for a long time. The very word mine before meant a detonable charge with a fuze, but a kind of digging under a fortification structure, which was broken to damage its defensive properties. This manhole made it possible to penetrate behind the fortification walls, and more extensive workings of the ground contributed to the destruction of the towers and other structures that prevented the attack. Then, as military technologies developed, these underground passages increasingly began to be supplied with powder charges in order for the process of breaking the bastions to occur more intensively. In parallel with the change in the design of the charges themselves, fuses to them were also improved. Advances in electrical engineering have simplified the task of remote detonation. During the Crimean War, for the first time, sea mines were widely used . The civil war of the northerners and southerners, which resulted in the unification of the USA (1861-1865), initiated the mass use of mine fields during defensive operations. Anti-personnel mines in the form of samples similar to modern ones were tested during the First World War. Then they were treated as a forced measure, applicable only in those cases when it was required to create a barrier hampering the advance of a superior enemy.

Mines are different

Anti-personnel mines did damage not only to soldiers, but also to horses, which constituted the main draft force of armies in the early 20th century. Appeared mechanical vehicles, including armored vehicles, also suffered from buried charges, but a special design designed to destroy the then tanks, slow and vulnerable, had not yet been invented. The situation changed by the thirties, when strategists, who thought it was promising, it became clear that the future war would become mobile, and aviation and armored forces would play a dominant role in it. On aviation, a special conversation, as the history of modern times has shown, there are counter-automatic means against it ... But more about this later. In the meantime, a new type of engineering armament appeared - an antitank mine. With all the fundamental similarities with its anti-personnel "sister", it is essentially different from it. The task that the designers were solving when designing this charge with a fuse was different.

What should be the anti-personnel mine

The device, created for the effective destruction of manpower, must meet a number of tactical requirements. During the explosion, a large number of fragments should be created, flying at a sufficient speed to cause maximum damage. In this case, the mine must be light, otherwise it will be difficult for sappers to carry and install it. An example is the so-called "Petals". Mines of the type PFM-1 and PFM-1C were copied from American samples called "Dragontooth" (Dragontooth) - BLU-43. They have very modest dimensions, but they cause considerable damage to the manpower, performing two tasks at once. Firstly, "Petals", as a rule, do not cause lethal injuries, but only cripple enemy soldiers, which creates an additional burden on the economy of the enemy state. Secondly, they can self-destruct (in modification "C"), which is very important in preparing the offensive.

T-35 and T-42 against T-34

Mine anti-tank, as it appears from its name, serves to defeat armored vehicles. The task, which sappers put, setting it, consists at least in damage to the running gear of the tank. Previously it was believed that this was enough to delay the enemy offensive. For example, the German anti-tank mine T-35, used by the Wehrmacht during the Second World War against the troops of the Red Army and its allies, had a total mass of just over 5 kg. The same characteristics were approximately the same for the T-42, both samples had a metal casing, which facilitated their detection by electric magnetic mine detectors. It was more difficult for the engineers to find wooden ones that were made by handicraft at the end of the war, but their charge was, as a rule, not very powerful. Almost every anti-tank mine of that time worked when the caterpillars hit it, the fuses were contact.

After the war

The war was over, but the tanks remained. And they were in the arsenal of countries that had recently become allies, but now became potential adversaries. The experience gained in the battles led to the improvement of anti-tank weapons, including mines. In addition, engineers and scientists did not sit idly by. Accumulated combat experience revealed the most vulnerable areas of armored vehicles, and new improved samples were to be delivered on them. In order to complicate the detection, the hulls were made of plastic, but this led to another problem. With the loss of maps of minefields, the work of sappers was much more difficult. But the variety of fuses and methods of fire impact on armored vehicles has expanded.

TM-62

The simplest is the Soviet anti-tank mine TM-62M. Its construction repeats the general ideas of charges of previous decades. The body is made of metal, the fuse is contact and withstands a load of up to 150 kg, which excludes its accidental activation. It can be installed with the help of mechanized means (for example, caterpillar minelayer GMZ or helicopter systems), which increases the speed of mining areas. The charge weight is 7 kg, the total weight is 10 kg. At its core, it is a land mine, the main action is air-to-air. After the attack on TM-62M, the tank breaks down the rollers, the hull partially breaks down, the crew gets a strong concussion, and if the hatches are closed, it dies. The main advantages of this mine are simplicity, high power, manufacturability, cheapness and reliability. On its basis, a whole series of ammunition, differing in weight and shape, was created.

Complicating the task

The most vulnerable point of any tank is its bottom. Thin armor both on each side and in the area of the engine compartment, but for the successful defeat of any unit of armored vehicles it is enough to blow up the charge under it. With all its merits, the TM-62M mine does not operate under the bottom, but when the caterpillar hits it, and most of the air-shock hits away from the side of the hull, which reduces the probability of detonation of the ammunition. In addition, in this case an important factor is the factor of secrecy. A saboteur can establish a charge along the route of enemy equipment, but its weight should be relatively small. The anti-tank mine TM-72 is more complicated. It is by nature cumulative. This means that when it activates a powerful directional jet of hot gas, capable of penetrating thick armor. But this is not all, the fuse of the mine provides some delay, which guarantees the detonation in the middle of the moving tank, just where the most important and vulnerable units are - ammunition and transmission. The device reacts to a change in the magnetic field, which explains its "capriciousness" and the probability of accidental triggering. This is a shortage of all such ammunition. In addition, the TM-72 is easy to neutralize by trawling. If, of course, the enemy has information about the danger of mining.

Mechanical option

Approximately the same anti-tank mine-type TMK-2 operates, which is considered more reliable. The difference is the fuse, working on a mechanical-lever principle. The rod sensor of the target protrudes from the ground, on the combat platoon of the mine becomes after its deviation from the horizontal position, and after a short time (from a third to a half of a second, it is enough that the tank advances half a body), the charge explodes, forming a cumulative jet. The mass of explosives is 6 kg. The destruction of the combat vehicle is guaranteed, but despite the large reliability in comparison with the TM-72, one drawback remained: to neutralize these munitions is relatively simple. Detection for an experienced sapper protruding from the ground pins is also not a big problem.

On the sides

Not only the caterpillars and the bottom become targets for anti-tank mines. Quite successful is the design TM-73, which is a set of a conventional grenade launcher "Fly", its means of attachment to the ground and a detonator fired. In other words, the Bazooka shoots when an enemy technique breaks the integrity of the stretch. The mine TM-83 is more interesting. It is installed on the ground, as a frame its case is used. After bringing the charge into the firing position, a seismic sensor that reacts to the vibration of the earth begins to work. If this is fixed, the infrared target designator is turned on. The cumulative core penetrates armor thickness of a decimeter from a distance of 50 meters. If the thermal trace is not detected, the mine comes to its original state and waits for the next target.

And even air defense means

Helicopters and ground attack planes are often called flying tanks. This is quite true, because aviation today can have a powerful reservation, artillery armament, "borrowed" from ground equipment, not to mention missiles. The mines of the Russian Federation and other countries are designed to combat low-flying objects, both aircraft and helicopters. An example is a high-tech device PVM, developed in the 1990s and designed to destroy flying objects with a cumulative core. The guidance system operates on two channels (acoustic and infrared). "Petals" mines in the fighting position are laid out, forming a base, the sensor per kilometer determines the sound of the flying target, then the heat sensor directs the ammunition onto it. The explosive, enclosed in a spherical shell, fires at a speed of 3 km / s and breaks through the armor protection with a thickness of 12 mm. The distance of defeat is not less than one hundred meters. An anti-helicopter mine can be installed manually and with aircraft means. The attack of enemy "flying tanks" will be repulsed.