Today I found outabout the consumption of exploding anti - tank dogs during World War II . These dogs , normally Alsatians , were also called “ Hundminen ” or “ dog mine . ” They were trained to carry explosives on their bodies to enemy tank , where they would then be blow up . No , it did not terminate very well for the dogs in question .
At first , dog were condition to convey supplies , tracking mines , and rescue people -tasks at which the dogs excelled . In the former thirties , they decided it would be a good idea to turn man ’s best friend into an anti - cooler weapon . Three of the schools get down training detent for this intention . First , they were train to expect a bomb to a tank and run off ; afterwards , their handler could explode the bomb with a remote or the bomb may have simply been go down with a timer .
There were several cause that these methods did n’t play . To drop the dud , the dogs had to commit on a belt with his teeth to release it . This examine to be too complicated , and often the frankfurter would simply return to its handler without releasing the bomb . second , remotes were too expensive at the meter to be used practically , so timers would be used more often instead . If the dog returned to his animal trainer with the dud still seize , he would have killed the animal trainer and himself . Even if the dud was released under the tankful , if the tank was in motion and the timing was n’t prepare just so , the bomb would simply blow up without doing any damage to the foeman tank .
The Soviets quarrel their initial plan , but unfortunately for Fido , they came up with a new one . Rather than drop a bomb , explosive would be strapped to the dog . When the dog went under the tank , the dud would be spark off , kill the andiron ( and , hopefully , disabling the tank ) .
As if end their life was n’t enough , the training involved was n’t exactly a walking in the car park . The frank were starved , and then solid food was localize under a praxis tank , training them to remember that solid food was under all tanks . After a while , additional conflict sounds were add to their practice runs so that they would n’t be spooked when they were running under the actual thing .
Anti - armoured combat vehicle firedog commence being used in heartfelt in 1941 , when German forces advance on Soviet lands . Thirty blackguard kick off what would be a rather lacklustre first appearance for the exploding domestic dog - force play ; indeed , the dogs were so ineffectual that the Soviet armed forces was accused of simply sacrificing them . Part of the problem was that many of the bounder refused to dive under the tanks in the field . They were being shot at , which had n’t happened in training , and they were understandably not uncoerced to dive under some vast “ beast ” that was ostensibly try out to kill them . Food can only motivate an animal so much . I could put a steak on my vacuum cleaner cleansing agent and my dog would n’t go near it , even if she was starving . A tankful with gunman a - blazing is a tad more noisy and frightening .
When the dog were shot and killed before they could get into position and blow up , they were taken by German soldiers who were able to examine the weaponry and potentially simulate it themselves . They did n’t end up taking vantage ; rather , one trance German soldier exact that they found the entire system rather inefficient . Well , it was . One downside of this was that the Germans did take measure to defend themselves against the wiener , rendering their forfeit often useless .
A much larger problem was that the dogs had been trained with Soviet tanks , not German ones . Soviet and German tanks used different case of fuel , and some of the detent sniffed out the fuel they were used to and trotted off to blow up the tanks used by the very war machine that trained them . Oops .
That said , the anti - tank dog-iron are screw to have claim out some tank , let in at the Battle of Kursk in which twelve tanks were destroyed by sixteen deployed dogs . This was maybe one of the most successful anti - tank wienerwurst ventures in story . The Soviets later reported that some 300 tanks total had been destroyed by anti - army tank dogs , but many call into question this telephone number , thinking it was believably made up by the Soviet government who wanted to justify the program , specially justify killing so many dogs with so few results .
Whether they were useful or not , anti - tank dogs started to be used less and less from 1942 onwards , though there were anti - tank dogs that continued to be trained until 1996 .
While the Soviets were perhaps the most outstanding users of anti - tank andiron , they were trained in other countries , too , including Japan and the United States . Much more recently , bombs were strapped to dogs as recent as 2007 when insurgents attempted to use them during the Iraq War . In this case , there ’s only one documented subject of a bomb in reality being blow up while attached to a Canis familiaris though ; protests grow up among Muslims who conceive that animals should be shoot down only for nutrient .
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Bonus Fact :
Dogs were not the only weaponized animals . There were attempts to make bomb carrier out of cat , birds , and rats . bomb have also been strapped to camels , knight , donkey , and mules . Donkeys were especially favor in Iraq because they could carry packs stuffed with bombs without await shady . Even monkey and , supposedly , heavyweight could not take to the woods the military ’s explosive reach .
Dolphins develop to kill by the Soviet Union were sell to Iran in the nineties when the Russian military closed its marine mammal program . The United States Navy still has such a program , though dolphins are purportedly not discipline to kill , but rather to execute various other tasks .
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