Saturday, July 22, 2017

Blast from the Past

Surfing around the Book of Face this morning, we come to this little graphic that explains the M18 Claymore Mine.


Of course, you can click it to embiggen it.  The M18 Claymore  mine entered the inventory in the late 1950s and has been in use ever since.    It is a command-detonated anti personnel mine that can be used in a variety of ways to keep the enemy at a distance, to break up attacks, and to deny terrain to the bad guys.   It can be employed single, or daisy-chained together.   With a unit cost of $119 (1993 dollars) it is inexpensive, lightweight, and easily understood.

As a matter of fact, that graphic tells you just about everything you need to know.

3 comments:

Old NFO said...

And they worked amazingly well...

Anonymous said...

Wont mention that if you have several of these out in front of a position, you have all these wires coming into the bunker. And a single pair of commo wires, which you know and I know are completely different, for your field phone.

And when you take over said position from the company you're relieving, they take their phone and all their clackers (the little devices that send the electrical impulse to fire a claymore) with them and you have to hook up your own.

Do NOT mix up the wires and then crank your phone to call in your status. Your status as a field-grade dumbass will be made known to all and sundry within a mile or so.

A spec-5 friend of mind in Korea did this.

Many of us thought it hilarious. He wasn't one of them, nor were members of our chain of command. He's lucky his rank survived.

MC

El Capitan said...

You can get a dummy Claymore on eBay. They look great mounted by the front door, with a couple of curly wires running to the doorbell over a sign saying "NO SOLICITING".