Mining (military) - Modern Warfare

Modern Warfare

Mining saw a brief resurgence as a military tactic during the First World War, when army engineers attempted to break the stalemate of trench warfare by tunneling under no man's land and laying large quantities of explosives beneath the enemy's trenches. As in siege warfare, mining was possible due to the static nature of the fighting.

A notable example was the Battle of Messines, when 450 tonnes of high explosive were placed in 21 mines after about two years of sapping. Approximately 10,000 German troops were killed when 19 of the mines were simultaneously detonated. The two remaining mines were not detonated, as they were outside the battlefield. To the great discomfort of the townspeople, the British misplaced the documents containing the precise details and positions of the two remaining mines. One of the mines detonated on June 17, 1955 during a thunderstorm; the only casualty was a cow. The second mine remains undetected. Recently, its location is believed to have been pinpointed, yet no one has attempted to recover it — thus, there are still several tonnes of high explosive buried somewhere in the Belgian countryside.

Another example is recorded in Louis Trenker's Berge in Flammen. Whole mountain peaks in the Alps, such as Col di Lana, Lagazuoi and Marmolata, were detonated during the mountain war.

Because troop movements in World War II were too fluid, and tunneling too slow, mining warfare was of little use during that conflict.

The Vietnam War saw a resurgence of the use of tunneling by the Viet Cong forces, but these tunnels were more commonly operational bases and communication tunnels than mining tunnels.