Naval Mine - Mine Laying

Mine Laying

Historically several methods were used to lay mines. During the First and Second World Wars, the Germans used U-boats to lay mines around the UK. In the Second World War, aircraft came into favour for mine laying with the one of largest such examples being the mining of the Japanese sea routes in Operation Starvation.

Laying a minefield is a relatively fast process with specialized ships, which is still today the most common method. These minelayers can carry several thousand mines and manoeuvre with high precision. The mines are dropped at a predefined interval into the water behind the ship. Each mine is recorded for later clearing, but it is not unusual for these recordings to be lost together with the ships. Therefore many countries demand that all mining operations shall be planned on land and records kept so the mines can later be recovered more easily.

Other methods to lay minefields include:

• Converted merchant ships – rolled or slid down ramps
• Aircraft – descent to the water is slowed by a parachute
• Submarines – launched from torpedo tubes or deployed from specialized mine racks on the sides of the submarine
• Combat boats – rolled off the side of the boat
• Camouflaged boats – masquerading as fishing boats
• Dropping from the shore – typically smaller, shallow-water mines
• Attack divers – smaller shallow-water mines

In some cases, mines are automatically activated upon contact with the water. In others, a safety lanyard is pulled (e.g. one end attached to the rail of a ship, aircraft or torpedo tube) which starts an automatic timer countdown before the arming process is complete. Typically, the automatic safety-arming process takes some minutes to complete. This is in order to give the people laying the mines sufficient time to move out of its activation/blast zone.