Praxis: Bangalores and grapnels.

Meet the bangalore torpedo.

One of the points of Absolved is that there are no obsolete weapons, only obsolete tactics. Old weapons are also often reinvented with a wrinkle or two that make them much more useful.

Such it is with the rather old idea of the bangalore torpedo. From Wikipedia:

A Bangalore torpedo is an explosive charge placed on the end of a long, extendible tube. It is used by combat engineers to clear obstacles that would otherwise require them to approach directly, possibly under fire. It is sometimes colloquially referred to as a Bangalore mine, bangers or simply a Bangalore.

It has been estimated that the modern Bangalore torpedo is effective for clearing a path through wire and mines up to 15 metres long and 1 metre wide.

Overview

The Bangalore torpedo was first devised by Captain McClintock, of the British Indian Army unit the Madras Sappers and Miners at Bangalore, India, in 1912. He invented it as a means of exploding booby traps and barricades left over from the Boer and Russo-Japanese Wars. The Bangalore torpedo would be exploded over a mine without the sapper having to approach closer than about three metres (ten feet).

In World War I

By the time of World War I the Bangalore torpedo was primarily used for clearing barbed wire before an attack. It could be used while under fire, from a protected position in a trench. The torpedo was standardized to consist of a number of externally identical 1.5 metre (five feet) lengths of threaded pipe, one of which contained the explosive charge. The pipes would be screwed together using connecting sleeves to make a longer pipe of the required length, somewhat like a chimney brush or drain clearing rod. A smooth nose cone would be screwed on the end to prevent snagging on the ground. It would then be pushed forward from a protected position and detonated, to clear a 1.5 metre (five feet) wide hole through barbed wire. An example of this technique can be seen in the silent film Wings, the 1927 film that received the Academy award for "Most Outstanding Production".

In World War II

The Bangalore torpedo was later adopted by the U.S. Army as well during World War II, as the M1A1 Bangalore Torpedo. It was widely used by both the U.S. and Commonwealth forces, notably during D-Day. The use of a Bangalore Torpedo to clear a barbed wire barrier is depicted in the D-Day beach invasion scene in the films Saving Private Ryan, The Longest Day, and The Big Red One as well as the games Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Medal of Honor: Frontline, and Call of Duty 2: Big Red One. In The Big Red One, screenwriter and director Samuel Fuller, a veteran of D-Day, expressed through the narrator his disdain for the inherent hazards of assembling and employing the weapon: "The Bangalore Torpedo was 50 feet long and packed with 85 pounds of TNT, and you assembled it along the way - by hand. I'd love to meet the asshole who invented it!"



Post WWII development

The Bangalore continues to be used today, in the little-changed M1A2 version, although primarily to breach wire obstacles, allowing soldiers to subsequently clear a path of mines using hand-emplaced demolitions, grappling hooks, or other means. British Royal Engineers and American combat engineers have also been known to construct similar field versions of the Bangalore by assembling segments of metal picket posts and filling the concave portion with Plastic Explosive. The PE is then primed with detonating cord and a detonator, and pickets are taped or wired together each to make a long torpedo producing shrapnel that cuts the wire when detonated. This method produces results similar to the standard-issue Bangalore, and can be assembled to the desired length by adding picket segments.



The newest evolution of the Bangalore is the Bangalore blade, an updated version made from lightweight aluminium and using explosively formed penetrator technology to breach obstacles which the original Bangalore would have been unable to defeat. In a test detonation conducted on the television show Future Weapons, the Bangalore Blade blasted a gap roughly 5 metres wide in concertina wire, and also created a trench deep enough to detonate most nearby anti-personnel mines. The Bangalore Blade was developed in the United Kingdom by Alford Technologies and is intended for use with both standard army and Special Forces units that require a lightweight, portable obstacle-clearing device.

Other recent path-clearing devices

The U.S. Antipersonnel Obstacle Breaching System (APOBS) and the British RAMBS II rifle grenade breaching system are starting to replace the Bangalore for path-clearing due to their ease of use, effectiveness, and flexibility—they can clear a path several times longer than the Bangalore torpedo.

From the US Army manual on the use of the M1A1 --

USING A BANGALORE TORPEDO

A bangalore torpedo comes in a kit that has 10 torpedo sections, 10 connecting sleeves, and 1 nose sleeve. Use only the number of torpedo sections and connecting sleeves needed.

All torpedo sections have a threaded cap well at each end so that they may be assembled in any order. Use the connecting sleeves to connect the torpedo sections together. To prevent early detonation of the entire bangalore torpedo if you hit a mine while pushing it through the obstacle, attach an improvised (wooden) torpedo section to its end. That section can be made out of any wooden pole or stick that is the size of a real torpedo section. Attach the nose sleeve to the end of the wooden section.

After the bangalore torpedo has been assembled and pushed through the obstacle, prime it with either an electric or nonelectric firing system (app B).

Once the bangalore torpedo has been fired, use wire cutters to cut away any wire not cut by the explosion.

Obviously employing the bangalore in its classic form by hand is dangerous in the extreme. Still improvised bangalores have been used in modern conflicts to breach enemy wire, as any Vietnam veteran can tell you about VC and NVA sappers.

The subject came to my mind when I was forwarded this article from Strategy Page.

Bangalore Torpedo Gets Upgraded Once More

February 19, 2010: Britain has used, for the first time, in Marjah, Afghanistan, the latest version of their bangalore torpedo. The new device, called Python, is a rocket that carries an explosives filled, 228 meter (700 foot) tube filled with 1.4 tons of explosives. When the tube lands, the explosives go off, destroying over 90 percent of mines, or other explosive devices, in an area 180 meters long and 7 meters wide. The cleared area has to be double checked for mines or devices that survived Python, but this can be done quickly, and troops and vehicles can rush through the cleared lane if they are under fire.

The Python is basically an update of a similar system developed in the 1950s (Giant Viper). The U.S. has a similar system (the Mk 154 Mine Clearance System), which uses rockets to propel a cable (stuffed with explosives) down a road. The explosives are detonated, and all mines, and road side bombs, are detonated or disabled over an area of 14 by 100 meters. The Mk 154 was originally designed to quickly clear mines during combat. But it turns out to work against booby traps and roadside bombs as well. All these systems are developed from the World War II era bangalore torpedo, where the explosives filled tube had to be pushed into position. The original bangalore torpedo was developed during World War II, for quickly clearing barbed wire barriers.

Here is an article from the London Times from February.

From Times Online

February 17, 2010

'Python' is British Army's winning weapon against Afghan roadside bombs

An explosive hose has become an unlikely weapon against roadside bombs, the biggest killer of British soldiers in Afghanistan.

The 230-metre long snake-like device, attached to a series of rockets, is fired on to an area thought to contain improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

Moments after impact, the hose explodes, detonating bombs nearby and clearing the way for soliders to advance forward.

Royal Engineers fired the Python rocket-propelled mine-clearing system for the first time in Afghanistan on Saturday, clearing a suspected IED belt in Nad Ali as part of a major offensive against the Taleban in Helmand province.

It was used again today along a dry river bed, landing with a thump and detonating a number of bombs, which created a huge cloud of smoke.

The rockets, which carry the hose, are fired off the back of a Trojan armoured engineer tank. The hose snakes through the air before landing with a bang.

Staff Sergeant Mark Eastley, from 30 Armoured Engineer Squadron, said: “It takes your breath away." The 35-year-old from Devon added: "You see the flash, hear the bang and then feel the shock wave.”

The Ministry of Defence said that all families in the area are contacted to ensure that no civilians come near the blast.

Taleban fighters have planted more roadside bombs than had been expected in Majrah, just south of Nad Ali, the focus of the latest Nato offensive.

More than 15,000 US, British and Afghan forces are taking part in Operation Moshtarak, the biggest military operation in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taleban in 2001.

Major General Nick Carter, the British commander of Nato forces in southern Afghanistan, said that the bigest danger for advancing troops was IEDs.“What has surprised us is the quantity. They have had a long time to prepare this and they have not been idle in terms of getting it right.”

Another lighter, easier to deploy tool for the modern trooper is the rifle-fired grapnel:



I own one of these handy little boogers (I picked it up at a gun show).

Here is the product description from the manufacturer.

Launched Grapnel Hook (LGH)

LGHThe LGH has been designed to meet the U.S. Army requirement for a small, light, and highly effective means to defeat tripwire mines and booby traps. This requirement, as well as a need for efficient humanitarian demining equipment, is applicable throughout the world. The LGH can be configured to operate with most standard infantry rifles, including the M-16, M-4, and NATO G-3, as well as with single-shot commercial rifles.

The range is approximately 100 meters with the M-16, and is reported to be close to 200 meters with the G-3. The LGH is reusable at least 20 times.

The compact standard package contains the grapnel, bullet trap. bridle, and retrieval line. The LGH is type classified by the U.S. Army (NSN 1095-01-412-4150) and is in full rate production in the U.S. by SAA International, Ltd, under a U.S. DoD approved Quality Assurance Plan.

The LGH has been demonstrated to meet all desired effectiveness and safety criteria.

Of course, if you think you'll never have to defeat mines, booby traps or enemy wire entanglements to get in to where you are not wanted, or to get somebody out of where they do not want to be, then ignore everything I've posted here and don't think about adaptations, permutations and improvisations.

"If ye do, yer daft, man. Did someone mention jail breaks?"