A mine roller or mine trawl is a demining device mounted on a tank or armoured personnel carrier, designed to detonate anti-tank mines. It allows engineers to clear a lane through a minefield which is protected by enemy fire.
The device is usually composed of a fork or two push arm assemblies fitted to the front of a tank hull, with two banks of rollers that can be lowered in front of the tank's tracks. Each roller bank has several heavy wheels studded with short projecting steel girders, which apply a higher ground pressure than the tank's tracks. This ensures the explosion of pressure-fused anti-tank mines, which would otherwise explode under the track itself.
At the end of the First World War, the British Army Engineers Major Giffard Le Quesne Martel and Major Charles Inglis experimented with tank bridges and mine rollers based on the Mark V tank. Three special tank battalions were mustered for trials at Christchurch in Hampshire, England, in 1918. Because of the Armistice, these were never tested in battle, but some development work continued with the Experimental Bridging Company until 1925.
After great difficulties caused by minefields in the Winter War against Finland, the Soviet Red Army assigned P.M. Mugalev at the Dormashina Factory in Nikolayev to design a mine-clearing vehicle. Prototypes were tested based on the T-28 medium tank in 1940. Development was interrupted by the start of World War II, but resumed in 1942. T-60 and KV tank chassis underwent trials, but only the T-34 was deemed to have a sufficiently robust transmission and clutch.
Experimental detachments of PT-34 mine roller tanks were formed in May 1942, and saw action at Voronezh in August. The first Independent Engineer Tank Regiment with eighteen mine rollers was fielded in October 1943. At least five regiments were formed during the war.
The PT-34's huge roller fork was semi-permanently mounted on a T-34 or T-34-85 tank. The rollers were usually removed for travel, and only installed for mine clearing operations.
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A mine flail is a vehicle-mounted device that makes a safe path through a minefield by deliberately detonating land mines in front of the vehicle that carries it. They were first used by the British during World War II. The mine flail consists of a number of heavy chains ending in fist-sized steel balls (flails) that are attached to a horizontal, rapidly rotating rotor mounted on two arms in front of the vehicle. The rotor's rotation makes the flails spin wildly and violently pound the ground.
Le déminage est un ensemble d'actions visant à l'élimination des mines terrestres ou navales d'une zone. Au sens large et par extension, il s'agit de la recherche, neutralisation, enlèvement et stockage ou destruction des munitions, mines, pièges, engins et explosifs susceptibles de poser des problèmes pour la sécurité ou l'environnement. On distingue deux types de déminage, celui militaire et celui du déminage humanitaire. Dans le cadre de la reconstruction qui a suivi la Première Guerre mondiale, on parlait plutôt de « désobusage ».
Le M4 Sherman est un char moyen et le char américain produit en plus grande quantité pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Près de cinquante mille exemplaires (toutes versions confondues) furent produits. Le système de dénomination américain se compose de trois éléments : le type de véhicule, ici medium tank pour « char moyen », la lettre T ou M suivi d’un numéro, qui désigne s’il s’agit d’un prototype ou d’un modèle de série. Ainsi, la désignation dans la nomenclature américaine est medium tank M4 et celle du prototype est medium tank T6.