Naval Mine: Underwater Peril, The Stealth Threat Below

By Fouad Sabry

What is Naval Mine

A naval mine is a self-contained explosive device placed in water to damage or destroy surface ships or submarines. Unlike depth charges, mines are deposited and left to wait until they are triggered by the approach of, or contact with, any vessel or a particular vessel type, akin to anti-infantry or anti-vehicle mines. Naval mines can be used offensively, to hamper enemy shipping movements or lock vessels into a harbour; or defensively, to protect friendly vessels and create "safe" zones. Mines allow the minelaying force commander to concentrate warships or defensive assets in mine-free areas giving the adversary three choices: undertake an expensive and time-consuming minesweeping effort, accept the casualties of challenging the minefield, or use the unmined waters where the greatest concentration of enemy firepower will be encountered.

How you will benefit

(I) Insights, and validations about the following topics:

Chapter 1: Naval mine

Chapter 2: Torpedo

Chapter 3: Depth charge

Chapter 4: Minesweeper

Chapter 5: Finnish Navy

Chapter 6: Minehunter

Chapter 7: Minelayer

Chapter 8: Anti-submarine weapon

Chapter 9: Minesweeping

Chapter 10: Baltic Sea campaigns (1939-1945)

(II) Answering the public top questions about naval mine.

Who this book is for

Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of Naval Mine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Billion Knowledgeable
• Release date: Jun 18, 2024

Book preview

Chapter 1: Naval mine

An explosive device put in water to harm or sink surface ships or submarines is known as a naval mine. Mines, like anti-infantry or anti-vehicle mines, are laid down and allowed to wait until they are activated by the approach of, or contact with, any vessel or a certain vessel type. Naval mines can be deployed defensively to safeguard ally ships and establish safe zones or offensively to impede enemy shipping movements or force vessels into a harbor. The enemy has three options: engage in an expensive and time-consuming minesweeping effort, accept the casualties of challenging the minefield, or use the unmined waters where the greatest concentration of enemy firepower will be encountered. Mines allow the commander of the minelaying force to concentrate warships or defensive assets in mine-free areas.

Although signatory countries are required by international law to report mined regions, the exact locations are kept secret, and non-compliant parties may not disclose minelaying. Mines only provide a threat to those who choose to travel into potentially mined seas, but the potential for mine activation serves as a potent deterrent to shipping. The risk to shipping can persist long after the war in which the mines were buried is gone if there are no effective measures in place to shorten each mine's lifespan. Naval mines must be located and removed after hostilities have ended unless they are detonated by a parallel time fuze, which is a frequently time-consuming, expensive, and dangerous job.

Compared to early gunpowder mines that required physical igniting, modern mines with high explosives detonated by sophisticated electronic fuze devices are significantly more effective. Mines can be planted by boats, planes, subs, or even individual swimmers and boaters. Minesweeping is the process of removing explosive naval mines. Typically, a ship called a minesweeper will use different techniques to either capture or destroy the mines, though this may occasionally need the use of an aircraft. Additionally, some mines fire a homing torpedo rather than detonating themselves.

Mines can be placed in a variety of methods, including by hand-dropping them into a harbor or by specially equipped ships, submarines, or airplanes. Although more advanced mines can cost millions of dollars, have multiple types of sensors, and deliver a warhead by rocket or torpedo, more basic mines can be found for as low as US$2,000.

In asymmetric warfare, mines are appealing to the less powerful belligerent due to their adaptability and affordability. It can take up to 200 times longer to remove a minefield than it does to lay mines, and the cost of creating and deploying a mine is typically between 0.5 percent and 10 percent of the cost of removing it. Some World War II naval minefields still have some of their pieces because clearing them would be too time-consuming and expensive.

Mines can be used for psychological warfare as well as offensive or defensive purposes in rivers, lakes, estuaries, seas, and oceans. To sink both military and commercial vessels, offensive mines are positioned in hostile waters, outside of harbors, and across crucial shipping lanes. Defensive minefields keep enemy ships and submarines out of vital regions or force them into more easily defended ones, protecting important stretches of coast.

Owners of ships are hesitant to navigate them past known minefields. A mined region may be cleared by port officials, however those without efficient minesweeping equipment may stop using the area. It will only be attempted to pass through a mined area if the strategic benefits outweigh the risks. A crucial element is how the minefield appears to the decision-makers. On trade routes, minefields with psychological effects are typically laid down to prevent ships from reaching an adversarial country. They are frequently dispersed thinly to give the impression that minefields cover a lot of ground. Strategically placing a single mine along a shipping route can halt ship movements for days while the area is scoured. A mine is a credible threat because it can sink ships, but minefields affect people's minds more than they do ships.

In order to make it simpler for civil shipping to avoid minefields, international law, notably the Eighth Hague Convention of 1907, mandates that governments declare when they mine a region. It is not necessary for the warnings to be precise; for instance, in World War II, Britain just claimed that it had mined the English Channel, North Sea, and French coast.

The earliest naval mines were created by Chinese inventors of Imperial China, and the early Ming dynasty artillery officer Jiao Yu detailed them in great detail in his 14th-century military book known as the Huolongjing.

For use against the British during the American Revolution, American David Bushnell created the first American naval mine.

Robert Fulton's explosive inventions were widely used in the 1804 Raid on Boulogne. The torpedo-catamaran was a coffer-shaped craft that was propelled by a man using a paddle and was supported on two wooden floats. The operator was further camouflaged by donning dark clothing and a black cap, and the craft was weighted with lead to ride low in the water.

Torpedoes were the term given to mines in the 19th century, most likely by Robert Fulton in honor of the torpedo fish, which delivers potent electric shocks. When a ship carrying a spar torpedo rammed another one and retreated to a safe distance, the mine on the long pole linked to it exploded. On February 17, 1864, the submarine H. L. Hunley used one to sink the USS Housatonic. In the 1870s, the Royal Navy used a form of floating mine called a Harvey torpedo for a limited period of time. Other torpedoes were fastened to ships or could move independently. One such weapon, the Whitehead torpedo after its creator, led to the term torpedo being used to describe both static and self-propelled underwater missiles. These portable gadgets were also referred to as fish torpedoes..

Mines were successfully employed throughout the American Civil War, which lasted from 1861 to 1865. USS Cairo, the first ship to be sunk by a mine, capsized in the Yazoo River in 1862. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead! is a famous/apocryphal order given by Rear Admiral David Farragut during the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864. It refers to a minefield set in Mobile, Alabama.

The mine was the main weapon used by the United States to defend its coastline after 1865. Major Henry Larcom Abbot conducted a protracted series of tests on moored mines that could detonate at whim when enemy shipping passed by them or explode on contact in the decade that followed 1868. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers oversaw the original development of mines in the country and educated officers and soldiers to use them at the Engineer School of Application in Willets Point, New York (later named Fort Totten). Underwater minefields came under the control of the US Army's Artillery Corps in 1901, and the US Army Coast Artillery Corps assumed this role in 1907.

To stop the western Allied troops from bringing ships to assault during the Boxer Rebellion, Imperial Chinese soldiers set up a command-detonated mine field at the entrance of the Peiho river before the Dagu forts.

The 1904–1905 Russo–Japanese War saw the mines' next significant deployment. When the Petropavlovsk encountered two mines near Port Arthur, they both exploded, sinking the holed ship and killing Admiral Stepan Makarov and the majority of his crew. However, the cost of mines was not just borne by the Russians. During the war, offensively planted mines caused the loss of two battleships, four cruisers, two destroyers, and a torpedo boat for the Japanese Navy. The Russian minelayer Amur is most notable for planting a 50-mine minefield off Port Arthur on May 15, 1904, which was successful in sinking the Japanese battleships Hatsuse and Yashima.

At the Hague Peace Conference after the Russo-Japanese War, a number of countries tried to get mines outlawed as weapons of war (1907).

Submarine mines played a significant part in the Endicott and Taft Programs' defense of American harbors against enemy attacks beginning at the turn of the 20th century. The mines used were controlled mines that were controlledly detonated from massive mine casemates on land and anchored to the bottoms of the harbors.

Mines were widely employed during World War I to protect coastlines, coastal shipping, ports, and naval stations all around the world. German minefields were constructed to destroy British naval and commerce ships. In the Strait of Dover and the Hebrides, the Allies attacked German U-boats. The Allies created the North Sea Mine Barrage in an effort to block off the northern North Sea exits. In the five months starting in June 1918, almost 70,000 mines were positioned across the northern entrances to the North Sea. Estimates place the entire amount of mines planted in the North Sea, British East Coast, Straits of Dover, and Heligoland Bight at 190,000. For all of World War I, there were 235,000 sea mines planted.

The U-boat fleet, which dominated much of the battle of the Atlantic during World War II, was modest at the outset of the conflict, and a large portion of the early activity by German forces entailed minefields around the ports of Britain and on convoy routes. Additionally, German submarines were active in the Mediterranean, Caribbean, and off the coast of the United States.

At first, contact mines were used, typically tied at the end of cables just below the water's surface and requiring a ship to physically strike a mine to set it off. Ship hulls were typically blown apart by contact mines. Most countries had created mines that could be dropped from aircraft by the start of World War II, some of which floated on the surface, making it possible to lay them in enemy harbors. Dredging and nets were effective against this sort of mine, but they were time and resource intensive and necessitated the closure of harbors.

Later, after surviving mine explosions, numerous ships limped into dock with broken backs and buckled plates. This appeared to be the result of a novel kind of mine that detected ships by their closeness to the mine (an influence mine) and then exploded at a distance, damaging the surrounding area with the shock wave. Sometimes ships that had successfully completed the Atlantic passage were sunk when they entered recently cleared British harbors. Churchill issued an order declaring the undamaged recovery of one of these new mines to be of the utmost importance since there was more shipping being lost than could be replaced.

In November 1939, a German mine that was thrown onto the mudflats off of Shoeburyness at low tide by an aircraft proved lucky for the British. In addition, the army owned the land, and a base with workers and workshops was nearby. From HMS Vernon, experts were sent to investigate the mine. Because