Taming the Landmine [Hardcover]

Peter Stiff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1986

The title was written on the development of the landmine as a tactical weapon combined with the efforts made to combat its devastating effects. It was the advent of superior firepower in the 19th Century, particularly the machine gun, which caused soldiers to cease fighting in the open and seek cover in trenches. A natural follow-on was the appearance of barbed wire to defend those trenches against attack. The stalemate of the trenches in World War-1 was finally broken by the tank, a weapon designed to crush barbed wire entanglements, cross trenches and provide a protective steel shield behind the safety of which the crews could fight the opposing infantry. The landmine, developed by the Germans to combat the tank, made its first tentative appearance in the final stages of the war. World War-2 saw radical developments. The British and French hierarchy who still viewed the tank in much the same light as they had in the last war, were rudely surprised when the Germans utilised them in powerful and fast-moving formations with motorised infantry in support, to break through battle lines and cleave through the soft underbelly of the rear echelons. By the end of the war both the Allied and Axis powers had adopted the same armoured tactics. The unglamorous and inglorious landmine laid by the tens of thousands to combat armoured breakthroughs, or making landings from the sea, had become a major weapon in the hands of all armies. To breach minefields, the South African-invented flail tank and other devices such as mine rollers were brought into service by the Allies and used with great effect at the Battle of El Alamein and later on the Normandy beaches. The 1950s saw the beginnings of most of the post-war uprisings against colonialism in Asia and Africa. In almost every case the communists provided training as well as weapons to nationalist insurgents and successfully prised them away from Western influences. The landmine, instead of being used principally in its more usual role of holding up the advance of motorised enemy forces, began being deployed as a terrorist weapon to halt the movement of all civil and military vehicles in an effort to bring a country's economy to a halt and strangle the ruling administration. In the Portuguese colonial wars in Africa, the insurgents' landmine tactics worked exceptionally well. The Portuguese found no effective way of combatting them. In the early 1970s, the landmine menace spread to both the South African-controlled Caprivi strip of South West Africa (now Namibia) and to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Both countries were stumped in their first efforts to find an answer, but they found it. A number of revolutionary ideas, including the v-shaped vehicle hull to deflect the blast of landmines, were successfully developed in both countries to minimise the explosive effects of vehicles and to reduce injuries and the deaths of people being carried in them.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Galago Publishing Pty Ltd (January 1, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0947020047
• ISBN-13: 978-0947020040
• Product Dimensions: 12.8 x 9.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,650,620 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good illustrated book on landmine-protected vehicles, March 10, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Taming the Landmine (Hardcover)

Peter Stiff has written an excellent account of the evolution of landmine protected vehicles in southern africa. Apart from an initial section on early armoured vehicles and their protective capabilities, the book focuses on the development thru trial, error and experience of mine-protected vehicles, firstly in Rhodesia in response to the terrorist mining campaign and then in South Africa as the terrorist threat their escalated.

The book contains a large number of photographes of the various vehicles that were developed and used, culminating with the current South African mine-protected armoured fighting vehicles which are some of the best available in the world. All in all, it's a very good read while the accompanying photo's really make the book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Serious description of a threat NOT mastered by the west, October 27, 2000

By 

Sam Damon Jr. (Fort Bragg, NC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Taming the Landmine (Hardcover)

If you don't have this book or have read it, you are simply not on top of the world of mine, countermine and counter-ambush. This book should be purchased en masse by the U.S. Army and made a standard student text at Combat Engineer School. Peter Stiff shows how the armies in the southern africa area SOLVED the land mine, automatic weapons fire ambush, and if we want to avoid learning the same lessons all over again at a high cost in destroyed lives, we should read and heed this book's ideas into our own Army. This is NOT being done as combat engineering concerns have been marginalized by armor/infantry branch officers dominating decision-making even though the LAND MINE is the biggest killer of our Soldiers since Vietnam.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent History of the development of landmine-protected vehicles in Southern Africa, January 5, 2007

By 

Kiwi (Mississauga, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Taming the Landmine (Hardcover)

Peter Stiff has written a truely outstanding history of the evolution of landmine protected vehicles in southern africa. Not only well-written but well-illustrated with excellent photo's of a wide range of the vehicles that were designed and built in both Rhodeasia and South Africa. The book starts of with early origins in Rhodeasia, where landmine-proof designs first evolved as a reaction to the terrorist laying of landmines targeting both civilian and military vehicles.

The book then moves on to South Africa and the development and evolution of a range of landmine protected vehicles by the South African Defence Forces for use in South-West Africa and later on within South Africa in the townships. Excellent history of the evolution of these vehicles, the variations, good photo's of them in use and of the damage they sustained when they set off mines. Most of these vehicles are still in use. In fact the Canadian Armed Forces recently purchased a lare number of them from South Africa to use in Afghanistan and India uses the Casspir's they purchased from South Africa in Kashmir.

What's obvious from the book is that the Rhodeasians and South Africans developed a type of vehicle which is outstanding in it's ability to successfully protect it's occupants from landmine explosions and ambushes by lightly armed guerilla forces, is easily repairable after such an attack and which is far better suited to counter-insurgency operations where the opposition doesn't possess armoured fighting vehicles of their own but rather relies on terrorist or guerilla-style tactics than other more conventional AFV's. A type of combat that the AFV's and light vehicles such as the Hummer's used by the US in Iraq (for example) are completely unsuited for as the US Army has shown us over the last couple of years.

Once more, this book teaches us that those who don't study history and learn from it are doomed to repeat it, something the US Army in Iraq is busy proving at the cost of thousands of lives and even more casualties. This book should be required reading for any military force involved in counter-insurgency operations, particularly in the desert, semi-desert or urban environments in which the design of these fighting vehicles evolved. The Rhodeasians and South African's took a practical approach to the strategic and tactical problems they faced, solved the problems of land-mines and ambushes by lightly-armed forces and minimized their casualties whilst consistently inflicting large #'s of casualties on the attacking forces (see also Peter Stiff's book, "Nine Days of War"). The vehicles illustrated in this book were the end result. It's well worth the read. Unfortunately for their soldiers, it appears the US Army is ignoring the lessons learnt from years of combat in southern africa. Hubris goeth before a fall.

As a personal aside, I have friends who fought from these vehicles in South-West (now Namibia) and in Angola and who survived land-mine explosions and ambushes and have the photo's to prove it. They've seen my copy of this book and swear by it's accuracy and that they owe their lives to the design of these vehicles. One friend whose Casspir hit land-mines twice swears he would now be deceased twice over if he'd been in a Hummer or a Stryker. All their Casspir lost was a wheel assembly each time - they were back up and running within a few hours with just a few bruises and the need for a couple of beers to sooth their nerves. Ponder on that when you think that most US casualties in Iraq have been from mines. What a waste.