tellermine box why??

[reidmuller]

i have a metal box for the tellermine 42 but why did they need it as thr tellermine had a handle so was a waste of preacious metals?? also is even hevier than the mine on its own!!

[MP44_tom]

My guess would be transportation purposes. The tellermines themselves are quite fragile (thin metal) amd they contain a lot of explosive charge, so better transport them safely

Tom
www.mp44.nl

[heinrich66]

Hello,

they made also (later in the war) a box from wood. Which is rarely encountered today.

[pete]

AT Mines

Why they had metal boxes i dont know..seems wood is the way there unless the mines were being used somewhere that wood is a problem might explain the choice of metal..i know in africa for example wood doesnt last long with termites around!!!...Is the box maybe part of a specail purpose set?

Im not overly framiliar with how they did it for ww2, but common sense wise in ref to how explosives work and tricks of the trade when utilzing mine design parts like handles, and packing the same thing is still used today for AT Mines and other explosives and accessories. The box is for transport of a "set" of mines, be it 5 for example as you dont order mines individually they come by the package mostly for supply. The fuzes and boosters would be in a diffrent box not inside the mines, if they were they would still be seperate, as mines dont come fused. The mine itself is harmless without the fuse and booster, as long as you dont put 1(fuze) and 2 (booster) together with 3(mine) you cant have 4 (boom)..of course it would also have to be armed and the fuze actuated as per design..that makes transport and delivery of 1000 mines in the same truck to the unit a hell of alot easier and the main thing, safer and is the reason for the seperation of components so nothing goes boom in the wrong place at the wrong time. The handles for the mines are so they can be carried while laying the mf or on the operation theyre being used for , for instance an explosive ambush patrol etc..obstacle, by an infantry or engineer section..or whoever. They also have many other improvised uses such as fixing the mine to something like a string to pull several mines across the road in a checkpoint, fix mines to a target like a bridge peir, you name it and all up to imagination and what explosive accessories are available...im sure the germans used the same deal... Theres also all sorts of other things the handle was for, im not sure if there were side booby trap fuse wells in the teller mine, but handles are often used for pull tripwires to boobytrap the mine with a charge underneath for example. Theres an identical mine to the teller mine in modern day that we ran into in kosovo and all over the balkans, the tmm1 , based on the teller mine....some of them were found with 20kg boxes of tnt underneath with a pull trip wire fuse boobytrapping it to the handle or a pressure release fuse underneath etc etc..all up to imagination.

Hope that helps!

Pete

[whsammler]

Teller Mine Box Devlopment

Here we have 4 examples of the types of teller mine cases used during WW2.

Top left is 1939 dated

top right is BMB marked WA136 NO DATE

Bottom left is DOE 43

Bottom right is GFX 43

As you can see they go from intricate and expencive construction to just simple wood planks dovetailed and nailed together.

I will post some more detailed pics later tonight.