International Harvester automatic towed mine planter

**Jon** · Oct 7, 2016, 10:27 PM

A disturbing but still compelling 1-minute video of a vintage mine planter from International Harvester, with a wheelbarrow of puppies for a chaser.

**Toolmaker51** · Oct 7, 2016, 10:45 PM

''....and reduces the time consumed for laying mines''; Maybe safer too if sympathetic or secondary explosions aren't possible.
Better yet, reduce the mines altogether.
World needs more dogs though, that's certain; suitable owners not so easy.

**Jon** · Oct 8, 2016, 12:26 PM

I'm fascinated by the interplay of war and technology, and I like seeing interesting military machines, but this particular video is bothersome to me and I'm not sure why. I don't even know if this exact device was ever used in combat.

It could be the swords-to-ploughshares notion that the effects of most implements of war are finite, and that the technological advancements made in wartime can be applied to post-war peacetime industries. But the mines remain a civilian peacetime hazard long after warring nations have resolved their conflicts. I guess what's chilling here is that, when this video was produced, nobody realized that.

**mklotz** · Oct 8, 2016, 12:33 PM

I had the same uneasy feeling when I viewed it. The idea of an automated way to ensure legless children far into the future is both disturbing and repugnant. As if war weren't horrible enough, let's figure out a way to project its horrors into peacetime.

**C-Bag** · Oct 8, 2016, 04:29 PM

The line "the mines are automatically armed before" as its going down that chute and into the furrow would seem to me pretty much insure this was never really used. Setting a mine is a delicate process AFAIK. How is something that would be set off by stepping on it going to take that kind of jolt and end up being under so much turf? I think that was just a IH Pentagon ad.

As disturbing as that is cluster munitions and white phosphorus munitions are much more disturbing to me. Especially cluster bombs that the bomblets look like toys? This is where my tax $$ go to?

I appreciate the puppy chaser, Wag More, Bark Less!

**mklotz** · Oct 8, 2016, 04:58 PM

Tank mines are equipped with a detonator that purposely requires a lot more pressure to detonate; don't want troops setting off mines meant for higher value targets. Perhaps that's what this thing is set up to plant.

Regardless, there would never be enough money to pay me to drive that infernal machine.

**C-Bag** · Oct 8, 2016, 05:36 PM

Originally Posted by mklotz

Regardless, there would never be enough money to pay me to drive that infernal machine.

I hear that! But, the folks in the military didn't have a choice. Some of them did, and volunteered for some of the craziest sucidal stuff! The rabbit hole that I've gone down recently was glider pilots in WWII. They touched on this in Saving Private Ryan. But for some reason I never looked into it more until a short recount in another book I was reading. I thought transport C-47 pilots were sitting ducks! But landing in fields etc at night, no power in cloth and tubing......and then make your way back to friendly lines only to do it again! Wow! Check out the vid "Silent Wings". Walter Cronkite and Andy Rooney both went in gliders! And the pilots were all volunteers.