Civil War Torpedoes and the Global Development of Landmine Warfare

 

To order, go to: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538174289/Civil-War-Torpedoes-and-the-Global-Development-of-Landmine-Warfare

 

 

"An important study that helps remedy the general neglect of mines and torpedoes. Significant both for the American Civil War and for our more general understanding of the process of technological innovation in the nineteenth century." -- Jeremy Black, author of Technology and War

"Professor Hess has produced yet another exciting book on an understudied aspect of Civil War military history. He examines the history of Civil War land mines and places them within the larger context of nineteenth-century military history. With his analysis of the tactics, technology, and moral ramifications of the use of land mines, Professor Hess has created the definitive book on the subject." -- Kyle S. Sinsi, author of Sacred Debts: State Civil War Claims and American Federalism
 

"Earl Hess continues to produce masterful studies in Civil War history that challenge decades of presumed scholarly wisdom. True to form, Civil War Torpedoes looks at the expansion of landmine technology and tactics during the sectional conflict, the campaigns in which subterranean mines were employed, and the colorful personalities involved in weapons development. It importantly assesses landmine effectiveness in both its own time and the role that these “infernal weapons” may—or may not—have played in the evolution of global warfare in both an operational and moral sense. Hess’s work is a triumph of diligent and focused scholarship." -- Christopher S. Stowe, Professor of Military History, Marine Corps University

 

The Civil War was the first conflict in world history to employ a large number and a variety of different types of landmines. A handful of Confederates pioneered in the development of contact-activated mines by adding a sensitive percussion fuse to artillery shells and burying them before fortifications, along roads, at watering places, and along pathways at about a dozen locations during the conflict. Some mines also were rigged to explode by electricity.

 

 

But Confederate hopes for the landmine were never realized. While the technology worked, the landmine failed to provide ay tactical benefits. Federal troops quickly learned how to deal with them, often using Confederate prisoners to dig them up.

 

 

The torpedoes, as they were commonly called in the 1860s, merely angered and embittered the Unionists rather than demoralized or stopped them. Some of these mines killed Southern civilians, including women and children, and many remained in the ground for decades to come.

 

 

Nevertheless, Confederate operatives worked out the first doctrine of landmine use in global history and implemented that doctrine in the 1860s. The key elements of the doctrine resurfaced in European warfare during the Second World War and in the conflicts associated with the Cold War.