

How Britain Beat Germany’s Magnetic Sea Mines - commandar
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/how-britain-beat-germanys-wwii-magnetic-sea-mines-bfec5558704c

======
Agustus
The amount of luck that goes into winning a battle and summarily a war is
insane. Here you have the United Kingdom desperately trying to get supplies
into the ports and are stymied by these new magnetic mines.

Only through the absolute luck of a Luftwaffe plane ditching its cargo
prematurely, the contact switch not being set, and the salt water not self-
priming the mine because the air-dropped mine lands in a swamp does the United
Kingdom short-cut research / spying efforts and address the magnetic sea
mines.

The countermeasure tests being done through live tests must have been fun to
volunteer for: "Take this plane, fly 35 feet off the water and when the mine
goes off the blast will shoot you into the air."

~~~
Shivetya
Not just luck, the bravery of those men who had to field strip that lucky
find. Really, just reading that part of the story gave me chills.

~~~
Agustus
Agreed. I try to put myself in the shoes of the person accomplishing a task
and after reading about the mine not being set properly, gave me the same
chill.

------
RachelF
For those more interested in a full documentary on beating the magnetic sea
mines:
[http://youtu.be/wKrweOqNxz0?t=1m49s](http://youtu.be/wKrweOqNxz0?t=1m49s)

------
mxfh
New rule: Don't use images with source resolution <= 800px for full width
headers.

~~~
scott_karana
I dunno, it kind of fits the grainy WWII wartime photography source.

~~~
anigbrowl
Nah, he's right - pixellation and macroblocking on a supposedly vintage
photograph just kills it for me - it's become my test for whether an Irish bar
is fake or not :-)

One handy trick if your historical source photo is just too small is to resize
and then apply a halftone effect - at least the analog-type distortion is
consistent with that of newspapers, textbooks etc.

------
funkyy
Its interesting to call things as they are. In politically correct world title
would say "How Britain Beat Nazist...".

Interesting read for sure!

