Demolition Equipment For Airborne Engineers 1943

Notice: This film was produced by the US Army and the copyright is held by the National Archive.
This film shows the demolitions kit designed for US paratroopers during WW2. Shows what it contains, how to pack it, and how to use it.

[@jastrapper190]

Push pull type ignition devices… a fifty foot spool of det cord… well shoot… a fellah could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that!

[@jastrapper190]

1943… and the demolition charges/bags I was issued in 2003… sixty years later… almost nothing had changed besides the type of explosive and our bags only had cloth ties. No buckles. And in the top flap of our demolition charges there were a few tagents (sections of det cord with pre crimped mechanical blasting caps designed to quickly link demolition charges together). The bags were designed to be primed and thrown into the openings of bunkers or caves or duct taped onto structural steel or concrete for demolishing buildings or bridges. The crimpers they issued me were probably the same set shown on this video. Same specs and design drawings… different year and generation. I suppose when you have a winning idea and design… no need to ever change it. Thanks for the video.

[@MakeItWithCalvin]

I feel like when handling explosives the fewer things that have the potential to cause an accidental detonation, the better!

[@jastrapper190]

@@MakeItWithCalvin I agree. But it’s not possible to engineer out the risk from some things. Having the tagents with the Comp C4 plastic explosive blocks (directly above the blocks (which are enclosed in a plastic pack that has an adhesive backing/peel away section so the blocks can be “stuck” onto things like structural steel))… well it just doesn’t seem very “safe”. Lol. But I felt even more of a constant “horror” or “impending doom” with the M67 fragmentation grenades. For my last deployment I at no time had fewer than four of those little baseballs strapped to me almost 24/7 at some points. After months and months… they start to get “beat up”. And if anything ever goes wrong there…. You’ll most likely never get or have time to work out the sudden electrical impulses sent to your mind showing your legs flying in a separate direction to your body. It’s all relative. In training you would see an entire five ton full of explosives and then behind it would come the “command humvee” with the first Sgt or the instructors towing a tiny little trailer holding a single ammo can (the caps). Then in combat they just show you a mountain of crap and tell you they are blowing it all up as “surplus to their deployment/budget/rules” so anything you wanted was yours. From caps to det cord to block TNT to Bangalore torpedo, flex linear (like a preformed shaped share geometry in long rollable lengths of a soft bendable metal with an explosive core) claymores, time fuse… all kinds of demolitions and you pack it into a sardine can of an LAV (Marine Light Armored Vehicle) and drive it over live mines and have people shooting at you and whatnot. All normal at the time but when you step back and think… it all kind of takes on a different hue. Lol. The one good thing about being surrounded by death… when/if it comes you won’t have to worry about it… you have grown accustomed to being in it’s presence.

[@MakeItWithCalvin]

@@jastrapper190 Makes total sense. The risk will never be zero, but the closer to zero the better. Ultimately only so much you can do when your time is up, your time is up.