A mine roller or mine trawl is a demining

Demining

Demining or mine clearance is the process of removing either land mines, or naval mines, from an area, while minesweeping describes the act of detecting of mines. There are two distinct types of mine detection and removal: military and humanitarian.Minesweepers use many tools in order to accomplish...

 device mounted on a tank

Tank

A tank is a tracked, armoured fighting vehicle designed for front-line combat which combines operational mobility, tactical offensive, and defensive capabilities...

 or armoured personnel carrier

Armoured personnel carrier

An armoured personnel carrier is an armoured fighting vehicle designed to transport infantry to the battlefield.APCs are usually armed with only a machine gun although variants carry recoilless rifles, anti-tank guided missiles , or mortars...

, designed to detonate anti-tank mines

Land mine

A land mine is usually a weight-triggered explosive device which is intended to damage a target—either human or inanimate—by means of a blast and/or fragment impact....

. It allows engineers to clear a lane through a minefield which is protected by enemy fire.

The device is usually composed of a fork or two push arm assemblies fitted to the front of a tank hull, with two banks of rollers that can be lowered in front of the tank's tracks. Each roller bank has several heavy wheels studded with short projecting steel girders, which apply a higher ground pressure

Ground pressure

Ground pressure is the pressure exerted on the ground by the tires or tracks of a motorized vehicle, and is one measure of its potential mobility, especially over soft ground. Ground pressure is measured in pascals which corresponds to the EES unit of pounds per square inch...

 than the tank's tracks. This ensures the explosion of pressure-fused anti-tank mines, which would otherwise explode under the track itself.

History

At the end of the First World War, the British Army

British Army

The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...

 Engineers Major Giffard LeQuesne Martel

Giffard LeQuesne Martel

General Sir Giffard Le Quesne Martel, KCB, KBE, DSO, MC , familiarly known as "Q Martel", was a British Army officer during World War I and World War II....

 and Maj. Inglis experimented with tank bridges and mine rollers based on the Mk V tank. Three special tank battalions were mustered for trials at Christchurch

Christchurch

Christchurch is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the country's second-largest urban area after Auckland. It lies one third of the way down the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula which itself, since 2006, lies within the formal limits of...

 in Hampshire

Hampshire

Hampshire is a county on the southern coast of England in the United Kingdom. The county town of Hampshire is Winchester, a historic cathedral city that was once the capital of England. Hampshire is notable for housing the original birthplaces of the Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force...

, England, in 1918. Because of the Armistice

Armistice

An armistice is a situation in a war where the warring parties agree to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, but may be just a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace...

, these were never tested in battle, but some development work continued with the Experimental Bridging Company until 1925.

After great difficulties caused by minefields in the Winter War

Winter War

The Winter War was a military conflict between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939 – three months after the start of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland – and ended on 13 March 1940 with the Moscow Peace Treaty...

 against Finland, the Soviet Red Army

Red Army

The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...

 assigned P.M. Mugalev at the Dormashina Factory in Nikolaev to design a mine-clearing vehicle. Prototypes were tested based on the T-28

T-28

The Soviet T-28 was among the world's first medium tanks. The prototype was completed in 1931 and production began in late 1932. It was an infantry-support tank intended to break through fortified defences...

 medium tank in 1940. Development was interrupted by the start of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, but resumed in 1942. T-60 and KV tank chassis underwent trials, but only the T-34

T-34

The T-34 was a Soviet medium tank produced from 1940 to 1958. Although its armour and armament were surpassed by later tanks of the era, it has been often credited as the most effective, efficient and influential design of World War II...

 was deemed to have a sufficiently robust transmission and clutch.

Experimental detachments of PT-34 mine roller tanks were formed in May 1942, and saw action at Voronezh

Voronezh

Voronezh is a city in southwestern Russia, the administrative center of Voronezh Oblast. It is located on both sides of the Voronezh River, away from where it flows into the Don. It is an operating center of the Southeastern Railway , as well as the center of the Don Highway...

 in August. The first Independent Engineer Tank Regiment with eighteen mine rollers was fielded in October 1943. At least five regiments were formed during the war.

The PT-34's huge roller fork was semi-permanently mounted on a T-34 or T-34-85 tank. The rollers were usually removed for travel, and only installed for mine clearing operations. Adaptations for later tanks consisted of two lighter arms. The Mugalev system was adopted by U.S. and Israeli forces in the 1980s.

The British developed the Anti Mine Roller Attachment (AMRA) for their Matilda II

Matilda tank

The Infantry Tank Mark II known as the Matilda II was a British infantry tank of the Second World War. It was also identified from its General Staff Specification A12....

, Valentine

Valentine tank

The Tank, Infantry, Mk III, Valentine was an infantry tank produced in the United Kingdom during the Second World War. More than 8,000 of the type were produced in 11 different marks plus various purpose-built variants, accounting for approximately a quarter of wartime British tank production...

, and Crusader tank

Crusader tank

The Tank, Cruiser, Mk VI or A15 Crusader was one of the primary British cruiser tanks of the early part Second World War and perhaps the most important British tank of the North African Campaign...

s in the desert. The rollers only covered the width of each track rather than clearing a tank-width path for subsequent vehicles and troops. To these were added a Churchill tank

Churchill tank

The Tank, Infantry, Mk IV was a heavy British infantry tank used in the Second World War, best known for its heavy armour, large longitudinal chassis with all-around tracks with multiple bogies, and its use as the basis of many specialist vehicles. It was one of the heaviest Allied tanks of the war...

 with the evocatively named "Canadian Indestructible Roller Device" (CIRD). The British used mine rollers to detect the presence of minefields and then used mine flail

Mine flail

A mine flail is a vehicle-mounted device that makes a safe path through a mine-field by deliberately detonating land mines in front of the vehicle that carries it. They were first used by the British during World War II....

s for the clearance.

The most used mine roller type used by the US forces in World War II, with the M4 Sherman

M4 Sherman

The M4 Sherman, formally Medium Tank, M4, was the primary tank used by the United States during World War II. Thousands were also distributed to the Allies, including the British Commonwealth and Soviet armies, via lend-lease...

 medium tank, was the T1E3 Mine Exploder unit, nicknamed "Aunt Jemima", from the pancake

Pancake

A pancake is a thin, flat, round cake prepared from a batter, and cooked on a hot griddle or frying pan. Most pancakes are quick breads; some use a yeast-raised or fermented batter. Most pancakes are cooked one side on a griddle and flipped partway through to cook the other side...

-like appearance of its two sets of five disc rollers, of 10 foot (3 meter) diameter each.

External links

• GlobalSecurity.org's page on Mine Clearing Roller System (MCRS)
• Photo of an APC with mine roller