One of the common techniques used in warfare during the First World War was mining. There were various mines planted under trenches, then detonated to send part of the trench, and anyone in it, sky high. Some of these mines were felt as far away as Switzerland. Lochnagar Crater, in the Picardie area of France, is the most recognizable example of this method:
The Lochnagar mine (photo) was dug by the Tunnelling Companies of the Royal Engineers and was detonated at 0728 on 1 July 1916. It was just one of eight large and eleven small charges that were placed underneath German lines for the first day of the Somme. Both Lochnagar and the nearby Y Sap mines were purposely overcharged to leave big craters with wide rims in the ground.
After the detonation, the main attack began. The crater was occupied by Allied troops as they began to fortify the eastern lip. The advance continued until the German Fourth Company counter-attacked and the British soldiers had to retreat into the crater.
As the day progressed and artillery was fired into Sausage Valley, the Germans used machine-gun fire to take down any British soldier who moved. They also started systematically shelling areas nearby, and wounded and lost men sought shelter and refuge within the crater, until the German forces began to bomb that as well. The British artillery then also opened fire on the crater, leaving the men stuck inside with nowhere to hide.
The mines in the Somme were detonated as part of a failed attack on the Hawthorn Ridge Redoubt, a German fortification west of the village Beaumont-Hamel. The mine was blown up ten minutes before the start of the general attack, alerting the Germans to its imminence. Despite surface destruction to the trenches, the lifting of the heavy artillery bombardment made it safe for the German soldiers to come out and occupy the front line defenses.
Another mine with thirty thousand pounds of explosives was laid beneath Hawthorn Ridge for the next attack, which wasn’t until 13 November 1916.
Remains were found at Lochnagar Crater in October of 1998 of British soldier George Nugent of the Tyneside Scottish Northumberland Fusiliers. He was later reburied with military honors in Ovillers Military Cemetery in 2000, eighty-four years after he died in battle, and a memorial cross now sits at the mine site where his body was found.
Lochnagar Crater attracts more than two hundred thousand visitors every year, and an annual memorial service is held on 1 July to commemorate the detonation of the mine and the dead Allied and German troops, while poppy petals are scattered into the crater.
The tunnellers, when creating the mines, dug up to a hundred feet below the ground and had to work in complete silence in order to avoid suspicion. They were also tasked with searching for, and stopping any German tunnelers who were doing the same job and tunneling in the opposite direction. When they were confronted with German miners, underground hand-to-hand combat would ensue until there was a winner.
One of the many mine craters from Messines ridge, also known as Lone Tree Crater or Pool of Peace.
In Belgium, near the most active minefield of World War One, there still lies an unexploded fifty thousand pound bomb, sitting under a farm on the Messines Ridge near Ypres. The mine is sitting eighty feet under a barn, and was located by British researchers, who were able to do so by using wartime maps.Rico says we made more and bigger booms during the Second World War, culminating in the biggest booms of all, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki:
It was one of many set by British miners along the Ypres Salient towards the German trenches on the Messines Ridge. The plan was to plant two dozen gigantic mines under the German lines and blow them as part of a major offensive planned for the summer of 1916, but it was postponed until 1917. Work on the mines began eighteen months before the offensive actually began and eight thousand meters of the tunnel were constructed.
On 7 June 1917, nineteen of the mines were detonated within half a minute. When the explosions took place, more than a million pounds of explosives were backed into the underground chambers along seven miles dug by the miners in an attack that killed six thousand German troops. The bang was heard as far away as Downing Street in London, England, buildings within a thirty-mile radius shook, and even seismographs in Switzerland were able to register a small earthquake. General Sir Herbert Plumer’s Second Army took the ridge, and the Battle of Messines was considered the most successful local operation of World War One; initial objectives were taken within just three hours.
However six mines were not used, and one twenty thousand pound mine called Peckham ended up being abandoned due to a tunnel collapse before the operation began, and four on the southern edge ended up not being necessary. The sixth was planted under a ruined farm called La Petite Douve, but was discovered by German forces in a counter-mining attack on 24 August 1916, and so was never used. One of the four unused mines exploded in 1955, believed to have been triggered by a lightening strike.
After the war, La Petite Douve was rebuilt and later renamed. The mine sat almost forgotten for years. Farmer Roger Mahieu told The Telegraph in 2004 that “It doesn’t stop me sleeping at night. It’s been there all that time, why should it decide to blow up now?” The unused Peckham mine is also located underneath a farmhouse on the Messines Ridge, ticking….
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