Juha Hujanen wrote:The source of photos are not mentioned but cutaway of explosive pen is on chapter dealing with S.O.E (British Intelligence Agency) with pics of explosive thermos and coat-hanger.
The before posted pic of explosive pen is also shown in Signal magazine Finnish language edition 12/1943.Magazine has one page article titlet American pens...The pic shows Italian 5 years old Romeo Francesco from Reggio and allegly he has picked from street apen droped by American airplane and pen had exploted injuring his hand.Article claims that thousands of these penns have been dropped by Americans.This could be same case that DrG have posted.
Just my 2 cents.Could it be possible that Allied would have dropped explosive penns to Italian partisans,so they could use them against Germans by leaving them to be found and German soldier would pick them up and injure his hand?
Here's that pic
Regards/Juha
After a few people (Axis soldiers or civilains) lost their hands to an "explosive pen" people would learn not to pick up pens lying on the ground, and the military use of such an item rapidly diminishes. The amount of resources a military would expend in design and producing such pens, transporting and then releasing them over the target area, to injure just a handful (excuse the pun) of people is not worth the effort.
Munitions that injure personnel are best used concealed. For example, a munition that you accidently step on in the grass or among the leaves because you don't see it, and thereforce cannot take precautions by stepping around it. These munitions are not items designed to explode when you pick it up and play with it.
On the other hand (excuse the second pun), what is worthwhile is for the enemy to concoct and disseminate the allegation (the lie) through propaganda.
If you are intending to injurin soldiers through clandestine explosive devices, instead of dropping explosive pens to them, you drop explosive porno mags, and you really catch them with their pants down and hurt them where it really hurts the most. Would
Signal have published that photo?
One quarter of all English civilians killed during the 1940 Blitz was reportedly killed by the British flak coming down on them. Who is to say that the explosive device, if it existed at all, was Allied? The device may have been an Axis military item. It could have been a plasting cap that some careless Axis engineer left lying around for a kid to pick up. As a kid, I remember TV commercials in the 1960s warning kids not to pick up and handle plasting caps.
If the Allies had actually used explosive toys, the Axis would more than likely have found some unexploded ones, or the explosive toys would have been found unexploded after the war.
Penn44