Did the US drop booby-trapped toys in WWII?

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xcalibur
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#61

Post by xcalibur » 01 Mar 2004, 23:12

Mark V wrote:David,

Sorry for double posting of same information - i found that you had already had info about M41 frag.

About M83 - IIRC it was an copy of German SD-2 "butterfly" fragmentation bomb. I am not sure was it deployed in WW2, but i am pretty sure it was (nominally) an 4-lb weapon. The weapon type might explain the "toy" appearance also...

Regards, Mark V
The M83 weighed in at 1.8 kg. Haven't been able to find a photo as yet.
Here is a pic and a diagram of the German SD-2:
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David Thompson
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#62

Post by David Thompson » 01 Mar 2004, 23:41

xcalibur -- Thanks, on behalf of our readers, for the "butterfly bomb" illustration.


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Juha Hujanen
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#63

Post by Juha Hujanen » 09 Mar 2004, 17:37

A bit late but i found this cutaway of explosive penns in Janus Piekalkiewicz Eurooppa Tulessa (Spione,Agenten,Soldaten)


/Juha
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#64

Post by David Thompson » 09 Mar 2004, 19:25

Juha -- Thanks for the interesting and on-point illustration. Did the text have any explanation of who manufactured the pens, or where the drawing came from?

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Juha Hujanen
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#65

Post by Juha Hujanen » 10 Mar 2004, 17:35

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
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David Thompson
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#66

Post by David Thompson » 10 Mar 2004, 18:51

Juha -- Thanks again for the additional information. I'm still puzzled as to who manufactured the pen bombs and how they appeared. The first report I've seen which had an associated date was from Italy in May 1943, which (as one reader pointed out) may be a little early for partisan activity there.

Another anomaly is the pen bomb in your illustration requires a certain amount of deliberate unscrewing and re-assembly before it's armed, whereas the Italian reports suggest that the pen was a boobytrap device which exploded when handled. It's all very strange.

Rob - wssob2
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#67

Post by Rob - wssob2 » 10 Mar 2004, 19:00

Thanks Juha for posting. As many forum members are aware, Signal was a Third Reich propaganda magazine published in multiple languages.

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Penn44
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#68

Post by Penn44 » 11 Mar 2004, 00:53

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

David Thompson
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#69

Post by David Thompson » 11 Mar 2004, 03:15

Another possibility is that the "pen bomb" was some sort of disguised fuse for saboteurs to use. This photo, which only superficially resembles the Italian and German photos, was scanned from Melton, H. Keith, Ultimate Spy, Dorling Kindersley Ltd., London: 2002, p. 119:
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Peter H
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#70

Post by Peter H » 11 Mar 2004, 15:58

SOE declassified files in 1999 mention pencil fuses,but the rejection of pen guns as viable.Explosive rats were even considered:

http://www.64-baker-street.org/gadgets/the_gadgets.html

Mark V
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#71

Post by Mark V » 11 Mar 2004, 21:34

Rather similar pencil fuzes were also used by Germans (and their allies). I think the major difference was that the acid solution was not secured to fuze itself but was selected from ampoulles supplied with the fuze - right one selected - broken, and then filled to the fuze.

It is said that it didn't do good to your teeth to bite through those acid ampoulles... :)

Mark V

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Matt Gibbs
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Tome Pencils

#72

Post by Matt Gibbs » 28 Nov 2005, 00:53

The SOE time pencil as invented by one of their scientists at Station IX was a development of the German version which was first used in 1916 during the 1st World War. The time pencil was the work of Colonel A.G. Langley RN. The time pencil has nothing whatever to do with a real or look a like pencil.

A fuse supplied with various ampoules to add to create a time delay would be like the SOE equivalent of the AC Delay, which came in a small tin with a selection of ampoules to create a delay of 2 hours to 6 days. This was a collaborative effort within Station IX by Maj/ CR Bailey, Capt. MBDonald and Mr RS Potter.

The Welpen was a development of SOE and was a .22 single shot last resort weapon. Known as the ".22 Experimental Firing Device, Hand Held, Welpen". It was first worked on in 1941. Disguised to look like a fountain pen the clip was the trigger. It was a bit on the heavy side and not very convincing when weighed in the hand.

Only about 100 were made before the project was abandoned in favour of the Enpen, made at Enfield by the Royal Small Arms Factory. This was the "Auxilliary Firing Device, Hand Held, Enpen Mk1" and produced in quantity in 1944. It was a similar .22 single shot weapon. It could be reloded.

The US led OSS had the "Stinger" which was a truly tiny device, 3.5 in long and weighed less than half an ounce. It had the .22 round in it and could not be reloaded.

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Topspeed
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#73

Post by Topspeed » 30 Nov 2005, 13:34

Rob - WSSOB wrote:Thanks Juha for posting. As many forum members are aware, Signal was a Third Reich propaganda magazine published in multiple languages.
I never saw it as a propaganda magazine. I tought it was like german TIME or a NEWSWEEK..ok it does have a lot of pics of war. Incredible....so this pen thing is totally made up....the italian baby's hand actually exploded in 1943 when he...toyed with a partisan fuse dropped by an american aeroplane ? I am confused about this thread.

dragos03
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#74

Post by dragos03 » 01 Dec 2005, 05:35

Here is some information from my country.

Just like in Italy, in Romania old men can tell stories about the toy bombs dropped by the Allies. But in a book i'm reading these claims were researched in the Romanian archives. The conclusion is that some toy bombs (but apparently only a few, there are only isolated incidents) were left behind by the Soviets on the Eastern Front. The author found no report of toy bombs dropped by the Allies. He found several instances when the authorities were called to investigate cases of people that claimed they were injured by such bombs. In all these cases the conclusion excluded the toy bombs, it was usually about unexploded elements from hand grenade detonators. In most cases, the injuries were caused by detonators from a type of Italian-made hand grenade (that may explain why this myth is also present in Italy).

But the Allied airforce certainly harmed children in another way: by strafing. My own grandmother (who was only a kid then) was strafed by US planes in 1944 while she was with some cows on a field. This happened in the countryside, far from any important objective. On another forum one of the members even found a matching record of this incident from the US archives (a USAAF report stating that US fighters strafed "targets of opportunity" at the approx. the same time and location).

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Topspeed
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#75

Post by Topspeed » 01 Dec 2005, 08:15

Dragos,


I see no toy bombs...good.

Maybe the US pilot tought the cow was hostile towards your granny and wanted to help her out.


rgds,

Juke

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