THE CANINE-ARMOR INTERACTION

In the 1930s, the Soviet Union decided that it would be a good idea to train dogs to destroy enemy tanks. Initially, the concept was that the dog's handler would strap a bomb to the dog. The dog would then run over to the tank, remove the bomb with its teeth, drop the bomb next to the tank, and scamper back to its handler. The bomb would then be set off by remote control or a timer. 

There were several flaws with this plan. First of all, the remote devices were considered too expensive to use in any quantity, so most of the bombs were instead detonated by timers. Second, since the tank would be moving, it might be out of range of the blast by the time the charge exploded. Finally, and most unfortunately, if Fido had trouble removing the bomb (or simply declined to do so for whatever reason), he would return with the bomb to his handler, at which point the device could decide that it was time to detonate. This was considered to be bad, so the Russian eggheads designed a more elegant system.

The Soviets were very cavalier about sacrificing their soldiers, and they were even less concerned about killing dogs. Under the new system, the dog was taught to run under a tank with a bomb strapped to his back. When he crawled under the tank, a lever sticking up from the bomb would be depressed, and the dog and the tank would go KABOOM (obviously, the KABOOM portion of the process was eliminated from the training sessions).

Many of these missions had to be aborted, simply because the dogs had not been adequately conditioned to the noise of gunfire and explosions during training, and they ran away when they encountered the sound and fury of actual battle conditions. However, there was even a more serious defect in their education. The Russians used their standard Soviet T34 diesel tanks as a training aids for the canines. During WWII, the German armor was generally powered by gasoline engines. When the dogs were released in combat, they tended to crawl under those tanks reeking of the familiar odor of diesel fuel. Uh oh.

The Germans captured some of the anti-tank pooches early on in the war but decided that the concept was not worth copying for their own forces. However, they did implement a policy of consistently shooting any dogs found within a combat area.

Notwithstanding the foregoing problems, sixteen dogs took out twelve German tanks at the Battle of Kursk. The Soviets also claim that their dogs destroyed 300 tanks (hopefully, at least some of them German) during the entire course of the war.

For more information on tank-busting Bowsers, see the excellent article from the Today I Found Out website.

Photo from Today I Found Out