The Magnetic Minesweeper
Heroes Remember
The Magnetic Minesweeper
The mines in the early part of the war were contact mines.
The ship had to hit them. Later on in the war, about ‘43 on,
they came out with the magnetic mine. And all the steel hull
ship had a positive or negative electric charge, and these mines
were positive or negative and you didn’t have to hit them.
You’d just go over them you’d detonate them. The magnetic
minesweeper had a great big long tail out behind and a heavy
generator aboard the ship and it pulsated alternately negative
and positive. And that’s, you could tell when you blew up a mine
because the tail would blow out of water.
And you had a coil, I can’t remember the technical name of it .
Now it went around the ship and it nullified this charge so you
could go over a mine without detonating it and our minesweeper
had that but something happened the time that it didn’t work,
that’s why the mine exploded.
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