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 ships 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.