Booby Traps!: The History of Deadly Devices, from World War I to Vietnam

Fantastic book, thank you.

This book discusses a history of booby traps mostly up to Vietnam. It discusses the psychological advantage of simple tools made to slow down and and disrupt the advance of enemy forces. Some mechanical booby traps used by military and government agencies are discussed but other non-mechanical and much easier made booby traps are examined. IMHO, this is not a book for your teenager but a book for a military historian. Social media can show many of the same traps and their basic design which is highly illegal to use on your property or in your home in every state of our country. Friends of mine in the war were PSYOPS and recommended this book to me. Hope this helps. As always, be safe. JJ

Booby traps have always featured in warfare since time began, but the advent of the first World War brought the skill to new highs and certainly low's.The unlucky, clumsy, fatigued or greedy soldier, is the greatest asset that an enemy has for these devices. A nice warm dugout with a stove ready to light, but with a length of fuse and a block of explosive up the chimney. A picture hanging at an angle, an invitation to an officer to straighten, with a grenade recessed in the wall behind it. These and many more such devices really started to be used on an organised mass scale with the German retreat of 1917. Even the British dead were used by the hiding of a pull fuse attached to their belt. Other nice touches, like taking the delay component out of a grenades fuse for your enemy to pick up and try to use against you (a practice reborn in Vietnam, where the instantaneous fuse of the M26 'Smoker' was deliberately replaced into another persons 'Frag' Grenade, ensuring instant maiming or death to the user). Another trick the delay fuse, one of which blew up a clock tower 104 hours after the Germans had retreatedThe deadly game of booby traps and counter methods, carried on into WWII, where in one Italian town, some 8th Army troops found a nice intact house, but with a wire to the door handle. They tied a string to the door, moved over and took shelter in a convenient slit trench opposite and pulled the string. The door triggered the booby trapped mines hidden under the 'handy' slit trench, result, they all died. Also another driving force behind booby traps was the secret agents needing new and reliable fuses for acts of sabotage, which inspired the 'boffins' inventiveness.Now however as the author points out, that these once purely military tactics of delay and fatiguing your opponents, has found a new use. The deliberate targeting of the civilian population to spread terror and stop people working their land or moving back to their abandoned homes, has in modern times reached new lows. The author stops at Vietnam, because with the current climate of IED's, he never intended to produce a handbook. He does mention that the radical reduction of electronic components size and cost, their improved accuracy, all make modern booby traps much more powerful and intelligent. Also from the Germans research into wood and glass mines, the new generation of plastic mines have become the greatest threat to civilians by their deliberate indiscriminate usage.A very readable book, but you will never be able to leave your house again without being paranoid over every trig, beer can, door handle.......

Great reference, but could have used more illustrations. This, plus the osprey books gets you there.

Casual reading. The book is in excellent condition.