What where those explosive tube thingamabobs they used during the Omaha beach scene?
Damn you
Great idea! Crappy barbed wire, though. It should be flexible enough that a coil just jumps up a few feet after the explosion, or gives a bit when a steer casually tests it with his butt at -15F. Snapping under strain is inexcusable.
Went to school in DeKalb, IL, home of barbed wire. We take our wire seriously.
That was quick! Thanks guys.
Another scene involving a Bengalore torpedo can be found in The Big Red One.
And in The Longest Day
and in The Sands of Iwo Jima
This is indeed the most nerve-wracking use of this weapon in any film I’ve seen.
As Private Zab (Robert Carradine) said in The Big Red One:
"The Bangalore Torpedo was 50’ long and packed with 85 pounds of TNT and you assembled it along the way. By hand. I’d love to meet the asshole who invented it. "
It’s such a splendid serendipity that the name of the place the torpedo is named for so perfectly describes the intended effect.
Slightly off-topic, but why couldn’t a soldier just hack through the wire with a large pair of wire cutters (not the little ones, but ones with very very long handles, for superior torque and a cushion of relative safety)?
It puts you out in the open for a very long time, subject to snagging on wire and being shot at by unfriendly types. The Bangalore torpedo is capable of being inserted with much less exposure and is capable of clearing much more wire in much less time. Although, as shown in The Big Red One, it was still rather hazardous to use.
Also, altough I’m not sure how much this was done in WWII, Jerry had a habit of running current throught his wires, at least during WWI. Could have some isolation on the cutters, of course…
A soldier, maybe, but a whole gaggle of them? Also, wasn’t barbed wire set out in a tangled mess, not a nice, neat, cow-fence.
Yes, there were generally multiple spools, sometimes even threaded into each other. It’d be like clearing brambles with scissors. While being shot at.
Besides, the bangalore also cleared mines and tank traps (those tripods made out of girders) around the explosion point all in one go, and created a shallow trench providing some measure of cover. High explosive is such a versatile tool, isn’t it ?
There are very few of Life’s problems that cannot be successfully addressed with high explosives.
Mythbusters: “When in doubt: C4”
Any chance someone has a link to this? I’ve seen that so many times I don’t watch it anymore.