Types of RW for sale.
Looks like nasty stuff. It says “Truck and Trailer rapid deployment systems available, can be deployed at 500m per minute.” What on earth do people use a rapid-deployment razor wire for?
And did you notice they have it in an electrified version as well? As if the “long-blade” style (nasty, nasty looking stuff) isn’t enough of a deterrent?
So the next question is…<b>what on earth would you need rapidly-deployed, electrified long-blade razor wire for?</b>
Best answer gets a set of rubber-handled wire clippers. Or something.
Shylock says:
I wouldn’t know about the elctrified version, but apart from that it sounds like a useful military application - as you can imagine, making razorwire obstacles by hand is an unpleasant (and timeconsuming) job. You’re always short on time when preparing a defensive position, so having an engineer truck scoot by in front of your position sure beats having a platoon or two carrying coils around by hand, hurting themselves in the process. Like mine ploughs and -dispensers - it’s not strictly necessary, but it saves time & effort.
As for normal old-fashioned run-of-the-mill barbed wire, I’ve seen people lying on coils of it and get walked on IRL. As posted earlier: Hard on the uniform, a couple of scratches on the soldier.
S. Norman
Cool link, BTW.
I recall seeing a reference (years ago, sorry can’t recall the book) about the German Army stormtroops (not the Nazi Brownshirts, but the late WWI assault troops) being trained for the big push of March 1918. The training included fire-and-movement tactics, with groups of men giving each other covering fire (made more effective by the Bergmann sub-machine gun), and making a human bridge over loose coils of British barbed wire.
In a prepared position, barbed wire entanglements would be very thick, the wire supported by long metal poles (scroll down on this page to see an ilustration of screw-pickets) which screwed into the ground (or less often, cemented in place), or on a series of “X”-shaped wooden or metal obstacles. Throwing oneself onto this kind of obstacle would not be any more effective than throwing yourself on a fence: you’d just be left hanging more or less vertical in space (with machine-gun bullets whipping around your ears).
Inside the prepared wire positions (which could be dozens of yards deep) might be rolls of loose barbed wire (what the British always referred to as “concertina” wire–see the picture of WW2 British barbed wire on this page. This could be compressed by a human body, the effect being a human bridge in the wire defences for the rest of the group to rush over. This sort of barbed wire obstacle was also found around temporary or emergency positions, put up in a hurry by retreating troops (which was exactly what the German Storm Troops were training for: their massive attack drove the British 5th Army back nearly 40 miles, capturing 975 guns, and causing nearly 300,000 casualties, in a desperate effort to finish the war before the bulk of the American Army arrived in France).
It is important to remember a century-old military dictum: barbed wire is only an effective obstacle when it is covered by fire: any unattended wire can be cut through, given time.
So, to wrap up and refer to the OP: yes, soldiers were trained to throw themselves on certain types of barbed wire obstacles, in WWI and WWII. However, this was not razor wire, but “old-fashioned” barbed wire.