Hej, Det är bara att gratulera Mattias till ett nytt och fint FrF-pack. Vi som var i Linköping fick ju ta del av det på turneringen, men det färdiga paketet med kartan dök upp i veckan och imponerade i alla fall på mig. (Men jag är ju ganska lättköpt ...) Scenariot "Pavlovs dogs", FrF 50, är en kul historia, där de sovjetiska minhundarna tillför en ny dimension. Jag tänkte bidra med ett klipp ur den eminenta boken "Dogs at war", Blythe Hamer, för att kasta ytterligare ljus över det hela. Håll till godo! "Anti-tank dogs A less inspiring story ... is that of Russias anti-tank dogs. The Russians, who considered their dogs to be offensive weapons that are expendable, began training their dogs in 1941 to run under German tanks carring explosives. They trained the dogs to become accustomed to carrying heavy bundles of T.N.T. strapped onto their backs. The dogs were kept hungry, and were only fed underneath running tanks. In this way, the Russians taught the dogs to eagerly anticipate the weight of the T.N.T. and the noise of approaching tanks. Of course, once underneath a real enemy tank, tha plan was to detonate the explosives -- ending the Germans and the dogs lives. But, in an almost slapstick twist, the early training backfired. Since the dogs had only been fed underneath Soviet tanks, they did not run toward the German tanks as planned. Instead, they made a beeline for Russian vehicles. This wasn't discovered until the dogs were at the Front, when an entire Russian tank division had to withdraw until their very own anti-tank dogs had been shot. Despite these mishaps, the Russians claimed that several German tanks were destroyed this way at the Battle of Kursk in 1943, and captured German papers also indicates that the anti-tank dogs were at least occasionaly successful. Even more bizarre Despite early Russian mishaps with anti-tank dogs, they kept working at it, and assigned their top people to the job. Dr Igor Valenkho at the University of Smolensk was a pioneer of Pavlovian methods for teaching tricks to mice. His goal had been to train lab mice to conduct fine repair work for use in industry and engineering, so that machines didn't have to be stripped down. But with the approach of the Wehrmacht, Valenkho was reassigned to anti-tank dog training. His real love, however, was mice, and so he secretly continued working with them -- this time training them as anti-tank mice. He knew that if he could get the mice near German tanks, they could easily get inside engines and destroy the wiring. He persuaded his superiores to drop mice from low-flying airplanes on to a German Panzer unit near Kirov in early April, 1942. This first attempt must have worked, because other drops were authorized, the most notorious being the mouse attack on 22 Panzer Division in November 1942. One of the mice, Mikhail, was later found inside one of the disabled German tanks, proving that the mouse attack had been successful. Mikhail was given a special "Hero of the Soviet Union " medal. But the Germans figured out what was going on after they shot down one of the Russians mice-carrying planes. In late 1942, the Wehrmacht started adding cats to their units so that they would eat the offending mice. They had trouble keeping up with the demand for cats, however, and since there weren't enough German cats for the job, they eventually resorted to conscripting cats from other countries. Dr Valenkho, sorry to see his mice rendered useless, put on his thinking cap. By now, the anti-tank dog program was being given up as a failure, and dogs were being retrained for other duties. Dr Valenkho proposed dropping several dogs with each airdrop of mice. The dogs could chase the cats, leaving the mice free to work. This brilliant idea was slightly behind the times, however, because the new Tiger tanks killed the mice with their gasoline fumes before the rodents could chew through the wires. The British then developed a plastic coating for wires which was mouse-proof, and the whole idea was, fortunately, dropped. The US tried a similar stunt. In 1943, the Army tried training dogs with timed explosives attached to their backs to attack fortified bunkers. Fortunately, problems arose immediately. Dogs sometims turned around and headed back to their masters. Also, it was soon realized that, in actual combat, it would be very difficult to train the dogs to run to bunkers that were not occupied by Allied troops. The project, which was wisely kept secret from the public, was abandoned several months after it began. Real explosives weren't used during this training attempt, and no dogs were ever hurt." ----------------------------------- Var sanningen tar slut och skrönan tar vid överlåter jag åt var och en att avgöra. Men håll med om att det är en bra historia! Boken "Dogs at war" innehåller mängder med fantastiska hundhistorier, inte minst om de schäfrar som fanns med i amerikanska patruller i Vietnams djungler under 60- och 70-talet. Hundar som kände lukten av och varnade för minförsåt på upp till 200 meters avstånd, som anade fiender innan deras överfall kunde slås ut, men som också släpade tillbaka sina dödligt sårade hundförare i kläderna mitt under brinnande strid och själva svårt skadade. Rekommenderad läsning för hundintresserade mellan asl-scenariona, alltså. Matts
