| Original caption: “This was the Italian’s Officers mess. The building was destroyed in a raid by Allied bombers. In the foreground an airman is piling up mines sown by the enemy before they evacuated the station.” Royal Air Force (RAF) Airmen clear Nazi German Tellermine 35s from an airfield in Libya. The Tellermine 35 is a steel-cased anti-tank (AT) blast mine. These are the early version, with the smooth pressure plate. Similar to the later Tellermine 42 and 43 which had the same basic design. Filled with Trinitrotoluene (TNT), the Tellermine 35 had to have its T.MiZ.35 fuse gently pushed in and turned from Scharf (“Armed”) to Sicher (“Safe”), a dangerous process. The T.MiZ.42 cannot be neutralized and must be blown up in place. Special tools are required to install and remove fuses. Luckily, these mines are usually easily detectable, but the Nazi Germans had ways to obscure detection. All available airstrips were mined and ploughed to prevent the Allies from making use of them. They even went as far as to dig shallow latrines on the runways in which before use they placed mines. They finally filled them in and made good the surface. It has to be remembered that the Sappers (British Combat Engineers), after the mine has been detected, has to feel around with his hands and underneath the mine to disconnect any anti-lifting device. Such an experience does not add pleasure to an already nerve-racking job. Supplementing the Tellermine 35s, 42s, and 43s, new types of wooden anti-tank mine were used during the Nazi German retreat to Tunisia and, as the effectiveness of the Allied flail tanks to de-mine areas started to increase, linked mines designed to defeat these ensured that the Germans maintained the initiative against the countermeasures. The continual threat of mines severely tested the Allies, although it never threatened to change the course of battle as it had so nearly done at El Alamein in November 1942. The strain fell in particular on the Sappers, about half of whom were constantly engaged on mine clearance operations, although during the advance the demining doctrine of “all-arms responsibility” alleviated some of the burden. A War Office report stated that there was “an enormous physical and nervous strain upon the Sappers who were referred to as ‘housemaids armed with Hoovers.’” The deliberate, continuous sweeping with detectors, each man going forward slowly and intently, eyes on the ground, earphones on the head, while the noise of battle crashes around, and the cold-blooded investigation and lifting of mines, never knowing when some heathenish invention for catching 1 out would not blow the Sapper to eternity is a terrific strain. After the war, the Royal Engineers commissioned the artist Terrence Cuneo to immortalize the image of the cool-headed sapper operating a mine detector, concentrating intently, while a violent firefight rages around him; the painting hangs in the Officers’ Mess at the Royal Engineers headquarters, Chatham. Modest efforts were made to clear the redundant minefields after the Nazi Germans had been expelled, and a visionary recommendation was made in a British report on the Engineer Lessons from the North African Campaign. It was suggested that the British should design a new form of mine capable of “self-destroying after a certain period to avoid the need for lifting.” It would take over 4 decades before any serious efforts were made in this direction. During the campaign for North Africa almost 20 percent of Allied tank casualties were attributed to mines, plus an estimated 5 to 10 percent of personnel casualties. General officers were not immune from the threat. At least 7 officers of that rank became casualties on both sides, including killing Heer (“Nazi German Army”) Generalmajor Georg von Bismarck (February 15, 1891 – August 31, 1942), Commander of the 21st Panzer Division, wounding United Kingdom Royal Army Major General Herbert Lumsden (April 8, 1897 – January 6, 1945), Commander of 1st Armored division and United Kingdom Royal Army Brigadier Frederick H. Kisch (August 23, 1888 – April 7, 1943), Chief Engineer of 8th Army. The casualties do not reveal the full extent of the role of the mine in this campaign. They dictated the pace and the style of the battle in the 1st real encounter between armor and mines. They inhibited maneuver, induced caution and imposed a huge logistical strain upon both sides. Yet the methods of countering mines formed the basis of those used in later campaigns and promising advances were made. During the North Africa campaign, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and France laid millions of landmines in Libya. In many instances, mines were 1st placed, then removed and reused by the warring parties, making it difficult to provide estimates of their numbers. Estimates now put the figure for the number of mines in Libya at 2 to 12,000,000. Reliable information on both the numbers of mines laid, and the numbers still deployed is difficult to obtain, but landmines laid over 5 decades earlier in Libya are still causing problems in the country in the 1990s. It was “no rare incident for shepards to step on the old buried land mines and be killed in the explosion that follows.” As a result of research undertaken by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), and the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), many projections have been made on the impact of mines used in Libya. their locations, and their long-term social and economic costs. Existing information indicates that mines were laid in more than 70 major minefields in Libyaas well as in innumerable lesser ones. Their locations in many instances have never been revealed by the forces that placed them.* According to a UNITAR seminar on the long-term impact of landmines and other material remnants of war, which looked at Libya as a case study, all of the country’s coastline and parts of areas adjacent to it were mined during the war. Mines were placed mostly along the main lines of communication, around urban areas and ports, and in agricultural zones of the Mediterranean coast. Reconstruction and development of the country’s highway network has been retarded and made more expensive by the widespread presence of mines. Reports presented at the UNITAR seminar showed that the Libyan agricultural sector has suffered considerable losses due to mines: 27 percent of the land under cultivation was mined, 68 percent was suspected of being mined, and other zones were judged “dangerous” due to mines — an area that amounted to almost 3 times the size of the total agricultural surface. A 1985 study presented by SIPRI and UNEP that further examined mine-related damage to agriculture in Libya divided the 176 1,000,000 hectares (680,000 square miles) of Libya into 3 types of land: cereal land, rangeland, and arid land. According to the study, each was seriously and widely affected by explosive remnants. Though the cereal and rangelands were said to represent only 5 or 6 percent of the total land area of Libya, they support most of the nation’s vital agricultural economy. The resulting losses were described as follows: — 183,000 of the 2 1/2 1,000,000 hectares of the barley and wheat lands (8 percent of the total) were rendered unusable by the explosive remnants of World War II. Mines were deployed in cereal lands between 1940 and 1943. Efforts to rid these lands of the mines were organized in 1945, and were largely completed by 1972. A crude estimate o f the total cereal loss was thus calculated at 16 times the original annual loss, “perhaps 980,000 tonnes of grain plus almost two million tonnes of straw.” The research also described the extensive impact of mines on Libya’s rangelands: The 3.2 1,000,000 hectares (12,350 square miles) of open rangeland in Libya — supporting such livestock as sheep, goats, camels and cattle — provide its people and economy with meat and milk, hide and hair (including wool), draught power and transportation. The explosive remnants of World War II have disrupted this resource both by killing livestock and by denying areas to grazing. Almost 2.8 1,000,000 hectares (10,800 miles), or fully 87 percent, of the Libyan rangelands were rendered unusable during World War II, and remained so, by virtue of having been mined or suspected of having been mined. Until these unusable lands were either cleared of explosive remnants or determined safe, their non-use represented a total loss of more than 100,000,000 feed units per annum, that is, forage for ruminants approximately equivalent to 100,000 tonnes of barley feed for a period ranging from 3 to 33 years, and in some areas to this day. As with the cereal lands, clearing operations have also progressed in the rangelands, but by no means as quickly, thoroughly or widely. By 1980 only about 1.8 1,000,000 hectares, or 67 percent, could be declared safe, and thus the tedious and dangerous clearing efforts will have to continue for years. A crude estimate of total rangeland loss to date is thus 22 times the original annual loss, that is, natural forage equivalent to over 2,000,000 tons of barley feed. Direct losses of livestock due to landmines continued through the mid-1980s. More than 3,000 head per year, or 1 per 1,000 annually of the livestock population extant at the time, have been killed since 1940. A disproportionately high number of camels have been killed because camels traditionally move more freely and widely than other livestock in the country. The presence of mines in the country has also impeded the extraction of oil and minerals, causing significant economic losses. Air, car and rail travel have been affected by the presence of landmines. According to the UNITAR seminar, postwar reconstruction projects could not begin due to the need for mine clearance prior to beginning work, causing delays and increased costs, and depriving affected areas of these important and necessary services for many years. Rail projects were also affected. Mines were also responsible for preventing access to sources of water in Libya. 450 wells and cisterns were inaccessible at the end of the war, and a small number of them were still affected in 1985. Soil and water surveys and other rural planning activities have also been delayed or canceled. Prior to the 1980 UNITAR seminar, 3,733 serious mine incidents had been recorded in Libya, of which 2,000 were fatal, in the 40 years since World War II. These numbers were considered “far below the real one for several reasons” due to a “shortage of labor to include all information in the records.” Most of the information mentioned came from the western areas of the country, and these areas are known to have been less affected by mines than the eastern areas. During the 2011 revolution, Gaddafi forces used 5 types of landmines in 6 locations while another 3 types of mines were found abandoned at several locations. At least 130 people, mostly civilians, have been killed by landmines and abandoned or unexploded ordnance in Libya since the armed group called the Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF) withdrew from Tripoli’s southern suburbs in June 2020. | |
| Image Filename | wwii2038.jpg |
| Image Size | 1.07 MB |
| Image Dimensions | 2892 x 2784 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | United Kingdom War Ministry |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | April 9, 1943 |
| Location | |
| City | |
| State or Province | |
| Country | Libya |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NRE-338-FTL(EF)-2802(4) |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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