Tag Archives: toe popper

The golf ball-sized grenades and top popper mines of Southeast Asia

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The Loadout Room has a great piece on two unsung weapons in the U.S. arsenal used extensively by SF types during the conflict. The M-14 Anti-Personnel mine, more commonly known as the “Toe Popper,” and the V40 Mini-Fragmentation Grenade.

Replica Of M14 ‘Toe Popper landmine With Spanner Wrench

The first weapon, the M14 mine, looked like a small, thick disc that was olive drab in color, 2.2 inches in diameter and 1.5 inches in height. It contained 1 ounce of Tetryl explosive to make up its 3.5-ounce weight.  This lightness came from its mostly plastic construction, and, to set it off, required a pressure of between 20 to 35 pounds.

Dutch V40 Mini-Fragmentation Grenade

The V40, at 2.6 inches high, 1.6 inches in diameter and weighing just 4.8 ounces, the grenade gave the appearance of a modified golf ball. A safety spoon like that found on standard grenades extended along its side and when released, caused the fuse mechanism to detonate the grenade four seconds later. The fragmentation pattern came from 326 squares pressed inside the metal casing and had a 16-foot lethal radius.

How were they used?

More after the jump.

Well this changes everything.

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The White House Friday made a big announcement after a five year review of the issue that the U.S. will change its practices of anti-personnel landmine (APL) usage.

The changes include that the U.S. will :

 -not use APL outside the Korean Peninsula;
 -not assist, encourage, or induce anyone outside the Korean Peninsula to engage in activity prohibited by the Ottawa Convention; and
 -undertake to destroy APL stockpiles not required for the defense of the Republic of Korea.

Now there are some 160 countries that have signed the international ban on the use of landmines and the U.S. has long said that it will only keep in the mine game to ensure that UN troops along the DMZ between the two Koreas stays that way. Even those mines, typically the plastic-bodied 1950’s era M14 landmine, are set up to be very easily detected if need be. U.S. forces have long used the M14 only in Korea, where metal washers have been added to meet detectability requirements of the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW).

The M14 Toe Popper

The M18A1 Claymore? Not covered as its soldier-activated. Heck even such enlightened countries as New Zealand still buy and stockpile these beauties. In Canada they reclassified the Claymore as the “C19 Command Detonated Defensive Weapon” and forbids the word ‘mine’ to be used, but the troops know these bad boys can still bite if not treated properly and with respect.

Anti-tank mines? Not covered by the treaty.

But hey, Russia, China and North Korea aren’t even signatories to the ban anyway.

Glad this has all been clarified.