Soviet mine-dogs

Mr.Paul, thanks for reviving my memory.:) I got the front right, but the order
wrong (it was Soviet Dogs and German tanks they were trying to destroy).

You said:
The mine-dogs were a Soviet idea- they were kept starving and fed,
minimally, under tanks with the engines running. As for the business about
them being ineffective due to being trained under the wrong type of tank
(Soviet diesels instead of German petrol engines, so they associated the wrong
smell with food) is a German story, which I think is a wee story to cheer the
troops, for the following reasons:
1) The RKKA used mine-dogs until 1943, when they were on the
offensive and such an emergency defensive weapon was no longer useful. The
Russians claimed that 16 dogs at Kursk killed 12 German tanks.

[Tomb]: Is there credible independent verification of this? For the
record, Russian docs claimed a lot of things that were unsubstantiated for
that self same "good for the troops" reason you just mentioned. I'd be
interested in any references you could provide. I'm aware of references on the
German side that dispute the effectiveness of these dogs.

2) The Germans shot all dogs on sight in case they were mines

[Tomb] Probably a good idea for any number of reasons. They also shot
a fair number of Russians for similarly paranoid (and not necessarily
unjustly) reasons. The Eastern Front was a truly unhappy place.

3) How would they know how the dogs were trained? If from POWs how could they
trust such info?

[Tomb] How do you trust any intelligence you gain? Elint, Humint,
etc. - You try to cross reference, verify sources, etc. And you take
field observations into account, but treat them as any eyewitness account.
This is hardly a problem unique to this situation.

4) The RKKA had plenty of petrol driven AFVs

[Tomb] My understanding was the problem was shape related moreso than
the particulars of diesel/petrol related. Someone with more knowledge
of canine visual perceptions than I could either confirm or debunk that. I've
always found my dog good at shape recognition, but not terribly great at
understanding a task that differs from one he was trained to.

5) The Russians had a lot of knowledge of dog training techniques (Pavlov!)
and were subtle enough to "train" German explosives sniffers to ignore
explosives (Partisans sprinkled tiny fragments of explosive around targets;
the dog would detect these and would then be punished for its "mistake". The
dogs soon learned not to warn of explosives at all.

[Tomb] This one I don't doubt. I'm just very skeptical of Russian
claims of efficacy. Every side in the war inflated their scores against the
enemy, but the Russians had as much reason as anyone (perhaps even more than
most) to do some "creative accounting to boost morale". It could be that the
Germans were downplaying the efficacy of this tactic. But it could also be
that the Russians were jacking it up (an "Enemy at the Gates" type scenario
comes to mind). OTOH, the truth probably lies somewhere between Russian and
German claims. And no one will probably ever have more than an educated guess.
Besides, its a pretty damn rotten thing to do to a dog.

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