Why Soviet Soldiers Boiled Their Bullets And Other Crazy Military Techniques and Tactics
![Why Soviet Soldiers Boiled Their Bullets And Other Crazy Military Techniques and Tactics Why Soviet Soldiers Boiled Their Bullets And Other Crazy Military Techniques and Tactics](/pic/why_soviet_soldiers_boiled_their_bullets_and_other_crazy_military_techniques_and_tactics/Q09HWHlidTU1aVU_.jpeg)
Imagine that you’re a Soviet soldier during the early 1980s. Your country is at war with Afghanistan, and, like many thousands of your comrades, you’ve been sent into a hot, arid, and unfamiliar country to suppress the mujahideen. These Islamic groups don’t like the Marxist and Leninist views espoused by Afghanistan’s ruling Khalq and Parcham parties, and it’s your job to ensure the spread of communism continues amidst constant rebellion. But you have a problem. Your leaders provide you with absolutely horrendous rations to keep your energy levels high during your fight. Dehydrated
and condensed field rations – which taste a little like feet – are all you have to keep yourself going, and you get sick of it. Surely, there’s better food out there. Something more befitting of a soldier, even a Soviet one who has come from poverty and has somehow found themself in even worse conditions in Afghanistan. Plus, your army actively sent better food to the frontlines, right? Strategic army food supplies regularly headed into Afghanistan, including canned meats, green peas, tea, cigarettes, and even some delectable Polish and Hungarian hams. Where did all of that food go? Why are you left with the most awful rations
available when you know your army is sending over much more substantial—and better-tasting—food? The reason was that much of the food the Soviets sent to feed their soldiers didn’t end up in Russian hands. It ended up in the hands of Afghani traders. Still, that means there’s an alternative source of food available. There is a lot of it being sold at Afghan bazaars, but that only makes your problems worse. You have no money—certainly none that Afghan merchants are willing to accept—but there’s a glimmer of hope for your rumbling tummy yet. The Afghan merchants may not accept your rubles, but they’re willing to barter for what they have to offer. And there’s one very valuable commodity you have that they want: Bullets. What do you do?
If you’re anything like the Soviet soldiers of the 1980s, you know that you can’t simply hand your bullets over to the Afghan merchants. Who knows who those merchants support? By giving them your bullets, you may be actively arming the very mujahideen that you’re in Afghanistan to fight. So, you come up with a plan. One that might be just crazy enough to work. Boil the bullets before you barter. Yes, in order to get around the moral conflict that a Soviet soldier would have faced when essentially bartering away ammo to the enemy, they’d boil bullets before exchanging them. The question now is simple:
Why? The idea was to make the bullets completely inoperable. A Soviet soldier would requisition ammo from supply zones – which was easy enough to do in a warzone – before grabbing a pot and some water. After making a small fire, the soldier would pour the water into the pot and place it over the flame, bringing the water to a boil in the process. Then, he’d put the bullets in the water. For the next four or five hours, the soldier would leave those bullets to simmer before taking them to an Afghan merchant to trade for food. The technique arose because of a
longstanding Soviet army tale that the bullets they used would fail to function if left in boiling water for a few hours. And the tale seems to make sense. After all, boiling bullets expose them to extremely high temperatures without the risk of causing the ammo to detonate while it’s in the pot. Boiling also doesn’t change the look or feel of the ammo. Instead, it supposedly did something to the bullet that would make it unusable when loaded into a gun. Plus, it had worked before. Bullets made during the 19th
and early 20th centuries could fall victim to the boiling strategy. Those early bullets used mercury fulminate as a primer, which would ignite the bullet’s propellant. When that fulminate reached temperatures of around 212 degrees Fahrenheit – the boiling point of water – it would undergo thermal decomposition. The fulminate would fail to function as the material had lost its integrity, leading to a bullet that couldn’t fire. But there was a problem.
The bullets the Soviets were using in Afghanistan in the 1980s were a far cry from the ones they’d used at the turn of the 20th century. They didn’t use mercury fulminate anymore. Instead, they were lacquer-coated and had primers made using chemicals that had far higher heat tolerances than the mercury fulminate of the past. By that point, Soviet bullets were completely resistant to heating, meaning the poor soldiers – who just wanted a little food – ended up selling bullets to Afghan merchants that may well have ended up being used to kill their comrades or even themselves. Desperate times lead to desperate measures. But the practice of boiling bullets was far from the only relic of the past that Soviet troops believed in for many years after the fact. For our next example, we take you to World War II and a strange practice that the Soviets – and later even the Russians – carried out for centuries.
Not wearing socks on the battlefield. Before you start conjuring up images of Soviet soldiers running around barefoot – that would be a nightmare when fighting in Russia’s snowy conditions – the Soviets did at least have some form of foot covering. Only those coverings weren’t socks. They were stinky rags. Transport yourself to World War II and imagine you’re an American soldier near the war's end.
You’re working alongside Soviet soldiers – who are part of the allied powers that would eventually defeat Nazi Germany – and you have a pretty good idea of what standard military wear should look like. That’s especially the case for your feet. You and all of your fellow American soldiers get issued a pair of hefty boots that lace up, along with long pairs of socks that you wear underneath. It's all logical. The boots protect your feet from anything on the ground – such as rocks – that could cause damage, while the socks provide protection from the boots themselves. After all, you need something to prevent the skin from being eroded from your feet during the long marches you must endure. Then, you see a Soviet soldier. And you take a look at their footwear. Gone are the laced boots that are standard issue for American soldiers, replaced by long leather boots that have no laces at all. But what’s far stranger to you is what lies underneath
those boots. Scraps of smelly rags are used in place of socks, and you’re left asking the obvious question: Why? The answer lies in the impoverished nature of the average Soviet soldier during World War II. During the 1940s and for much of Russia’s history, socks were seen as a luxury item that was essentially the reserve of the rich. The reason dates back to Russia’s industrial revolution when socks were surprisingly expensive and time-consuming to manufacture. They were a far cry from what they are today when they can be manufactured by the millions using machinery and are so cheap that you can easily find a couple of pairs for less than $1. To Soviet soldiers – and
their commanders – socks were a luxury that diverted resources away from other valuable equipment, such as bullets and food. Why waste money on socks when nasty old rags would suffice? In truth, these footwraps, known as “Portyanki,” were a little bit more than rags. They were large pieces of cloth, typically rectangular, that a Soviet soldier would wrap carefully around their feet. Once applied, the Portyanki would work in much the same way as a sock – protecting the foot against moisture and blistering. They also did a fine job keeping dirt and rocks out of a Soviet boot.
But even though they were functionally similar, that doesn’t mean they weren’t strange in an era when socks were plentiful for U.S. soldiers. Take putting them on as an example. We all know how a sock works. Shove your foot in the hole and pull up, and you’ll be wearing a sock. A Portyanki had to be actively applied, wrapped around the foot like a bandage or the hand wraps a boxer wears, meaning a technique needed to be perfected before a soldier could wear a Portyanki.
The wraps also served a minor disciplinary purpose. Failure to apply a Portyanki properly would lead to the Soviet soldier getting blisters. Plus, soldiers were often timed on their ability to wrap a Portyanki properly. If you were too slow,
you received a punishment. Think of it as being similar to the rifle dismantling drills that soldiers today have to master, and you’re on the right track. A Soviet soldier had to be capable of being fully dressed within 45 seconds, meaning they had mere seconds to wrap the Portyanki properly. These interesting footwraps also had centuries of
tradition behind them, dating back to the era of Peter the Great and the legends that his armies marched into battle wearing rags rather than the knits that were customary during the 17th and 18th centuries. Russia had already won many wars wearing Portyanki, almost making them as much of a good luck charm as a practical way to protect feet. And you could argue that the good luck charm worked – the Soviet Union was on the winning side by the end of World War II.
But Portyanki had to be replaced by socks eventually. The craziest part is that this change didn’t occur until 2007. As military reforms took hold in Russia that year, Portyanki was finally seen as a relic of the past that Moscow needed to leave behind. But it still took time to eradicate them from the Russian military entirely. Portyanki were still in minor use until 2013
when they were finally abandoned for good. The reason for that abandonment is as much symbolic as it is practical. Portyanki had come to symbolize the “old” Russian army. One powered by peasants rather than a modern military capable of standing with the world’s best. Sergei Shoigu – Russia’s defense minister in 2013 – had the final word on Portyanki in a televised briefing, ending their use once and for all. “In 2013, or at least by the end of this year, we will forget foot bindings,” he proclaimed. “I’m asking you, please, if there is need, we will
provide additional funds. But we need to finally, fully reject this concept in our armed forces.” By now, we’re perhaps seeing a pattern emerge in Soviet techniques and tactics. Rather than modernizing, Soviet soldiers seemed to rely on outdated ideas and equipment. The concept
of boiling bullets stemmed from an era when mercury fulminate was used in Soviet rounds. An era that had long passed by the time the soldiers stationed in Afghanistan were boiling bullets to exchange them for food and supplies. As for Portyanki, they were a relic that dated even further back than boilable bullets and one that stuck with the Soviets as much for symbolic reasons as practical ones long past the point where socks were easy to manufacture in Russia.
But these aren’t the only examples of the Soviet Union relying on outdated equipment. Our next example was far more successful than it had any right to be—the flight of the Night Witches. During World War II, Nazi Germany managed to achieve aerial superiority throughout much of the war thanks to the terrifying might of the Luftwaffe. Officially formed in 1935 – though it had been in development long before that
year – the Luftwaffe boasted over 1,800 aircraft and 20,000 personnel. But more importantly than that, it was the most technologically advanced aerial force the world had seen to that point. And the jewels in the Luftwaffe crown were immense. The He 111H became the Nazi air force’s mainstay bomber, raining fire down on many a city as Hitler cut a destructive path through Europe. But even more dangerous were the fighters that
protected these bombers – the Messerschmitt Bf 109, or Me-109, and the Messerschmitt Bf 110, Me-110. The former was a single-seater with one engine, and the latter carried two people and a pair of engines. But both were fast, agile, and capable of battling the best that the Allies could bring to the skies. The Soviets had nothing that could compare, at least at the beginning of World War II. So, as you saw in the previous two techniques, they looked backward. Yes, they would continue trying to develop planes that could compete with the Nazi’s ingenuity. But in the meantime, they would battle the Me-109 fighters with the
Polikarpov Po-2 biplane. The problem? By the time World War II came around, those biplanes were massively out of date. They were relics of the previous World War and contained far inferior technology to Germany’s new fighters. Knowing this, the Soviets chose not to entrust their best pilots to these planes.
Instead, they chose women. There was just a hint of misogyny to this decision, with women being chosen because the Soviet Union knew the Po-2 wasn’t up to scratch. Perhaps the thought was to use these outdated biplanes – and the women piloting them – as cannon fodder to distract with Me-109s and Me-110s, giving other Russian planes a chance to attack. What nobody could have predicted was that the outdated technology in the Po-2 made it a surprisingly good match for Nazi Germany’s fighters. Take the plane’s wooden frame as an example. The Po-2s were made using plywood and canvas,
a construction method that led to some calling the plane “a coffin with wings.” That plywood was susceptible to tracer fire, as a single bullet could lead to the Po-2 becoming a flying inferno that would engulf the poor woman sitting inside. But that wooden construction also came with a key benefit: The Po-2 was undetectable by German infrared sensors and radars. For that reason, the women who flew the planes restricted themselves to flying under the cover of night. When darkness descended,
their slow-moving and low-flying craft were far harder to see from the ground than they were during the day. And thanks to being undetectable by radar and infrared sensors, they were able to get in close to a target and drop the two bombs they could carry before German fighters had any idea they were in the vicinity. The only sign came far too late for the target: A whooshing sound—often described as similar to the sound of a witch’s broom—could be heard as the Po-2 glided over its target. Thus, the Night Witches were born. And they weren’t only effective during nighttime bombing raids on German targets. When stacked up against the Me-109 – one of the most terrifying fighters in the Luftwaffe – the Po-2 often came out on top for a simple reason – it was too slow for the Me-109 to catch.
That may seem like a contradiction until you realize that the Me-109 could reach a top speed of nearly 350 miles per hour. To keep pace with a Po-2, the Me-109’s pilot would have to decrease their speed to 90 miles per hour or lower, which presented a major problem: The Me-109 stalled out at that low speed. When combined with the Po-2's surprising maneuverability, that low speed led to the far superior Me-109 sometimes dropping out of the sky—assuming the pilot didn’t abandon the fight altogether—as it tried to take on a Night Witch. By the end of the war, the 588th Night Bomber Aviation Regiment – the official name for the Night Witches – had become one of the most dangerous Soviet weapons. Decked in old uniforms, which had previously been worn by men and were extremely ill-fitting, the women of this regiment numbered around 400 and collectively flew around 30,000 missions. They dropped 23,000
tons of bombs on the German armies attempting to invade Russia, with most of the women who piloted the Po-2s being aged between 17 and 26. It's crazy to think that such outdated planes could present such a threat in the face of the Luftwaffe. However, the Soviets’ use of old technology to take on terrifying new threats is far from the only example. For our next strange
technique, we turn to the British and their use of tools that have existed for millennia: Hammers and bags. Where the Luftwaffe may have been one of the most impressive technological achievements that Germany brought to the table in World War II, the First World War saw a naval advancement that wreaked havoc on British, French, and American troops—the Unterseeboots, or U-boats. Armed with powerful torpedoes that could sink a ship in minutes, the German U-boats spent most of World War I prowling the Atlantic Ocean on the lookout for targets. They were Germany’s chief naval weapon during the war, especially given the British approach of blocking German ports, and their goal was simple: Take out as many ships carrying supplies as possible. They were extremely effective. In May 1915, the German U-Boat U-20 sunk the Lusitania off the coast of Ireland. A passenger liner, the boat sunk
with 1,200 people on board – including 128 Americans – all of whom lost their lives. The attack was a signal of intent from Germany. It would attack ships indiscriminately, claiming that any it sunk were legitimate wartime targets because they carried war materials. By the end of the war, the U-boats had sunk around 5,000 merchant ships, claiming the lives of around 15,000 Allied soldiers in the process, and had even managed to bring a European war to the shores of the United States. In fact, you can still find several shipwrecks near the North Carolina coast in an area dubbed by some as the Graveyard of the Atlantic.
So, what could the allies do to combat this terrible threat? That’s where the British hammers and bags come into play. The key to the U-boat’s success was that it could submerge itself underwater during a time when submarines weren’t commonplace in naval warfare. Using periscopes, German sailors could navigate undetected until they came into range of an allied ship before firing their torpedoes. The damage was done before the victim could do anything about it, leaving the U-boat free to sail away and find another target. The approach proved massively effective. For instance, SM U-9 managed to sink three British armored cruisers – killing 1,500 people – alone in about an hour on September 22, 1914. Still, the U-Boat had a weakness.
Before the days of radar and electronic navigational equipment, the periscope built into each boat was essential. Without it, the German sailors had no idea where they were going. And, crucially, that periscope had to emerge above the water’s surface, giving the British a potential target. The initial ideas were strange in their own right. For example, the British Board of Invention and Research suggested training seagulls to spot the periscopes. Once spotted, the seagulls would swarm the periscope, indicating where the U-Boat was while also obscuring the pericope’s lens. There was also an idea to pour paint in
the water where the British suspected U-Boats to be, with that paint then covering any periscope lenses that emerged. Neither idea worked. The more effective idea was to treat the threat as if it were a giant game of Whack-A-Mole. The tactic was simple. The British sent out small boats to search for U-boat periscopes. If the British spotted one, they would cover it with a bag before whacking the bag with a hammer, destroying the periscope’s lens and leaving the U-Boat unable to navigate.
There’s no word on how effective the technique proved to be. However, it’s worth noting that at least one senior officer—based on the HMS Exmouth—enlisted the services of blacksmiths to build large hammers that sailors on the patrol boats could use to smash periscopes. Desperate times called for desperate measures. And, just like the Soviets and their Night Witches, the British found a way to use
outdated tools to take on a technologically superior threat. This streak of ingenuity for the Allies continued into World War II, as they were forced to find a novel way of transmitting messages to the frontlines: Using carrier pigeons. Parachuting carrier pigeons, to be exact. If you visit the National Air and Space Museum,
you might have a chance to rummage through its archives. There, sitting alongside around 75,000 technical manuals, you might find a document called Handing and Release Home Pigeon from Aircraft in Flight. Carrying a “Restricted” security clearance label, the manual was first given to American military personnel in August 1943 and contains some interesting instructions. Detailed in the manual are methods for creating paper messages that could be attached to homing pigeons that a soldier would keep on their person. There are also instructions on how to properly release one of these pigeons from an aircraft, whether that craft was in flight or on land. The concept behind this technique was simple enough.
When a pilot needed to transmit a message – either in an emergency or because they needed to sneak it in behind enemy lines – they could strap it to a carrier pigeon and send the bird on its way. It wasn’t a new idea. Almost all armies involved in World War I had used these pigeons, perhaps the most famous example being Cher Ami. Used by the famous “Lost Battalion,” Cher Ami delivered a message from soldiers pinned down by German forces to their allies, who had unfortunately started accidentally shelling the battalion. The message was simple: “Our artillery is dropping a barrage
directly on us. For heaven’s sake, stop it!” Free from bombardment from their own side, the Lost Battalion defended its position long enough for reinforcements to arrive. Still, by World War II, you might have thought using carrier pigeons would be outdated. You couldn’t be more wrong. In fact, not only were the pigeons still used, but they received equipment that they’d never had before: Parachutes. The British pioneered
an interesting use for homing pigeons during World War II. In addition to using them to send messages to the frontlines – in the same ways America did – Britain also started loading carrier pigeons into boxes before parachuting them into enemy territory. The hope was that either Allied troops or at least people who were friendly to the Allied cause would find the pigeons, write messages, and then send the birds on their way to take the written notes back to the United Kingdom. Pigeons were no longer restricted to sending messages from command posts.
They become intelligence operatives, gathering information – however unwittingly – for the allied troops to use in their attacks. According to the BBC, Britain dropped around 16,000 of these parachuting pigeons into France, though only 1,800 made it back home. Many thousands more were either found by Axis soldiers or died in their containers while waiting for somebody to release them. Others were killed over the English Channel, becoming the victims of a squadron of German hawks explicitly trained to take out any carrier pigeons they saw. The unreliability of that technique led to further evolutions in the ways that British and American troops used carrier pigeons. Paratroopers started wearing the pigeons on
their chests – using specially designed “pigeon vests” – so they could jump into enemy territory, gather information, and then send the pigeon on its way with a written note. When the vests started to run out, some even resorted to stowing their pigeons into socks, with holes cut into the toe end so the pigeon could pop its head out. This approach proved far more successful, with some reports claiming that 95% of the messages these pigeon vest-wearing birds delivered to the right hands were successfully delivered. And with that bird-brained idea, we come to the end of our examination of some of the strangest techniques and tactics used in modern warfare. The clear thread running throughout is that all were outdated at the time of their use, whether due to a mistaken belief that boiling bullets still worked or because no better equipment was available. All of this shows a surprising amount of ingenuity,
even if the boiling bullets tactic that opened this video never actually worked. Now check out “Real Reason Why The Soviet Union Collapsed.” Or watch this video instead!
2024-06-04 20:53