The SM-70, or Splittermine Modell 1970, was a directional fragmentation mine developed by East Germany with Czechoslovak assistance and installed along the Inner German Border to stop East Germans fleeing to the West. Its design traced back to a system devised by the Nazi weapons engineer Erich Lutter in 1942 to secure concentration camps, plans the Soviet Union later obtained and passed to East Germany, which worked with the Czechoslovak institute VUSTE from 1966 before first installing the mines in 1970. Roughly 60,000 cone-shaped, tripwire-triggered SM-70s were eventually mounted on posts and fences along about 440 kilometers of the border, firing a lethal cone of fragments up to 25 meters, until international outcry after a 1976 defection that recovered an intact device led to their removal by 1984.
Facts
Weapon ClassDirectional fragmentation antipersonnel mine 2 Introduced Year Classification
Service Status Weapon Class
Weapon Class (category)Grenade / Explosive Device 2 Sources
1. Wikidata: SM-70
Wikidata Q3351692, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)View the Source 2. SM-70, Wikipedia
Introduction
directional fragmentation antipersonnel mine
Service
Beginning in late 1970, approximately 60,000 SM-70s were installed on 440 kilometers (273 mi) of particularly escape-prone rural sections of the East German border.
service-status
service = 1970-1984
- Weapon class classified from the entity's own sourced description text.
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