Anti-tank mine

An anti-tank mine is a land mine built to disable or destroy tanks and other armored vehicles, carrying a much larger explosive charge than an anti-personnel mine and fuzed to be triggered by the weight of a vehicle or by remote command. The weapon emerged in the First World War as a countermeasure to the newly introduced British tank, beginning as buried artillery shells before purpose-built designs appeared, including the wooden-cased German Flachmine 17. In the interwar period the Soviet Union fielded its first dedicated anti-tank mine, the EZ mine, in 1924, and Germany introduced the disc-shaped Tellermine 29 in 1929. Early mines used pressure fuzes that often broke only the tracks of a tank, until the tilt-rod fuze let a mine detonate directly beneath a vehicle, killing the crew and sometimes setting off the ammunition carried inside.