Episode 45: The Bomb Brothers and the Invention of Landmines

Explosion of a torpedo in Harper’s Weekly, 1862

In 1862, during the American Civil War, Confederate rebels Gabriel Rains and his brother George Washington Rains changed warfare forever. They ordered their men to place specially made explosive torpedoes into the ground as they retreated from the Battle of Yorktown, creating the world’s first land mines. Their invention would go on to become one of the most destructive and pervasive weapons ever created.

Sources include

The book The History of Landmines by Mike Croll

The book History of the Confederate Powder Works by George Washington Rains

The book America’s Buried History: Landmines in the Civil War by Ken Rutherford

The book Gabriel Rains and the Confederate Torpedo Bureau by W Davis Waters and Joseph Brown

The Smithsonian article The Historic Innovation of Landmines by Lorraine Boissoneault