More early explosive ROVs

In an earlier post here, I discussed some First World War antecedents of modern ROVs, these early one being used to deliver explosive charges – essentially a mobile land mine.  One of the early ones I mentioned was a Schneider “Crocodile” from 1915 which I have not much information on but is pictured here, and which apparently was French developed, but was trialled by a number of nations including Britain and Russia.

Here’s a pic of the controlling team, manning some sort of command interface while the ROV pays out or pulls a cable. I think they are French.

Interestingly I’ve just come across a reference to a number of other Russian devices, some of which seem to have been ROVs. These are referred to as “Sidelnikov’s mobile mine, the creeping mines of Kanushkin and Doroshin, the crocodile mine of Colonel Tolkushin.”     It’s interesting that Colonel Tolkushin’s device was also called a “Crocodile” like the French device. I have only this poor image of it from about 1915-1920:

It seems to be a multi-charge device, on wheels, but to be honest it’s not that clear. Alas my Russian is not good enough to dig out more detail.

Russian ROV technology also preceded some other German technology to deliver large explosive charges in WW2 that I have written about here .  In the 1930s, Russia developed the “Teletank” . One of the versions of this teletank had a large charge (200-700kg) which was “dropped” by the ROV tank like the German Borgward. These were radio-controlled tanks and utilised some early systems which were designed to prevent radio jamming.  Don’t underestimate Russian technology.