War dogs

[Rex_Pelasgorum]

I`m just curios in what wars where the dogs used in the battlefield to attack the enemy infantry/cavalry, and to what effect... examples of battles, and actuall effect of such an attack.

I`ve heard about the Mollosian dogs, very ferociuous kin of dogs from Illirya. Attila the Hun might have used them.

Also, i found some references of the English using wardogs against the Celts.... anyway, against unarmoured man, war dogs would be extremely effective... cinically effective.

[Antagonist]

I don't think war dogs were ever used on a large scale (inside the historical period anyway) but interestingly they seem to have been used at some point in quite a lot of places.

The one that always sticks in my mind is the Soviet Union using dogs as "living mines" to be detonated underneath German tanks. I thought that was an urban legend but apparently they were quite real.

I was reading through the Gallic Wars last week (specifically the bit about Britain) and I vaguely recall a mention of British war dogs somewhere, but I might be imagining it.

Also, i found some references of the English using wardogs against the Celts

That's funny, I know Wikipedia mentions this, but I heard almost the exact opposite: Irish Wolfhounds (apparently the largest domesticated dogs in existence) being trained to bring down English knights by pulling them out of the saddle or hamstringing their destriers. Maybe both sides used them.

I've read about them being employed in Eastern Asia as well, but I don't know how reliable the source was. Stories about war dogs are probably highly prone to exaggeration and embelishment in general.

Antagonist

[Subedei]

I read a book about "Raubritter" [translates smth. like robber knights] this summer. In there dogs are mentioned very often as "knight´s best friend" in battle and en route. I guess they used them in battle to keep nasty infantry away from them.

In the Bavarian forrest and other woody areas of Europe people often had wolfhoundes or other sorts of huge dogs to protect themselves and their belongings, esp. in the middle ages.

The ´"hopefully in hell burnin´" conquistadores used tons of them to hunt down indians..... I remember seeing a picture once in a book on them....

Nobody used dogs like it is suggested in vanilla....I guess.

Burning pigs were always a fundamental part of warfare in all periods of mankind though.

[Watchman]

I've read "barbarians" occasionally employed wardogs as disposable precursor attacks to cause disarray in enemy shieldwalls before contact. But the factual basis of that I won't vouch for.

As for odd uses of animals in combat, would you believe the Chinese apparently occasionally did a trick where they strapped a barrel of gunpowder to the hind end of a buffalo, set it on fire and drove the animal out of the gates towards enemy siege engines...? Pretty spectacular when it went right presumably, but no doubt more than little unreliable.

[Orda Khan]

I've seen references to a large Mastif type dog known as an Alaunt

......Orda

[KrooK]

Accroding to mine information these russian living mines didn't work.
Germans defused them with sausage :)

[AntiochusIII]

Accroding to mine information these russian living mines didn't work.
Germans defused them with sausage :)

True or not, that's some joke!

[Peasant Phill]

Wasn't the problem with the Russian 'mine'-dogs that they were trained on Russian tanks and therefor blew more Russian tanks up than German tanks? If they were dangerous, they were at least as dangerous for Russian tanks as they were for German tanks.

[Watchman]

That turned out to be an issue all right. The dumb critters were conditioned to a Pavlovian eagerness to crawl under tanks (in training they found food there), whereupon the contact trigger of the bomb strapped to their back touched the thin underside of the tank and the resulting explosion gutted it.

The problem was that for quite a while all the tanks the Soviets had available for training purposes were their own ones, and in the field the dumb mutts duly tended to home in on the shapes they were conditioned for...

The bugs eventually got worked out though by what I understand. German soldiers developed a habit of shooting unknown dogs on sight as a precaution, and duly a side branch of military gallows humour about it ("exploding dogs are a Russian peculiarity; do not shoot dogs on sight when on leave back home").

[HighLord z0b]

I'm fairly sure the Romans used Wardogs as well, though, not often. I asked a friend of mine that knows a lot about Roman history and he said they were used to flush out troops who were waiting in ambush in a forrest.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

The Spanish conquest of Cuba talks about using wardogs particularly Mastiffs. They were apparently used to hunt down the natives in the undergrowth and forests of the island. The Indians greatly feared them according to some sources. They were not battle winning by any means but probably used as a type of scout, let loose to disrupt any ambush in wait of a Spanish column

[Kraxis]

The entire 'minedog running to Russian tanks', is a bit overstated. Srue it happened, but the Russians were not stupid per se. They could see if things worked the opposite way of what it should. They learned not to use the dogs in cooperation with their own tanks.
Further I have read that the main trainingapplication was in fact tracked tractors, which were rather abundant in Russia, while tanks had a more important role than act as target for dogs.
Dogs' eyesight isn't terribly great. It can see far enough, but it has a hard time differentiating between similar shapes at combatdistances. Tanks are/were generally very similar in shape, it is only because of our human eyes we can see all the little differences. But all of them have the important stocky shape and tracks.
So the dogs would generally tend to run at the NEAREST tank, be it Russian or German.

But I can easily imagine the isolated German accounts of dogs running at Russian tanks being inflated, because of the somewhat comical picture it would generate in the regular troops' minds. It would be a great story to tell when the last you saw of Russian tanks were a KV-1 running over a battery of guns.

I actually read an account from a German tank commander who experienced these dogs.
He explained how two dogs came at his tank, one a beautiful tall Dobermann, the other a smaller mutt of mixed origin. Also that another tank in his company was in fact destroyed by a dog.
Naturally the dogs were easily gunned down, but he felt a considerable regret at shooting the Dobermann.

So it happened, it failed and it succeded. It is the ratio that is important.