Russian Butterflies

[Fragman]

Hi, These nasty little suckers are scattered all over Afghanistan (along with a hell of a lot of other stuff). Have a great New Years and no matter where you are be grateful youre not there. Cheers

 

[Fuzeman]

Im surprised that the PFM 1 shown on the warning poster is an inert practice model (shown by the Y cut into the wing) Im a supporter of Mines Advisory Group , which is a charity that teaches locals of the countries how to identify and remove mines from their soil . Rather than other organisations that clear them for them .Happy New year to you All
Steve

 

[Fragman]

Hi Steve, The practice mine in the photo is from my collection (live ones don't make great collectables). I added a photo from an old defence quarterly publication for interest sake (it's not a poster as such). Cheers

 

[Fuzeman]

Hi Chris it looks very good, being a supporter of MAG they have very kindly supplied over the years a lot of their warning posters, which hopefully very soon i will display on here , i seem to have built up a small collection of them .years ago i collected mines of all types , all i have left now are some maps and posters

 

[spotter]

Is the PFM-1 a copy of the USA made BLU43 b ,or is the american one a copy of the ussr PFM-1

 

[Fragman]

Hi Spotter, the PFM-1 mine is a reverse-engineered copy of the US BLU-43 mine that first showed up shortly after the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.

 

[Falcon]

I was at the "Airborne Eastboure" airshow in summer 2003, they had one of these mines on a stand run by the EOD with some various munitions on show. They told me that it was triggered after being stepped on a certain number of times. He said "your friend might step on it and be fine, then you step on it and it blows your foot off".