During the hostilities in northern Dalarna in 1943 the Germans used remote control mines (known as the Goliath) in trying to break through the fortifications of the Swedish border defences. Hauptman Pillistin of the Pioneer Company deployed a number of them during the fighting in Särna. The Hero of Skans 211 (the name of the fortification system at Särna) Corporal Davidsson managed to demobilise three of them using his Scoped Rifle and some pretty accurate shooting. This caused a significant delay to the offensive that bought necessary time at the early stages of the offensive to ready the Swedish defences at the inner lines.

Ok, it is my 1943 what-if again and one of the scenarios I am working on. The idea with the eventual set of scenarios is to provide a book with some interesting scenarios ranging from defending fortified positions, creating bridge heads positions, assaulting over water, and forest fighting. It will be set in Sweden but you could equally replace the Swedes with Polish during 1939 or the Finns (and the German with the Soviets) during the 1944 Summer offensive, etc. Interested in presenting We shall see how it goes.

The defensive system at Särna was built following the invasion of Norway in 1940, it can be see in the video below (the audio is in Swedish but the pictures could be of some interest) as it looks today.

Now what is this Goliath thing, well it is a tracked mine (German: Leichter Ladungsträger Goliath, “Goliath Light Charge Carrier”) and was disposable demolition vehicles and remote controlled (through a cable). You can read more about them on good old wikipedia (here).

So although to quote the wikipedia article “Mostly, they failed to reach their target although the effect was considerable when they did.”, I think a scenario with them in it would add some tension to the game with some slow moving Goliaths working their way through the defensive positions whilst the infantry sections are trying to stop it with small arms fire.

Recently I found some files on Thingyverse (here) and printed out some Goliaths with and without trolleys and added some Peter Pig Germans and two Kettenrads. Happy how they turned out.

/Hope that was of some interest