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Odd Solutions to Historic Problems

Khalid Elhassan December 9, 2020 32 min

United States - American Civil War — Young recruits during the Vietnam War, circa 1967. History

19. The Sticky Bomb’s Unfortunate Tendency to Stick to Its User’s Hand

Lit TNT stuck to Wile E. Coyote’s hand. Warner Bros.

In cartoon-like fashion, the Sticky Bomb’s adhesive tended to leak and glue the bomb to its thrower’s hand or uniform. The results would have been funny had they not ended so tragically and gruesomely. A Sticky Bomb user would pull the pin to arm the five-second-fuse, then attempt to stick the bomb to a tank or throw it at one, only to discover to his horror that it was stuck to his hand instead. It is hard not to imagine such unfortunates spending their last seconds on earth frantically shaking their hand like Wile E. Coyote with a stick of TNT glued to his paw.

As a British Home Guard veteran recounted an experience with this less-than-ideal solution to Britain’s antitank weapons shortage: “It was while practicing that a Home Guard bomber got his sticky bomb stuck to his trouser leg and couldn’t shift it. A quick thinking mate whipped the trousers off and got rid of them and the bomb. After the following explosion, the trousers were in a bit of a mess — though I think they were a bit of a mess prior to the explosion.”

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.