Type 69 (AP) Chinese Anti-Personnel Mine

The Type 69 (AP) is a Chinese cylindrical, steel bodied anti-personnel bounding landmine which is designed to wound or kill by its fragmentation. The landmine is about the size of a pop/soda can and has a smooth finish. It is usually painted olive green. The Type 69 has a centre-mounted detonator cavity with a screw on cap. The cap has a large wire ring through it. A protruding percussion cap is offset from centre. This cap is threaded to accept a variety of fuzes but the most common is a plastic bodied pull fuze which is peculiar to the Type 69. On actuation, the landmine is propelled upward and explodes. The 110g explosive charge propels approximately 240 fragments to a hazardous radius of 50 metres. The landmine can be located visually or using metal detectors under most field conditions. The Type 69 can be defeated by blast overpressure from explosive breaching systems. This bounding fragmentation landmine is similar in appearance to the Russian OZM-3 and OZM-4, though it is noticeably smaller. It has an outer sheet-steel casing and a cast-iron body containing a propelling charge and a TNT main charge. A channel runs through the centre of the main charge, at the base of which is a pyrotechnic delay element. The detonator is placed (open end down) into the central tube and held in place by a long removable plug, which screws into the top of the landmine. To one side of this plug is a threaded spigot, which accepts a Type 69 mechanical combination stab-sensitive igniter element. The fuze has a spring-loaded striker retained inside a slotted plastic plunger by a split pin. This pin, sitting in a groove around the striker, acts in much the same way as retaining balls would in a conventional fuze. A safety pin runs through the plunger and striker to secure the assembly. The landmine is normally painted olive green with characters stencilled in black.