The history of naval mines is longer than that of Land Mines, dating to before the middle of the 19th century. It is estimated that the belligerents laid approximately a half million naval mines during World War II. The direct effect of this weapon was not as great as one might expect. Mines were responsible for sinking about 6.5 percent of all Allied merchant shipping during the war; aircraft, submarines, and surface ships accounted for the vast majority of sinkings. Nevertheless, the presence of mines had a profound effect on naval strategy. By laying mines, the Germans could prompt the closing of British and U.S. ports for days at a time. Mines were important in the siege of Malta, and the British made effective use of mines against German surface raiders in February 1942. The United States used naval mines--laid from the air--most effectively in the blockade of Japan. This heavy mine barrage greatly disrupted merchant supply traffic into the Japanese homeland.

All combatants deployed primarily moored contact mines. These were ball-shaped mines from which horns projected. When the hull of a ship broke one of the horns, a chemical was released, which triggered a firing mechanism that touched off approximately 600 pounds of explosive material. Contact mines were generally laid in moderately shallow waters, no more than 600 feet deep (although the Japanese developed mines that could be laid in water as deep as 3,500 feet). They were moored to the sea bottom by a weighted cable. Contact mines were laid by specialized minelaying ships as well as by other warships modified to carry minelaying equipment.

During World War I, both the British and the Germans developed more sophisticated magnetic mines, which were also called influence mines. Whereas contact mines were detonated by actual contact with a ship's hull, magnetic mines were detonated by the proximity ("influence") of the steel hull of a passing ship. This significantly increased the chance that a mine would be detonated.

At the beginning of the war, the Germans deployed many influence mines to great effect; however, a hiatus in the German minelaying program from early December 1939 until the end of March 1940 proved strategically damaging to the Germans, who were never able thereafter to lay sufficient quantities of influence mines to disrupt British shipping significantly. Moreover, by mid-1940 the British had developed effective minesweeping countermeasures. The British Minesweeping Service recovered an intact German magnetic mine in November 1939, analyzed it, and by mid-1940 developed and deployed a magnetic sweep. The Germans then began deploying another type of influence mine, the acoustic mine, which was detonated by the sound of a passing ship's screw. The British quickly developed effective sweeps for these as well. . .

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