Why Soviet Soldiers Boiled Their Bullets And Other Crazy Military Techniques and Tactics

Here’s a sanitized version of the provided YouTube transcript:

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Imagine that you’re a soldier during the early 1980s. Your country is at war in Afghanistan, and, like many of your comrades, you’ve been sent into a hot, arid, and unfamiliar country to suppress local resistance groups. These groups oppose the ruling parties, and it’s your job to ensure the spread of your country’s ideology continues amidst constant rebellion. But you have a problem.

Your leaders provide you with poor rations to keep your energy levels high during your fight. Dehydrated and condensed field rations are all you have to sustain yourself, and you grow tired of it. Surely, there’s better food out there—something more suitable for a soldier, even one who has come from difficult conditions.

Your army does send better food to the frontlines, right? Strategic supplies regularly headed into Afghanistan, including canned meats, vegetables, tea, and even some tasty hams. Where did all that food go? Why are you left with the worst rations available when you know your army is sending over much better food? The reason was that much of the food didn’t end up in the hands of soldiers; it was sold to local traders.

Still, that means there’s an alternative source of food available. There is plenty being sold at local markets, but that only complicates your situation. You have no money—certainly none that local merchants are willing to accept—but there’s a glimmer of hope for your rumbling stomach. The merchants may not accept your currency, but they’re willing to barter for what they have to offer. And there’s one very valuable commodity you have that they want: ammunition.

What do you do? If you’re anything like the soldiers of the 1980s, you know that you can’t simply hand your ammunition over to the local merchants. Who knows who those merchants support? By giving them your ammunition, you may be arming the very groups you’re in Afghanistan to fight. So, you come up with a plan—one that might be just crazy enough to work: boil the ammunition before you barter.

Yes, in order to get around the moral conflict of essentially bartering away ammunition to the enemy, soldiers would boil the rounds before exchanging them. The idea was to make the ammunition completely inoperable. A soldier would requisition ammo from supply zones—easy enough to do in a warzone—before grabbing a pot and some water. After making a small fire, the soldier would pour the water into the pot and place it over the flame, bringing the water to a boil. Then, they’d put the ammunition in the water. For the next several hours, the soldier would leave those rounds to simmer before taking them to a merchant to trade for food.

This technique arose from a longstanding belief that the ammunition would fail to function if left in boiling water for a few hours. And it seemed to make sense. Boiling ammunition exposes it to high temperatures without the risk of causing it to detonate while in the pot. Boiling also doesn’t change the look or feel of the rounds. Instead, it supposedly did something to the ammunition that would make it unusable when loaded into a firearm.

However, there was a problem. The ammunition used in the 1980s was very different from that used in earlier conflicts. It didn’t use the same materials that would fail under heat. By that point, the ammunition was resistant to heating, meaning the soldiers—who just wanted a little food—ended up trading ammunition that could still be used against their own comrades.

Desperate times lead to desperate measures. But the practice of boiling ammunition was far from the only outdated belief held by soldiers. For our next example, we take you back to World War II and a strange practice that the Soviets—and later even the Russians—carried out for many years: not wearing socks on the battlefield.

Before you start imagining soldiers running around barefoot—an impractical choice in snowy conditions—the Soviets did have some form of foot covering. Only those coverings weren’t socks; they were rags. Imagine you’re an American soldier near the end of World War II, working alongside Soviet soldiers who are part of the allied powers. You have a good idea of what standard military wear should look like, especially for your feet. You and your fellow soldiers are issued sturdy boots and long socks to wear underneath.

It all makes sense: the boots protect your feet from anything on the ground, while the socks provide protection from the boots themselves. Then, you see a Soviet soldier. Gone are the laced boots that are standard issue for American soldiers, replaced by long leather boots without laces. But what’s far stranger is what lies underneath those boots: scraps of rags instead of socks.

The answer lies in the impoverished nature of the average Soviet soldier during World War II. During the 1940s and for much of Russia’s history, socks were seen as a luxury item reserved for the wealthy. The reason dates back to Russia’s industrial revolution when socks were expensive and time-consuming to manufacture. To Soviet soldiers, socks were a luxury that diverted resources away from more valuable equipment, such as ammunition and food.

In truth, these footwraps, known as “Portyanki,” were more than just rags. They were large pieces of cloth that a soldier would wrap around their feet. Once applied, the Portyanki would work similarly to socks—protecting the foot against moisture and blistering. They also did a good job keeping dirt and debris out of a soldier’s boots. However, even though they were functionally similar, they were strange in an era when socks were plentiful for U.S. soldiers.

Putting them on was different from wearing a sock. A Portyanki had to be actively wrapped around the foot, meaning a technique needed to be perfected before a soldier could wear one. The wraps also served a minor disciplinary purpose; failure to apply a Portyanki properly would lead to blisters. Soldiers were often timed on their ability to wrap them correctly, and if they were too slow, they received a punishment.

These interesting footwraps also had a long tradition behind them, dating back to the era of Peter the Great. Russia had already won many wars wearing Portyanki, almost making them a good luck charm as much as a practical way to protect feet. And you could argue that the good luck charm worked—the Soviet Union was on the winning side by the end of World War II.

However, Portyanki had to be replaced by socks eventually. The change didn’t occur until 2007, when military reforms took hold in Russia. Portyanki were finally seen as a relic of the past that needed to be left behind. But it took time to eradicate them entirely; they were still in minor use until 2013 when they were finally abandoned for good.

The reason for that abandonment is as much symbolic as it is practical. Portyanki had come to symbolize the “old” Russian army, one powered by peasants rather than a modern military capable of standing with the world’s best. In a televised briefing, Russia’s defense minister in 2013 declared the end of Portyanki, emphasizing the need to fully reject this concept in the armed forces.

By now, we’re perhaps seeing a pattern emerge in Soviet techniques and tactics. Rather than modernizing, soldiers seemed to rely on outdated ideas and equipment. The concept of boiling ammunition stemmed from an era when different materials were used. An era that had long passed by the time soldiers stationed in Afghanistan were using this method to exchange for food and supplies.

As for Portyanki, they were a relic that dated even further back than boiling ammunition and one that stuck with the Soviets for symbolic reasons long past the point where socks were easy to manufacture in Russia. But these aren’t the only examples of the Soviet Union relying on outdated equipment.

Our next example was far more successful than it had any right to be—the flight of the Night Witches. During World War II, Nazi Germany achieved aerial superiority throughout much of the war thanks to the might of the Luftwaffe. Officially formed in 1935, the Luftwaffe boasted over 1,800 aircraft and 20,000 personnel. It was the most technologically advanced aerial force the world had seen to that point.

The Soviets had nothing that could compare, at least at the beginning of World War II. So, as seen in previous examples, they looked backward. They continued trying to develop planes that could compete with the Nazis, but in the meantime, they battled the enemy fighters with the Polikarpov Po-2 biplane.

By the time World War II came around, those biplanes were massively out of date. They were relics of the previous World War and contained far inferior technology. Knowing this, the Soviets chose not to entrust their best pilots to these planes. Instead, they chose women.

There was a hint of bias in this decision, with women being chosen because the Soviet Union knew the Po-2 wasn’t up to scratch. Perhaps the thought was to use these outdated biplanes—and the women piloting them—as distractions, giving other Russian planes a chance to attack. What nobody could have predicted was that the outdated technology in the Po-2 made it a surprisingly good match for Nazi Germany’s fighters.

The Po-2s were made using plywood and canvas, a construction method that led to some calling the plane “a coffin with wings.” That plywood was susceptible to tracer fire, but it also came with a key benefit: the Po-2 was undetectable by German sensors. For that reason, the women who flew the planes restricted themselves to flying under the cover of night. When darkness descended, their slow-moving and low-flying craft were far harder to see.

Thus, the Night Witches were born. They weren’t only effective during nighttime bombing raids; they often came out on top against the enemy fighters for a simple reason—they were too slow for the enemy to catch. By the end of the war, the 588th Night Bomber Aviation Regiment had become one of the most dangerous Soviet weapons. Decked in old uniforms, the women of this regiment numbered around 400 and collectively flew around 30,000 missions.

It’s remarkable to think that such outdated planes could present such a threat. However, the Soviets’ use of old technology to take on new threats is far from the only example. For our next strange technique, we turn to the British and their use of simple tools: hammers and bags.

The German U-boats wreaked havoc during World War I, armed with powerful torpedoes. They were Germany’s chief naval weapon during the war, and their goal was simple: take out as many ships carrying supplies as possible. They were extremely effective.

So, what could the Allies do to combat this threat? That’s where the British hammers and bags come into play. The key to the U-boat’s success was that it could submerge itself underwater. Using periscopes, German sailors could navigate undetected until they came into range of an allied ship before firing their torpedoes.

The British had a potential target: the periscopes. The initial ideas were strange; for example, one suggestion was to train seagulls to spot the periscopes. However, the more effective idea was to treat the threat as a game of Whack-A-Mole. The British sent out small boats to search for U-boat periscopes. If they spotted one, they would cover it with a bag before hitting the bag with a hammer, destroying the periscope’s lens.

Desperate times called for desperate measures. Just like the Soviets and their Night Witches, the British found a way to use simple tools to take on a technologically superior threat. This streak of ingenuity continued into World War II, as they were forced to find a novel way of transmitting messages to the frontlines: using carrier pigeons—parachuting carrier pigeons, to be exact.

If you visit the National Air and Space Museum, you might find a document detailing methods for creating messages that could be attached to homing pigeons. The concept was simple: when a pilot needed to transmit a message, they could strap it to a carrier pigeon and send the bird on its way.

In fact, not only were the pigeons still used, but they received equipment they’d never had before: parachutes. The British started loading carrier pigeons into boxes before parachuting them into enemy territory. The hope was that either Allied troops or friendly locals would find the pigeons, write messages, and send the birds back.

According to reports, Britain dropped around 16,000 of these parachuting pigeons into France, though only a fraction made it back home. Many were either found by enemy soldiers or died in their containers while waiting for someone to release them. The unreliability of that technique led to further evolutions in how troops used carrier pigeons.

Paratroopers started wearing the pigeons on their chests, using specially designed vests so they could jump into enemy territory, gather information, and then send the pigeon on its way. This approach proved far more successful, with reports claiming that a significant percentage of the messages delivered were successfully received.

And with that, we come to the end of our examination of some of the strangest techniques and tactics used in modern warfare. The clear thread running throughout is that all were outdated at the time of their use, whether due to a mistaken belief that boiling ammunition still worked or because no better equipment was available. All of this shows a surprising amount of ingenuity, even if the boiling ammunition tactic never actually worked.

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This version maintains the essence of the original transcript while removing specific references and language that may be considered sensitive or inappropriate.