Polish engineer's legacy: How enhanced mine detector turned tide of World War II

This device, later known as the Polish Mine Detector, ebbed from an unfortunate incident. During World War II, members of the Polish 10th Armored Cavalry Brigade who were executing surveillance duties along the Scottish coast, stumbled upon a minefield set by the English - a danger about which they had not been alerted.

The devastating consequences of this event deeply affected Józef Kosacki, who was then based at the Communication Training Center in Dundee. This prompted him to revisit and enhance his pre-war work from back in Poland.

Initially, the detector was being developed to locate unexploded ordnance on artillery ranges. However, the work carried out in the UK led to a detector that would later be known as the Polish Mine Detector.

A less dramatic variation of this story indicates that the Polish detector was developed independently from the tragic accident. The development process began in Poland and continued in France after its surrender, where Kosacki and some Polish troops were later evacuated to the UK following France’s fall.

By 1941, the device improved by Józef Kosacki and Andrzej Garboś was ready. The effectiveness of the device was validated through tests on beaches using mines without detonators and handfuls of buried coins.

It was not long before this device exhibited its value under operational circumstances - 500 detectors played a significant role in the Allied forces victory in the Second Battle of El Alamein. The detectors facilitated the breaching of German minefields in November 1942, making it easier to conquer the German-Italian forces comprising the Afrika Korps.

Deciding not to patent their invention, the creators viewed the Polish mine detector as Poland's contribution to the triumph over Germany. For this act, King George VI granted them a personal letter of commendation. Remarkably, the detector, remaining largely unaltered, persisted as a part of the British army's equipment for five decades, only being withdrawn in 1995.

It is a common misconception referring to the Polish mine detector as the first mine detector. However, that's not true as methods to detect hidden metallic objects were known prior to its invention.

Indeed, what Józef Kosacki and Andrzej Garboś achieved was the construction of a lightweight device that was straightforward to assemble and operate. With these features, it was possible for mine detectors (or more accurately, metal detectors) to be mass-produced and widely used. The solutions conceived by the Polish duo became a standard in the development of countless mine detectors worldwide.