GURPS skill used to assemble a bomb?

[nanoboy]

Originally Posted by Sable Wyvern

I can't imagine any sane military issuing this sort of manual to the average infantry soldier.

The Australian Army actually stopped including the booby-trapping section in most copies of their demolitions manual, and only issues the complete version under much stricter security.

While I'm not entirely convinced this should have been done, anything teaching the creation of explosives from scratch is so dangerous and open to abuse I just can't see it being a widely circulated manual. Especially considering that anything requiring "a pretty well-equipped kitchen" is going to be useless to a soldier in the field.

I agree entirely with Kromm's three possiblities -- either this was a specialist manual, not something designed for issue to the average soldier; it was not an official military manual at all; or your recollection is mistaken.

As an additional data point, Australian assault pioneers (infantry combat construction and assault demolition specialists) receive no official training on the creation of explosives.

That's possible. I'm certain that it was a US Army manual, though it was Vietnam era. Given that we had a lot of military advisers in Vietnam and that military policy got rather screwy (to the point that post-Vietnam reforms were a thing for a while) it is possible that this manual was over-widely distributed.

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

Originally Posted by Sable Wyvern

. . . you wouldn't just pick a random infantry soldier and tell him he's making jam-tin explosives today.

"All right. I need a couple of random infantry soldiers who don't owe me any money to assemble some jam-tin bombs . . . "