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A grenade is a small explosive weapon typically thrown by hand (also called hand grenade), but can also refer to a shell (explosive projectile) shot from the muzzle of a rifle (as a rifle grenade) or a grenade launcher. A modern hand grenade generally consists of an explosive charge ("filler"), a detonator mechanism, an internal Firing pin to trigger the detonator, an arming safety secured by a transport safety. The user removes the transport safety before throwing, and once the grenade leaves the hand the arming safety gets released, allowing the striker to trigger a Percussion cap that ignites a fuze (sometimes called the delay element), which burns down to the detonator and explodes the main charge.
Grenades work by dispersing fragments (fragmentation grenades), (High explosive, anti-tank and ), chemical (Smoke grenade, gas and chemical grenades) or fire (incendiary grenades). Their outer casings, generally made of a hard synthetic material or steel, are designed to rupture and fragment on detonation, sending out numerous fragments (Sherd and ) as fast-flying projectiles. In modern grenades, a pre-formed fragmentation matrix inside the grenade is commonly used, which may be spherical, cuboid, wire or notched wire. Most anti-personnel (AP) grenades are designed to detonate either after a time delay or on impact.
Grenades are often spherical, cylindrical, ovoid or truncated ovoid in shape, and of a size that fits the hand of an average-sized adult. Some grenades are mounted at the end of a handle and known as "Stielhandgranate". The stick design provides leverage for throwing longer distances, but at the cost of additional weight and length, and has been considered obsolete by western countries since the Second World War and Cold War periods. A friction igniter inside the handle or on the top of the grenade head was used to initiate the fuse.
Grenade-like devices were also known in ancient India. In a 12th-century Persian historiography, the Mojmal al-Tawarikh, a terracotta elephant filled with explosives set with a fuse was placed hidden in the van and exploded as the invading army approached.
A type of grenade called the 'flying impact thunder crash bomb' (飛擊震天雷) was developed in the late 16th century and first used in September 1, 1592 by the Joseon during the Japanese invasions of Korea.〈25년, 선수 26권〉. 《선조실록》. 1592년 9월 1일. The grenade was 20 cm in diameter, weighed 10 kg, and had a cast iron shell. It contained iron pellets, and an adjustable fuse. The grenade was used with a dedicated grenade launcher called a 'wangu' (碗口). It was used in both the besieging and defense of fortifications, to great effect.
The first cast-iron bombshells and grenades appeared in Europe in 1467, where their initial role was with the besieging and defense of castles and fortifications.Needham, Volume 5, Part 7, 179. A hoard of several hundred ceramic hand grenades was discovered during construction in front of a bastion of the Bavarian city of Ingolstadt, Germany, dated to the 17th century. Many of the grenades retained their original black powder loads and igniters. The grenades were most likely intentionally dumped in the moat of the bastion prior to 1723.
By the mid-17th century, infantry known as "grenadiers" began to emerge in the armies of Europe, who specialized in shock and close quarters combat, mostly with the usage of grenades and fierce melee combat. In 1643, it is possible that grenados were thrown amongst the Welsh at Holt Bridge during the English Civil War. The word grenade was also used during the events surrounding the Glorious Revolution in 1688, where cricket ball-sized ( in circumference) iron spheres packed with gunpowder and fitted with slow-burning wicks were first used against the Jacobitism in the battles of Killiecrankie and Glen Shiel. These grenades were not very effective owing both to the unreliability of their fuse, as well inconsistent times to detonation, and as a result, saw little use. Grenades were also used during the Golden Age of Piracy, especially during boarding actions; pirate Captain Thompson used "vast numbers of powder flasks, grenade shells, and stinkpots" to defeat two pirate-hunters sent by the Governor of Jamaica in 1721. By the 18th century the popularity of hand grenades was declining
Improvised grenades were increasingly used from the mid-19th century, the confines of enhancing the effect of small explosive devices. In a letter to his sister, Colonel Hugh Robert Hibbert described an improvised grenade that was employed by British troops during the Crimean War (1854–1856):
Hand grenades were used by French and Russian forces during the Siege of Sevastopol
During the Battle of Fort Sumter grenades were kept at critical points of the fort such as the room over the gateway . About 93,200 Ketchum Grenade were procured by the Union Army throughout the American Civil war; those weapons were used in the sieges of Vicksburg, Port Hudson and Petersburg. Grenades were issued to United States Ram Fleet and Union Navy vessels to repel boarders.The Augusta Arsenal manufactured around 13,000 hand grenades between 1863 and 1865, Confederate troops also used improvised grenades made from artillery shells to defend their positions.
In March 1868 during the Paraguayan War, the Paraguayan troops used hand grenades in their attempt to board Brazilian with canoes.
Hand grenades were used on naval engagements during the War of the Pacific.
British troops used hand grenades in Sudan between 1884 and 1885
During the Siege of Mafeking in the Second Boer War, the defenders used fishing rods and a mechanical spring device to throw improvised grenades.
Improvised hand grenades were used to great effect by the Russian defenders of Port Arthur (now Lüshun Port) during the Russo-Japanese War. At first they were improvised from old iron cases or mountain gun shells. Later, they were replaced with cut down shell casing quick-firing artillery; filled with dynamite or gun-cotton, and fitted with Safety fuse The workshops in Port Arthur could turn out 2,500 grenades in 24 hours. In the month of August alone 18,000 grenades were prepared.
Japanese forces also used grenades during the Russo-Japanese War. The first Japanese grenades were made from tin cans or bamboo tubes filled with gun-cotton, and fitted with fuses; they were lit with matches but later on a percussion arrangement was improvised by means of a rifle cartridge (which acted as a primer) and steel wire. Japanese cavalry was also armed with grenades and threw them under the horses of the enemy when pursued.
In 1904 Serbia adopted a grenade designed by Major Miodrag Vasić; it was partially inspired by copies of Bulgarian grenades manufactured by the Serbian Chetnik Organization.
Marten Hale, known for patenting the Hales rifle grenade, developed a modern hand grenade in 1906 but was unsuccessful in persuading the British Army to adopt the weapon until 1913. Hale's chief competitor was Nils Waltersen Aasen, who invented his design in 1906 in Norway, receiving a patent for it in England. Aasen began his experiments with developing a grenade while serving as a sergeant in the Oscarsborg Fortress. Aasen formed the Aasenske Granatkompani in Denmark, which before the First World War produced and exported hand grenades in large numbers across Europe. He had success in marketing his weapon to the French and was appointed as a Knight of the French Legion of Honour in 1916 for the invention.
The Royal Laboratory developed the No. 1 grenade in 1908. It contained explosive material with an iron fragmentation band, with an impact fuze, detonating when the top of the grenade hit the ground. A long cane handle (approximately 16 inches or 40 cm) allowed the user to throw the grenade farther than the blast of the explosion. It suffered from the handicap that the percussion fuse was armed before throwing, which meant that if the user was in a trench or other confined space, he was apt to detonate it and kill himself when he drew back his arm to throw it.Hogg, Ian. Grenades and mortars. Ballantines Illustrated History of the Violent Century. Weapons book, no. 37.
An improved version of Vasić's design was adopted by the Serbian Army in 1912; the grenade provde very useful during the First Balkan War, specially during the Siege of Adrianopole.
Before the beginning of the Second Balkan War, Serbian General Stepa Stepanović ordered that bomb equipped squads (consisting of one non-commissioned officer and 16 soldiers each.) should be formed in all companies of the 4t 3th, 14th, 15th and 20th Infantry Regiments of the Timočka Division.
The German Army adopted the Kugelhandgranate in 1913, it was meant to be used by pioneers to assault enemy positions.
Early in World War I, combatant nations only had small grenades, similar to Hales' and Aasen's design. The Italian Besozzi grenade had a five-second fuze with a match-tip that was ignited by striking on a ring on the soldier's hand. William Mills, a hand grenade designer from Sunderland, patented, developed and manufactured the "Mills bomb" at the Mills Munition Factory in Birmingham, England in 1915, designating it the No.5. It was described as the first "safe grenade". They were explosive-filled steel canisters with a triggering pin and a distinctive deeply notched surface. This segmentation is often erroneously thought to aid fragmentation, though Mills' own notes show the external grooves were purely to aid the soldier to grip the weapon. Improved fragmentation designs were later made with the notches on the inside, but at that time they would have been too expensive to produce. The external segmentation of the original Mills bomb was retained, as it provided a positive grip surface. This basic "pin-and-pineapple" design is still used in some modern grenades.
After the WWII, the general design of hand grenades has been fundamentally unchanged, with pin-and-lever being the predominant igniter system with the major powers, though incremental and evolutionary improvements continuously were made. In 2012, Spränghandgranat 07 (shgr 07, "Blast hand-grenade 07") was announced as the first major innovation in the area of handgrenades since the Great War.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> FMV announcement Officerstidningen nr 7, 2019, sid 8 Succé för svensk handgranat, Aftonbladet 2013-09-05, Jan Huss
Developed by Ian Kinley at Försvarets Materielverk (FMV), shgr 07 is a self-righting, jumping hand grenade containing some 1900 balls that covers a cone 10 metres in diameter with the centre about 2 metres in height. This minimize the dangers outside the lethal zone as there is little to no random scattering of fragments from the blast..
Modern fragmentation grenades, such as the United States M67 grenade, have a wounding radius of – half that of older style grenades, which can still be encountered – and can be thrown about . Fragments may travel more than .
Concussion grenades have also been used as (underwater explosives) around boats and underwater targets; some like the US Mk 40 concussion grenade are designed for use against enemy divers and Frogman. Underwater explosions kill or otherwise incapacitate the target by creating a lethal shock wave underwater.Dockery 1997, p. 188.
The US Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) announced in 2016 that they were developing a grenade which could operate in either fragmentation or blast mode (selected at any time before throwing), the electronically fuzed enhanced tactical multi-purpose (ET-MP) hand grenade.
Sting grenades do not reliably incapacitate people, so they can be dangerous to use against armed subjects. They sometimes cause serious physical injury, especially the rubber fragments from the casing. People have lost eyes and hands to sting grenades.
Sting grenades are sometimes called "stinger grenades", which is a genericized trademark as "Stinger" is trademarked by BAE Systems for its line of sting grenades.
Impact was the first used, with fragile containers of Greek fire that ruptured when landing. Later impact fuzes contained some kind of sensitive explosive to either initiate the main charge directly, or set off a primer charge that in turn detonates the main charge. This turned out to present significant drawbacks; either the primer is so sensitive that unintended and premature ignition happens, while a more stable substance often fails to set off the grenade when landing in softer ground, not seldom even allowing the targeted troops to hurl the grenade back. Thus, the only significant use of impact fuzes since WWI has been in anti-tank grenades.
Fuze-delayed grenades is the predominant system today, developed from the match-fuzes that were hand-lit in the early grenades. From there, two sub-groups were developed: friction-igniters where a cord is pulled or a cap is twisted to ignite the delay-fuze like on the German Stielhandgranate; the other being strike- or percussion-igniters where the user either hits the cap before the throw like on the Japanese Type 10 grenade, or have a spring-loaded striker hit the cap after the grenade is released like the Mills bomb, with the latter being predominant since WWII. There is also an alternative technique of throwing, where the grenade is not thrown immediately after the fuze is ignited, which allows the fuze to burn partially and decrease the time to detonation after throwing; this is referred to as "cooking". A shorter delay is useful to reduce the ability of the enemy to take cover, throw or kick the grenade away and can also be used to allow a fragmentation grenade to explode into the air over defensive positions. United States Army Field Manual 3–23.30, Grenades and Pyrotechnic Signals (2005 revision), pages 3–11 to 3–12
Concerned with serious incidents and accidents involving hand grenades, Ian Kinley at the Swedish Försvarets materielverk identified the two main issues as the time-fuze's burntime variation with temperature (slowing down in cold and speeding up in heat) and the springs, the striker spring in particular, coming pre-tensioned from the factory by mechanism designs that had not changed much since the 1930s. In 2019, a new mechanism, fully interchangeable with the old ones, was adopted into service. The main difference, apart from a fully environmentally stable delay, is that the springs now are twist-tensioned by the thrower after the transport safety (pin and ring) has been removed, thus eliminating the possibility of unintentional arming of the hand grenade. Officerstidningen, Säkrare tändfunktion till handgranater testas
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