The No. 77 grenade was a British white phosphorusgrenade introduced in September 1943 and used during the Second World War. The No. 77 consisted of around 225 grams (7.9 ounces) of white phosphorus, an impact fuze and a tin casing. It was intended for laying down smoke screens and as a signalling device. The grenade was also very effective as an anti-personnel, incendiary weapon. As well as being issued to the Home Guard, the No. 77 grenade was issued to the British army. This grenade was fitted with an "all-ways" action impact fuze designed to set the grenade off when it hit a surface - the fuze was called "all-ways" as it was designed to work no matter which way the grenade landed.
Once the grenade exploded, the contents (i.e. the white phosphorus) scattered and ignited as soon as they touched the air. This made the grenade extremely dangerous — hence its usefulness in combat.
When the war had ended, many of the grenades had become dangerous, due to corroding of the inferior tin plate steel used in the manufacture of the grenade bodies. In 1948 the grenade was determined to be obsolete and all were destroyed to minimize the danger they could cause.
However, these were produced and used in Canada until the 1950s, for the quality and manufacturing of them was better than found in Britain.[1] References to the No. 77 smoke grenade could also still be found in Dutch army manuals up to the fifties, coded as "C-hgr Nr 77", (chemische handgranaat nummer 77) indicating its use up to that decade in Western Europe.
A Molotov cocktail is a hand-thrown incendiary weapon constructed from a frangible container filled with flammable substances equipped with a fuse. In use, the fuse attached to the container is lit and the weapon is thrown, shattering on impact. This ignites the flammable substances contained in the bottle and spreads flames as the fuel burns.
Shrapnel shells were anti-personnel artillery munitions which carried many individual bullets close to a target area and then ejected them to allow them to continue along the shell's trajectory and strike targets individually. They relied almost entirely on the shell's velocity for their lethality. The munition has been obsolete since the end of World War I for anti-personnel use; high-explosive shells superseded it for that role. The functioning and principles behind Shrapnel shells are fundamentally different from high-explosive shell fragmentation. Shrapnel is named after Lieutenant-General Henry Shrapnel (1761–1842), a British artillery officer, whose experiments, initially conducted on his own time and at his own expense, culminated in the design and development of a new type of artillery shell.
A shell, in a military context, is a projectile whose payload contains an explosive, incendiary, or other chemical filling. Originally it was called a bombshell, but "shell" has come to be unambiguous in a military context. Modern usage sometimes includes large solid kinetic projectiles, which are more properly termed shot. Solid shot may contain a pyrotechnic compound if a tracer or spotting charge is used.
A smoke grenade is a canister-type grenade used as a signaling device, target or landing zone marking device, or as a screening device for unit movements.
Stielhandgranate is the German term for "stick hand grenade" and generally refers to a prominent series of World War I and World War II-era German stick grenade designs, distinguished by their long wooden handles, pull cord arming and cylindrical warheads. The first models were introduced by the Imperial German Army during World War I and the final design was introduced during World War II by the German Wehrmacht.
The Gammon bomb, officially known as the No. 82 grenade was a British hand grenade used during World War II.
The British No. 69 was a hand grenade developed and used during the Second World War. It was adopted into service due to the need for a grenade with smaller destructive radius than the No. 36M "Mills bomb". This allowed the thrower to use a grenade even when there was little in the way of defensive cover. In contrast, the much greater destructive radius of the Mills bomb than its throwing range forced users to choose their throwing point carefully, in order to ensure that they would not be wounded by the shrapnel explosion of their own grenade.
White phosphorus munitions are weapons that use one of the common allotropes of the chemical element phosphorus. White phosphorus is used in smoke, illumination, and incendiary munitions, and is commonly the burning element of tracer ammunition. Other common names for white phosphorus munitions include WP and the slang terms Willie Pete and Willie Peter, which are derived from William Peter, the World War II phonetic alphabet rendering of the letters WP. White phosphorus is pyrophoric ; burns fiercely; and can ignite cloth, fuel, ammunition, and other combustibles.
The No. 76 special incendiary grenade also commonly known as the A.W. bomb and SIP grenade, was an incendiary grenade based on white phosphorus used during World War II.
The M67 grenade is a fragmentation hand grenade used by the United States military. The M67 is a further development of the M33 grenade, itself a replacement for the M26-series grenades used during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and the older Mk 2 "pineapple" grenade used since World War I.
The No. 73 grenade, also known as the "Thermos", "Woolworth bomb", or "hand percussion grenade", was a British anti-tank grenade used during the Second World War. It got its nickname from the resemblance to a Thermos flask.
The M26 is a fragmentation hand grenade developed by the United States military. It entered service around 1952 and was used in combat during the Korean War. Its distinct lemon shape led it to being nicknamed the "lemon grenade".
The Ordnance SBML two-inch mortar, or more commonly, just "two-inch mortar", was a British mortar issued to the British Army and the Commonwealth armies, that saw use during the Second World War and later.
The military of the United States has used many different types of hand grenades since its foundation.
The F1 grenade is manufactured by Thales Australia exclusively for the Australian Defence Force as a primary defensive anti-personnel hand grenade.
In military munitions, a fuze is the part of the device that initiates function. In some applications, such as torpedoes, a fuze may be identified by function as the exploder. The relative complexity of even the earliest fuze designs can be seen in cutaway diagrams.
A grenade is an explosive weapon typically thrown by hand, but can also refer to a shell shot from the muzzle of a rifle or a grenade launcher. A modern hand grenade generally consists of an explosive charge ("filler"), a detonator mechanism, an internal striker to trigger the detonator, and a safety lever secured by a cotter pin. The user removes the safety pin before throwing, and once the grenade leaves the hand the safety lever gets released, allowing the striker to trigger a primer that ignites a fuze, which burns down to the detonator and explodes the main charge.
An artillery fuze or fuse is the type of munition fuze used with artillery munitions, typically projectiles fired by guns, howitzers and mortars. A fuze is a device that initiates an explosive function in a munition, most commonly causing it to detonate or release its contents, when its activation conditions are met. This action typically occurs a preset time after firing, or on physical contact with or detected proximity to the ground, a structure or other target. Fuze, a variant of fuse, is the official NATO spelling.
An anti-tank grenade is a specialized hand-thrown grenade used to defeat armored targets. Although their inherently short range limits the usefulness of grenades, troops can lie in ambush or maneuver under cover to exploit the limited outward visibility of the crew in a target vehicle. Hand launched anti-tank grenades became redundant with the introduction of standoff rocket propelled grenades.
The Frangible Grenade M1 was a specially designed factory produced molotov cocktail created by the United States in 1942 as it entered World War II (1939–1945). It was designed to provide lightly armed personnel with simple, uncomplicated weapons that were easy to mass-produce. It provided a cheap stopgap means of knocking out enemy vehicles, clearing out strongpoints, and harassing or killing enemy personnel until more effective weapons could be produced and distributed. It was dubbed "frangible" because it was made from glass, which is brittle and easily broken.
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