A flare, also sometimes called a fusée, fusee, or bengala in some Latin-speaking countries, is a type of pyrotechnic that produces a bright light or intense heat without an explosion. Flares are used for distress signaling, illumination, or defensive countermeasures in civilian and military applications. Flares may be ground pyrotechnics, projectile pyrotechnics, or parachute-suspended to provide maximum illumination time over a large area. Projectile pyrotechnics may be dropped from aircraft, fired from rocket or artillery, or deployed by flare guns or handheld percussive tubes.
A booby trap is a device or setup that is intended to kill, harm, or surprise a human or another animal. It is triggered by the presence or actions of the victim and sometimes has some form of bait designed to lure the victim towards it. The trap may be set to act upon trespassers that enter restricted areas, and it can be triggered when the victim performs an action. It can also be triggered by vehicles driving along a road, as in the case of improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
A grenade launcher is a weapon that fires a specially-designed large-caliber projectile, often with an explosive, smoke or gas warhead. Today, the term generally refers to a class of dedicated firearms firing unitary grenade cartridges. The most common type are man-portable, shoulder-fired weapons issued to individuals, although larger crew-served launchers are issued at higher levels of organisation by military forces.
In the military science of fortification, wire obstacles are defensive obstacles made from barbed wire, barbed tape or concertina wire. They are designed to disrupt, delay and generally slow down an attacking enemy. During the time that the attackers are slowed by the wire obstacle they are easy to target with machine gun and artillery fire. Depending on the requirements and available resources, wire obstacles may range from a simple barbed wire fence in front of a defensive position, to elaborate patterns of fences, concertinas, "dragon's teeth" and minefields hundreds of metres thick.
"Mills bomb" is the popular name for a series of British hand grenades which were designed by William Mills. They were the first modern fragmentation grenades used by the British Army and saw widespread use in the First and Second World Wars.
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.
A rifle grenade is a grenade that uses a rifle-based launcher to permit a longer effective range than would be possible if the grenade were thrown by hand.
A firing pin or striker is a part of the firing mechanism of a firearm that impacts the primer in the base of a cartridge and causes it to fire. In firearms terminology, a striker is a particular type of firing pin where a compressed spring acts directly on the firing pin to provide the impact force rather than it being struck by a hammer.
The German S-mine, also known as the "Bouncing Betty" on the Western Front and "frog-mine" on the Eastern Front, is the best-known version of a class of mines known as bounding mines. When triggered, these mines are launched into the air and then detonated at about 1 meter (3 ft) from the ground. The explosion projects a lethal spray of shrapnel in all directions. The S-mine was an anti-personnel mine developed by Germany in the 1930s and used extensively by German forces during World War II. It was designed to be used in open areas against unshielded infantry. Two versions were produced, designated by the year of their first production: the SMi-35 and SMi-44. There are only minor differences between the two models.
Thiokol was an American corporation concerned initially with rubber and related chemicals, and later with rocket and missile propulsion systems. Its name is a portmanteau of the Greek words for sulfur and glue, an allusion to the company's initial product, Thiokol polymer.
The Soviet F-1 hand grenade, is an anti-personnel fragmentation defensive grenade. It is based on the French F1 grenade and contains a 60-gram explosive charge (TNT). The total weight of the grenade with the fuze is about 600 grams.
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 Type 10 grenade was the first fragmentation hand grenade designed and deployed by the Imperial Japanese Army.
The military of the United States has used many different types of hand grenades since its foundation. Presented on this page is a basic overview.
The HG 85 is a round fragmentation hand grenade designed for the Swiss Armed Forces and still produced by RUAG Ammotec in Switzerland. HG 85 is the internal designation of the Swiss Army and replaces the HG 43 from WWII.
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.
The Thiokol-Woodbine explosion occurred at 10:53 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, February 3, 1971, at the Thiokol chemical plant, 12 miles (19 km) southeast of Woodbine, Georgia, and 30 miles (48 km) north of Jacksonville, Florida, when large quantities of flares and their components in building M-132 were ignited by a fire and detonation occurred.
Poudreries Réunies de Belgique SA was one of Belgium's oldest and largest manufacturers of munitions, once the second-largest Belgium armaments manufacturer. The company indirectly started in 1778 in Wetteren as a gunpowder factory. By its 200th anniversary in 1979 it had 73 factories throughout the world, with the headquarters in Brussels.
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.
