can give you pleasure
ofc anon thought of that
I recall a story of an evacuated ER in the UK(?). Bomb squad called because an older man showed up with unexploded ordinance in their rectum. Think it was a WW2 shell in that case but the parallels remain.
Talk about an explosive orgasm!
If I remember correctly, the spherical design was mainly created to resemble a baseball. Since most US citizens knew how to throw a baseball at the time it would mean they didn’t have to train soldiers as much
That is a myth. The spherical form is to maximize surface area to volume for shrapnel, ensuring that no matter how it lands. Shrapnel will go in all directions.
That’s definitely a myth. Soviet WW-2 grenades like RGD-5 and F-1 are also spherical and baseball was unknown at that time in USSR.
It’s also wayyy more cost effective when you’re transporting them. For the Allies, because they relied so heavily on supply lines every cubic foot of space on a ship or truck was important. Carrying a grenade on a stick to the front means not carrying three more grenades. I’m sure four grenades are more lethal than one grenade that a soldier might be able to throw a little bit further.
So… what were the Germans so used to throwing that theirs had a handle?
AxisaxesDildos
Going off of the shape and what I know of Germany today, beer bottles.
or Yufkas
Those came after WWII, from the Gastarbeitern who helped rebuild Germany
nur “gäste”, lmao
That was the original plan, which caused a lot of the trouble the Germany currently has. There weren’t big programs for immigrants to learn German until decades after the original Gastarbeiter had arrived. There was no effort at all of integrating them or their children until basically an entire generation had already come, settled, and retired. Even aside from cultural aspects, a lot of the descendants of Gastarbeitern don’t have German citizenship. It’s fucking wild to me that someone could be the third generation of their family born in a country and still not be given citizenship.
I’m an immigrant and a German teacher, so I’m probably biased, but that’s not the way to go about things.
My ex was like that; 3rd generation, no German pass.
Her grandad worked the factories, her mum was born and grew up in the workhouses next to the factories (apparently they’d hand him lunch through the wall), and her mum had no formal education other than sunday school.
Fiercely proud of their heritage and shunned/mocked by previous generations of Germans, they didn’t see the need to get German citizenship. Even my Ex.
When I saw the way things were going in Germany, I begged her to get her German passport before it was too late. I hope she did.
The reason is logistics (as usually the reason for most things military related). You can fit a hell of a lot more conventionally shaped grenades in a crate than you can with stick grenades. Even on a person, conventional grenades weigh less, are less cumbersome, and you can carry more compared to stick grenades. Stick grenades really only have their ease of throwing over a conventional grenade
It’s easier to pack and ship cylinders than it is to ship oblong spheroids.
That’s probably partly why the new modular grenade is a cylinder, but that’s worse for a frag grenade.
You only look at the complexity of the shapes and ignore the total volume used
I wonder if anyone in the military has used a sling to launch a grenade.
You’d want a longer fuse though…
They used slingshots during WW1, it wasn’t great
How much damage would a trebuchet grenade do?
a trebuchet could throw 300 grenades up to 300 meters
Or a cistera 😀
Dungeon Crawler Carl Style
Just connect the pin to the sling so it slides out as you launch it. It has the small side effect of maybe getting stuck, but hey, nothing is perfect.
Sling staff to launch grenades?
just grab a dog ball throwing stick
I was going to mention those at first, but who hasn’t had a throw go wild with one of them?
According to wikipedia, the International Brigades used slings to hurl grenades during the Spanish American War. I’ve heard tell of Ethiopian troops using slings to launch grenades, but can’t find a source.
And I know people have launched molotovs from slings, which are larger and more unwieldy, unless we’re talking about the German example above with a handle.
Grenades are mostly used at closer and more hectic ranges, so it’s often much faster to just throw it instead of having to prepare some sort of implement to increase range.
There have been instances of things being used, like slings, slingshots and even devices similar to those things you use to throw tennis balls for dogs. But at the end of the day, the increased range is rarely worth the extra time needed. You would only get an advantage as an opening attack from a longer distance. And for that we already have under-barrel grenade launchers that can reach ten times further than thrown ones, or mortars that could be a hundred times further away from the target.
Grenades are mostly used at closer and more hectic ranges, so it’s often much faster to just throw it instead of having to prepare some sort of implement to increase range.
Hand grenades, sure. There’s a reason we have grenade launchers though. They can fire several hundred meters. With that said, is there really a need for a sling? I could see gorilla forces making good use of them, as they’d be silent, cheap, portable, and a lot easier to hide. Conventional forces have no need though because either you’re close enough for a hand grenade (there are different types, some are thrown further and some not), or you have grenade launchers available to hit the further away.
Gorillas got grenades guys.
I feel like the ultimate ‘stick’ you can attach to a grenade these days is a drone. But yeah, agreed in general
Oh yeah, that is by far the best device in which they’re used these days. Although that has little to do with grenades per se, since they can use all kinds of different explosive devices. And it still suffers from the main concern with hand grenades: Time to prepare. It’s a lot faster and cheaper to throw one 20-30m than it is to take out, power up and send a drone that distance.
Anon is over-analizing the design.
Someone must have tried a jai alai stick at some point.
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You can also easily string them together into a fancy danger necklace
One reason I’ve heard it’s that you can hold the spoon after pulling the pin on a pineapple grenade, but not on a stick
Plus, these are huge, not easy to carry several in addition to all your other gear.
Wood is heavy
more expensive building a grenade with a full wood handle and all extra parts is more expensive then ball that go boom
I’ve been playing a good amount of disc golf lately. Why not a disc shape?
- With proper training, it can be thrown over 100 meters.
- It can curve around corners.
- It’s fun.
- It will definitelly hit the very first tree in your path and kill you.
- it stacks nicely in a backpack.
Make these Bionicle disk launchers but military sized.
Bruh bionicles were the shit I’d forgotten!
Add some LEDs and feel like you’re playing Tron instead of killing people.
Stacks nicely in a backpack? You know how much crap goes in a medium ruck? How’s Jenkins gonna find my stash of disk nades under my spare ammo and ‘field stripped’ MREs? No, I need my grenades quick access, on my chest next to the repurposed saw pouch full of rip-its.
Okay, but how about both? 2 discs in the backpack (or medium ruck if you want to be german about it) and a waist of ball nades. Then you have options!
You know how you can throw a frisbee at an angle that makes it come back to you in a straight line?
An angle that you can easily hit if you try to throw out of a trench…No. 4 is proof that you really are a disc golfer.
- heavy.
I doubt you can throw them further. Has a lot more drag and is less dense than modern grenades.
You are seemingly correct:
According to the British War Office, the stielhandgranate had a throwing distance of up to 27m while standing, compared to the 35m distance of the more modern and still used M67. Which weighs 30% less and take up 75% less space lengthwise. Even the Mk2( classic pineapple design) reached 30m despite weghing the same as the German one, because it was denser and more aerodynamic.
EDIT: For anyone curious, the ideal shape among those used and weight for distance and accuray is apparently round and ~300g. Reaching a distance of (38.6±6.5 m) and an accuracy of of (6.9±3.9 m).
Why not an American football shape, but grenade sized?
This would make CFL much more entertaining
I would assume the ideal design for distance would be shaped somewhat like a glider.
Frisbee grenade
Frisbee/disc golf players being drafted…
Yeah but completely unpredictable which is the most important variable. Wouldnt want the wind to carry it back into your trench.
The traditional hand grenade became the standard for the American military because American soldiers grew up playing baseball, and were extremely accurate throwing grenades the same way. American Baseball gave American soldiers an advantage that European and Asian militaries didn’t have.
They could make a stick that a soldier could put a spherical grenade on to help give extra range. Like an atlatl or one of those tennis ball launchers for dogs.
Balls go further than sticks. Theyre more aerodynamic for a start.
Dont worry, the Military Industry Complex is all about killing people, so it would be using sticks if it was beneficial.
No he’s talking about those things where you can sling tennis balls with, the ball gets released and the stick is still in your hand. You can throw tennis balls much further with those things
“New” war tech dropped
Like a gun!
Or a 7 meter long stick, just bob it off
Like a Vortex football! They could even put those little whistle things on the sides so they make that sound while soaring through the air
Yeah, we did this, we just made them rocket propelled and called them mortars.
Are mortars rocket propelled? I thought they were just short indirect cannons.
They facist nazi’s that used them was destroyed. No one cared about the design of the grenades. Only the rockets and the jet engines.
Interesting question.
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.
Ah, then why not throw them with a sling? All the extra leverage with none of the extra weight, and it’s more or less silent. Imagine a barrage of grenades coming in from 200 yards at 60mph.
Most boringly because most western armies are probably going to use an airplane or tank in that situation. Significantly less risky to have the squishy people hide behind something strong while a machine does the dangerous work from a distance, if you can manage that.
Grenade is more for close distances, like “just over that ridge” or “in the next room”.
Because you have to learn to use a sling and if you’re not good you’re much more likely to blow yourself up.
You could probably come up with a more idiot friendly version though some kind of fabric sock where you just launch the whole thing
What if we made a tube to launch the grande, and powered it by a small amount of propellant?
That’s why you practice with rocks. Like what slings originally did.
So which existing training should we cut to make time for sling practice?
Do we really need them to be able to read?
Just use a drone to drop it two kilometres away instead
You could even give it some sort of rocket propulsion.
That sounds complex. Just put some gunpowder at the rear end of the grenade, and stuff it in a small tube. You could make this small enough to stuff the tube under the barrel of your gun, or big enough that it can function as a small artillery piece.
this is the guy i want on my team for the post apocalypse
I’ve seen slings used to throw things. Either ropes attached to the projectile, or pouches on ropes designed to release the projectile.
I’ve also seen those slings not throw the “grenade” 200 yards away, but straight up in the air, or wrapping around branches or arms or flying backwards…
Slings require just enough skill that they would probably be more lethal to friend than foe.
They’ve got the M203 grenade launcher that attaches to their rifle, effective to 382 yards. They’ve got the M224 mortar that can be operated in a handheld configuration, and is effective from 70 to ~3812 yards.
I do historical reenactment, so I figured I’d learn the sling because it’s awesome.
Turns out it’s really really hard. After maybe 50 or 60 hours of practice, I could reliably hit the side of a house. Before that, it was indeed pretty much a crapshoot whether it even went forward.
If I throw something I can pretty reliably hit a person sized target. With a sling, forget about it.
My guess? the stick part blocks the effectiveness of the explosiveness at where ever the stick is point at time of impact. You could argue that to change that would be to make the stick part the actual explosive part and have effectively an explosive baton. But then the ends of the “danger” baton wouldn’t have the same explosive effect to the target facing the end of the baton grenade compared to a target facing the sides of the baton. So, to mitigate that, a sphere shaped grenade would probably be ideal with separable metalic “scales” as a shell. Now you have ideal coverage of the area no matter how the grenade lands at the target.
At that point, I would assume ergonomics and determining which way was up so that you know where the pin is leads to why grenades look the way they do today.
It’s just a bit of wood attached to a fairly big chunk of explosive and I would guess that wood shrapnel is just as deadly as metal within its effective range. The stick isn’t going to block much of anything.
Stick grenades could have a fragmentation sleeve, but they relied more on the explosive concussion for damage, not the shrapnel.
