View Full Version : Play stupid games... Hand grenade edition
https://www.foxnews.com/us/indiana-man-killed-teenagers-wounded-grenade-found-inside-grandfathers-belongings-explodes
Gee they found a grenade in late grandpa's stuff. Pulled the pin. Hilarity ensues.
Dafuq were they thinking? Don't be a dumbass with shit that goes boom.
Maybe they were playing that game from Fast and Furious. Too bad grenades don't work that way.
Dang near killed his kids as well!
If you have live ordnance, you probably want to mention it to anyone who might get your stuff one day.
Rectum? Damn near kill em!
Growing up I knew lots of WWII vets who brought back LOTS of stuff.
Plenty of MP38s and MP40s. During the late 70s they explained to me that so long as you pulled the bolts out and kept them in the attic, you didn't have a functional machine gun. They also talked about being careful because if you got caught you either had to pay your tax or surrender the gun. No shoot your dog, no $10,000 fine, no 10 years in jail...just pay your $200 or lose it. It was treated like getting caught speeding in your car. Funny how things have changed.
And I saw lots and lots of other things in collections including potato masher grenades. When I asked if they were real / live? The answer was usually "You betcha."Some guys brought back stuff you wouldn't believe. I knew a guy who used a bazooka rocket as his door stop and he told me not to worry because it wouldn't fire without the firing mechanism in the tube however the hell that worked.
Even my grandfather grabbed 4 rounds of .50 BMG which he linked together in a block when he got out of the plane for the last time. And my brother and I discovered those rounds about 1977, glad we didn't drop them because it's live ammo. And right now, somewhere in my uncles house (probably in a safe) are some 78 year old .50 BMG rounds that came off his dad's Liberator. The important details have been explained to his kid so that he may safely inherit them someday (along with the flag and medals which are in my possession), but I do worry that in another 50 years somebody might get that .50 ammo and assume it's somehow been made safe.
Then there are the recent guys I know sitting on a ton of illegal ordnance. Sometime around 1983/84 (maybe both) the Ft Lauderdale National Guard Armory was robbed over a space of time before anyone noticed. It was all an inside job that was funded by the cocaine wars in Miami, the money grugs generated and a desire to have more advanced weapons than Ingram M-10s. Lots of M16A1s went out the door, lots of M203s went out the door, cases of 40mm HE, cases of fragmentary grenades all ended up on the secondary market to help Miami maintain it's "murder capital of the world" status for years to come.
The other guys buying it were the survivalist types who maybe saw a little bit too much creative government when they were in Vietnam. Lots of guys snapped up lots of that stuff for pennies on the dollar before it finally started to dry up around 1988.
ThirdWatcher
05-22-23, 07:49
You gotta wonder who would want to keep a live grenade around. I was fortunate to never have to touch one after BCT. (I know they have their uses in combat, especially during the hours of darkness but even then I’d be damned careful with them.)
Averageman
05-22-23, 08:17
You gotta wonder who would want to keep a live grenade around. I was fortunate to never have to touch one after BCT. (I know they have their uses in combat, especially during the hours of darkness but even then I’d be damned careful with them.)
My Grandfather had a case in the garage attic when he passed.
I believe my Uncle and Dad disposed of them in a local river. This was more than fifty years ago.
UXO is a problem because there is a shelf life until it becomes unstable. They are still finding UXO from WW1 and WW2; that stuff washes ashore on our coast not infrequently.
Averageman
05-22-23, 09:22
UXO is a problem because there is a shelf life until it becomes unstable. They are still finding UXO from WW1 and WW2; that stuff washes ashore on our coast not infrequently.
Aren't there still places in France that are so soaked in Chemical Weapons that you're not supposed to turn over the Earth there?
Aren't there still places in France that are so soaked in Chemical Weapons that you're not supposed to turn over the Earth there?
I did not know so I looked it up. That appears to be the case:
https://www.riskope.com/2014/02/13/100-years-after-wwi-the-soil-between-france-and-belgium-is-still-contaminated-by-remnants-of-war-uxos-and-toxic-chemical-compound/#:~:text=The%20land%20is%20still%20contaminated,more%20arsenic%20and%20ammonium%20perchlorate.
Too bad you probably couldn't even do the RIGHT thing and call the bomb squad. The corrupt .gov would probably come after you.
Still not as potentially large area sketchy as natural gas.
I had a friend that claimed to have some pineapples and asked if I wanted to go to the desert and set them off. Hard pass, very hard pass. He is no longer with us and it wasn't a grenade but damn. I know what I know and what I don't know, and I dont know shite about grenades so I will pass every time.
PB
Frags are actually pretty stable and have a very long shelf life. If anything was gonna go sideways it would be the fuse/detonator. Those use more unstable elements. I'm not saying they had nothing to worry about, who knows what vintage that thing was.
It's the whole "pulling the pin" bit that screwed them. The spoon holds a spring loaded firing pin that strikes a primer. Once that spoon flips its game on. No putting the genie back in the bottle. It's gonna go boom.
PB don't sweat missing out. They are effective for what they are meant to do but they really ain't exciting to throw or fun to watch. Nothing like those megaton frags from the action movies.
France is dealing with tons of UXO every year, HE and Chemical. If it's safe to move they take it to a place on the Channel and when they have enough at low tide they stack it up out on the sand and after the tide comes in blow it up. I figure that stretch of beach must be pretty nasty.
900 tons in France and 150+ tons in Belgium every year, WOW.
In the Ardennes region of France, large-scale citizen evacuations were necessary during MEC removal operations in 2001. In the forests of Verdun French government "démineurs" working for the Département du Déminage still hunt for poisonous, volatile, and/or explosive munitions and recover about 900 tons every year. The most feared are corroded artillery shells containing chemical warfare agents such as mustard gas. French and Flemish farmers still find many UXOs when ploughing their fields, the so-called "iron harvest".
In Belgium, Dovo, the country's bomb disposal unit, recovers between 150 and 200 tons of unexploded bombs each year. Over 20 members of the unit have been killed since it was formed in 1919.
ChattanoogaPhil
05-22-23, 16:53
IF grandpa didn’t think to tell his family about what he had stored, and IF his grandkids pulled the pin to see what would happen… we’ll… the apples didn’t fall far from the tree. Who knows… there’s probably a Paul Harvey in there somewhere.
Life can change in a flash. When in doubt… take a moment to think and choose wisely.
Frags are actually pretty stable and have a very long shelf life. If anything was gonna go sideways it would be the fuse/detonator. Those use more unstable elements. I'm not saying they had nothing to worry about, who knows what vintage that thing was.
It's the whole "pulling the pin" bit that screwed them. The spoon holds a spring loaded firing pin that strikes a primer. Once that spoon flips its game on. No putting the genie back in the bottle. It's gonna go boom.
PB don't sweat missing out. They are effective for what they are meant to do but they really ain't exciting to throw or fun to watch. Nothing like those megaton frags from the action movies.
Anyone who grew up watching action movies is very disappointed on grenade range day in basic.
Utah and C-grunt, thanks for the 101 Grenades study. Good to know.
PB
The worst part of frag grenades is the fuze. 3 to 5 seconds. Im not okay with that estimate. Especially when doctrine says cook it for 2 seconds before chucking it in a door. That's a big negative for me. The bunkers and trenches we fragged in Iraq never got a cooked grenade. No one I know was willing to chance it. Hahaha.
Frags are actually pretty stable and have a very long shelf life. If anything was gonna go sideways it would be the fuse/detonator. Those use more unstable elements. I'm not saying they had nothing to worry about, who knows what vintage that thing was.
It's the whole "pulling the pin" bit that screwed them. The spoon holds a spring loaded firing pin that strikes a primer. Once that spoon flips its game on. No putting the genie back in the bottle. It's gonna go boom.
PB don't sweat missing out. They are effective for what they are meant to do but they really ain't exciting to throw or fun to watch. Nothing like those megaton frags from the action movies.
Yep, once the spoon flies, the grenade is no longer your friend. I know that much. I'm also aware that they made short delay frags (so they couldn't be thrown back) and no delay frags (for trips and traps) and I know I don't know one from the other and when you combine that with something potentially 75 years old or older, it's not something I fool around with.
Once the pin is pulled Mr. Hand Grenade is not your friend .
Anyone who grew up watching action movies is very disappointed on grenade range day in basic.
That's hilarious. The other hollywood stupidity is how slow the RPG flies in the movies. The actor usually has time to see it coming and jump for cover.
Anyone who grew up watching action movies is very disappointed on grenade range day in basic.
What, you mean they don't explode in a massive fireball??
That's hilarious. The other hollywood stupidity is how slow the RPG flies in the movies. The actor usually has time to see it coming and jump for cover.
You get a nanosecond of 'oh, shit..' and that's about it....
You get a nanosecond of 'oh, shit..' and that's about it....
Yeah. I remember the first time I saw a video of some terrorizers firing one into a structure. I was like wow that's fast.
You get a nanosecond of 'oh, shit..' and that's about it....
For those who have never seen it. Happens fast...much longer range than many assume.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1NJPSZZBsk
I once took a report of a gunshot wound to the leg. When I interviewed the guy he said he had the pistol in his pocket and wanted to see if the safety was on. So he checked it by pulling the trigger.
Poor guys in the back.
https://youtu.be/tZLwKjlErmo
teufelhund1918
05-24-23, 05:48
Lol... It's funny to remember some things that happened as I was growing up. I was at a gun show in Pa back in the 80's when an old WW2 vet showed up wanting to sell a dealer a case of WW2 pineapple grenades he had saved from WW2. The dealer said it happens all the time.
A while back some old vet's widow brought in a MP44 to a gun turn in. They did the right thing and didn't destroy it for once. Don't know what happened to it though. I've heard a few stories like that about gun buy backs.
Not too long ago, a local police department auctioned off about 4-6 police issue Thompson submachine guns from the 20's that were in storage to raise money. They got a pretty penny out of that auction.
My buddy went to a VFW sometime back in the 60's to put an ad on the wall for militaria. The person he was talking to showed him a WW1 era Lewis machine gun up on the wall. He pulled it down and let him handle it. It was dewatted by pouring lead down the barrel. When he flipped it over to look at it, the lead slid out of the barrel. Everything was there to make if functional.
Same person found a barn somewhere in PA or WV back in the 50's I think, that had 4 original Gatling guns with their cassions stored in it. Funny thing was that some of the cassions were filled with unissued WW1 German belt buckles still in wax paper. He said he started th paperwork to claim them and the ATF agent denied the claim. He says the agent was also a collector and screwed him to get the guns himself. True or not about that I dunno. But he had all sorts of stories about finding all sorts of stuff over the years.
I remember seeing catalogs from after WW1 that were selling Maxium and Browning machine guns, BAR rifles, Thompson machine guns and every sort of surplus you could imagine. Who knows what is out there.
Gatling guns, being manually operated, are not NFA items, they would be treated like a rifle.
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