Posted on 03/03/2011 8:46:14 PM PST by smokingfrog
SILVERDALE — A Central Kitsap man brought a grenade to the Silverdale precinct of the Kitsap County Sheriff's Office Tuesday afternoon, prompting a short closure while the device was removed.
The man told deputies he found the World War II-era ("pineapple style") grenade recently when sorting through the belongings of his recently deceased father. He brought it to the sheriff's office to have it properly disposed of.
At about 2 p.m., the office was cleared out and parking lot blocked off so sheriff's deputies could determine what to do with the device. A deputy and a Washington State Patrol trooper, both members of the county's bomb squad, took it to a firing range where it was "rendered safe" with an explosive charge.
Deputies gave the man some instructions for the future.
(Excerpt) Read more at kitsapsun.com ...
Why didn't they just pull the pin and throw it while at the range, why waste other explosives on it? What a panic over a grenade that has been lying around harmlessly since the war. Bunch of wussies. I would have taken the damn thing out into the woods and thrown it without telling the cops about it. Telling the cops leaves you wide open to some stupid charge you never heard of.
Indeed.And that is why I say it is inert.How ‘bout you?
Good thing this didn’t happen in England or that guy would be in jail.
And that’s not a joke.
There were a bunch of threads a couple months back about how a guy found a gun that had been dumped in his yard or something, and, being a good citizen, took it to the police — who immediately threw him in jail.
IIRC, he was actually convicted because the British law says that mere possession of the gun, regardless of reason, demands conviction and punishment.
I know, its refreshing to see law enforcement actually treat someone decently, and use some common sense, and not look for an excuse to throw the man in jail.
“I would have taken the damn thing out into the woods and thrown it without telling the cops about it. Telling the cops leaves you wide open to some stupid charge you never heard of.”
If that thing blows up a spotted owl in the woods, you better hope nobody hears it or you could be in BIG trouble!;)
My roommate in school had one of those things. He used to call the plebes into our room and he would sit at his desk, the plebe standing at attention, and fiddle with the thing while talking about this and that. He would then “accidently” release the pin and let the handle fly off. Those poor kids would nearly jump out of their skins.
You know, it really is... I have lost much faith in our law enforcement boys these days (used to have nothing but high regard)... Maybe it’s that union effect from Wisconsin (heh)... If the police continue to back the SEIU, I will have absolutely NO support for any of them...
Odds are it was inert but the story doesn’t address it one way or the other.
I’ve got some inert ones around the house just for conversation pieces. You can pick them up at Army-Navy surplus stores, gun shows, etc.
Why didn’t they just pull the pin and throw it while at the range, why waste other explosives on it?
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Probably because they don’t want to be the stars in the next “EOD Gone Bad” training film.
Seriously, why take a chance? It’s easy to sit here and laugh but the funeral and looking at the man’s children and wife are not funny. I have attended one. It’s not nice to clean up either.
Treat everything the same and you probably go home at the end of a shift. Get careless and you may not. Most grenades are very stable but the old striker fired ones relied on springs that routinely fail (see springs on an all original WWII era Thompson for comparison) and the timed fuze was sometimes a risky proposition even in WWII. Some of them have also been “remanufactured” by people who don’t know what they are doing.
They stopped using live grenades in training for a short time prior to the U.S. entering WWII due to several training deaths where the soldiers pulled the pins and the grenade exploded within a second of being thrown. This led to the creation of the blue capped training grenades.
It’s easy to poke fun when you watch the process but one moment of carelessness can cause lots of hurt to many people. If you don’t care about the cop at least consider what it costs the taxpayers when their bomb tech gets blown up or a bystander gets killed or wounded because they did not set a safe perimeter.
Why take a chance?
If they tossed it at the range and it SEEMED to be a dud... would you want to walk over and try it a second time???
What an idiot. They were using live Grenades for training in 1959 when I went though basic. Simple, you pull the pin, throw the damn thing as far as you can and lie down while it is still in the air. Grenade goes boom, has a very small kill radius and you stand up and walk away. Nice to be cautious but this is a grenade we are talking about not a 155 howitzer round that failed to explode.
Perhaps they should just call you next time.........
Sometimes a bad idea... if the fuse has been changed out for use as a booby-trap... spoon flies... boom
That would be handy at an SEIU rally.
After that, all armed services had to go through their grenade stocks and confirm the proper fuses were installed.
When a student held up his hand and pointed to the LIVE claymore sitting in front of him that had been mis-painted as an Inert Training Aid... again, all military units using the devices had to go through their stocks to properly identify the live/inert units.
Another instance was a NG soldier that should have known better, took home a dud 40mm grenade. Apparently, while at work, the cat jumped up on the book case that had the "trophy" and knocked off the grenade, enough for a final arming spin, and BOOM, blew his 1,500 sq foot house all to hell. THE CAT SURVIVED!
if ya toss a grenade in the woods and whack a spotted owl and nonebody is there to hear it, do spotted owls actually exist ??? 8^}
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