Posted on 04/04/2006 12:35:12 PM PDT by BenLurkin
I'll see your war story/ sea story, and raise you one: I had a pal at MACV HQ who among other things dealt with casualty report summaries being forwarded back to the Funny House with Five Sides [Pentagon] for *lessons learned* studies. One in which I hope somebody learned something involved two young troops who'd just recently been issued the then-new M67 *baseball* grenade to replace the previously issued M26 *Lemons*.
Actually about the size of a tennis ball, the M67 could be thrown a bit further than the M26 or the old WWII *Mark Two* pineapple frag, still sometimes seen in the hands of US troops who worked with the ARVN and Koreans. But the little baseball frag was so nicely throwable it got a couple of guys in trouble....
Not having used up all their ammo and not yet having visited our PCOD hooch, they grabbed a quick sandwich at our messhall and were hanging around the hulk of an ARVN M41 tank that had its power pack out for replacement, but still made a neat *steel foxhole* with its .50 MG on top. One of the two began bouncing one of his frags against the tank's steel turret, handball-style, with his pal catching it.
It could be that the cast-zinc fuze assembly broke and let the pin and safety lever go, or it could have just been the effect of throwing a metal ball with a #6 blasting cap inside it against a steel wall that did the trick, but in any event, it did.
The report my pal wrote up described the effect, 3 or 4 feet away, as *traumatic decapitation of all extremities,* which was maybe a bit technically inaccurate but got the idea across of what the result was. Funny thing was, after everyone found out what a thorough job the new frag had done on the two guys, everybody wanted to use *the new frags that worked.*
Those who've been in or around the military are invited to guess the rank of the two victims.
I remember the M67. I also remember ocasionally being assigned to the the grenade range at CAMPEN, sitting in the concrete hooch about twenty yards behind the firing line, helmet and flag jacket on. Once in a while little red-hot bits of metal would land on you, and it was get 'em off quick or it's either a blister on your arm/neck or a hole burned in your cammies.
I also recall watching some of the prives throwing their very first grenade. Some did well, some did, er, not so well. A few times I saw guys shaking enough just holding the thing to let the spoon fly before they were ready. That was fun.
Even more fun was when a guy would throw it so badly it would *tink* off the edge of the pit on its way out. Pucker factor -- big time!
You are half correct.
My experience with M406 grenades was in the field, less formal than at an EOD shop *in the rear with the gear.* But the usual procedure was to very, very carefully slip the blade of an entrenching tool under the grenade body without touching it [you think cheese can be sliced thin!] then slowly pulling it away via a 200-meter length of parachute cord or bomb lanyard [550 cord] tied to a hole in the shovel handle. The little Canadian FIXOR binary shaped charges they use now for 40mm grenades, especially those of the HEDP flavor, or a much better arrangement, and also work nicely for UXO mortar rounds and mines.
None of that for us. We would place an electric cap in a fair sized piece of C4, place it next to the un-exploded whatever, run the wire off about 100 feet or so and then BANG!
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