So, You find a hand grenade....

[flatbutt]

Sometimes there comes an act of stupidity so utterly staggering that one just can't understand the "why?" of it.

[Por_sha911]

"Here, hold my pin and watch this"

[JackDidley]

Originally Posted by masraum

half surprised that it's not on YT.

For real. Seems like everything ends up on YT.

[Racerbvd]

[red 928]

Sometimes, things fix themselves

[Tim Hancock]

As part of Army basic training in the 80's we each had to throw a live grenade at a purpose built range. Group of us went in a concrete bunker and received detailed instruction. Then went out one at a time to a little concrete walled area with a drill sergeant who carefully had you pull the pin and toss grenade over concrete wall into a pit then immediately forced you down to ground behind wall.

I remember being very nervous hoping I would not eff up. Even wearing hearing protection, I could not believe how loud that little grenade was.... Made the M80's of my youth seem like a tiny firecracker.

[fintstone]

There are entire generations where few have served and probably not watched the TV shows of our youth like Rat Patrol and Combat...probably not even Hogan's Heroes. I imagine that there are a lot that might not know what to do with a live grenade or how it works.

[Arizona_928]

I've seen rural americans. They sit on their phone and watch shorts all day.

They even do it while driving, walking the dogs, or instead of sleeping.

Grenade < Kardashians

[GH85Carrera]

Back in the olden days when I was a kid, we took our empty CO2 cartridges and packed them with match heads and made a cool rocket by dropping them down a metal pipe. The was fun, but we wanted to make it go further. So a little added gunpowder and it went further. Then we put in a bit much. We all looked for it to fly out the end of the pipe and no one saw it go. We looked and looked then we gave up and went to get our pipe. To our horror, we noticed the end of the pipe was much expanded. The good news for us, the pipe contained the explosion, but just barley. We realized it was not a rocket, but a grenade. We had come within inches of mass injury or death.

We made several great bombs and set them off at Maxwell AFB where we lived. Now days the FBI, CIA, ATF, and likely the CIA would be investigating. Seeing the damage out little gunpowder bombs did to tree stumps and metal cans I honestly can't image a real grenade damage.

I do know if I saw one that had a pin in place the very last thing I would do is pull the pin to see what happens. I would leave the house, and then call the police and the bomb squad.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by KC911

Tragic. Evidently you can fix stooopid

LMAO. Tragic, but you've gotta laugh or you'll cry.

Originally Posted by herr_oberst

That pin wasn't going to pull itself.

ROFLMAO!

Originally Posted by aschen

I mean I gotta assume 5 sec before the incident they were like "what are the chances this thing is actually live?".

In a vacuum, Id personally think very low. Though I sure as hell wouldn't pull the pin to find out.

It's surprising how many folks came back from the wars with live ordnance.

Originally Posted by matthewb0051

Found in grandfather's belongings. A pineapple grenade, antique.

Thing is when you pull the pin the spoon still has to release to start the primer. So in addition to pulling the pin, no one had a grip on the spoon.

Leave that stuff where it sits and call the PD. Especially if you have no idea how to handle it.

Right. Or if you're going to do something stupid, at least go outside. And throw the damn thing for all of the good that it would do. I can't even imagine what that would do to the inside of a wood frame and drywall home. I have to imagine that a large portion of the inside of the home is fubar.

Originally Posted by tabs

I know..I know what to do...pull the pin and throw it a at couple of old folks out for a walk..

LOL! Well played, sir! Toss it to them as you drive past, and then gun it.

Originally Posted by flatbutt

Sometimes there comes an act of stupidity so utterly staggering that one just can't understand the "why?" of it.

Yep. Completely unfathomable.

Originally Posted by Tim Hancock

As part of Army basic training in the 80's we each had to throw a live grenade at a purpose built range. Group of us went in a concrete bunker and received detailed instruction. Then went out one at a time to a little concrete walled area with a drill sergeant who carefully had you pull the pin and toss grenade over concrete wall into a pit then immediately forced you down to ground behind wall.

I remember being very nervous hoping I would not eff up. Even wearing hearing protection, I could not believe how loud that little grenade was.... Made the M80's of my youth seem like a tiny firecracker.

by comparison, they were. But I get what you're saying.

Originally Posted by Arizona_928

I've seen rural americans. They sit on their phone and watch shorts all day.

They even do it while driving, walking the dogs, or instead of sleeping.

Grenade < Kardashians

But, but, there are those videos out there. You've seen the good stuff by the 8sec mark, and then there's plenty more where that came from.

[Noah930]

Watching the above video, how do these people F up throwing a grenade?!?! OK, I've never thrown one before, either. But I've thrown tens of thousands of baseballs, footballs, basketballs, soccer balls, tennis balls, rocks, horseshoes, you name it. These people look like they've never thrown a paper airplane in their lives.

[Seahawk]

That video was great in terms of learning "what to do" in training.

The Instructors were dialed in as the lay out of the training ranges.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Noah930

Watching the above video, how do these people F up throwing a grenade?!?! OK, I've never thrown one before, either. But I've thrown tens of thousands of baseballs, footballs, basketballs, soccer balls, tennis balls, rocks, horseshoes, you name it. These people look like they've never thrown a paper airplane in their lives.

My thoughts exactly. How do you not throw an item that's sized and shaped fairly regularly. I might get it if it was super awkward like a heavy weight on the end of a chain or a log or 3' diameter sheet of plywood.

Originally Posted by Seahawk

That video was great in terms of learning "what to do" in training.

The Instructors were dialed in as the lay out of the training ranges.

The instructors that aren't dialed in probably have very short careers.

Watching them, I'm sure the guys are trained to "watch where the grenade goes, and then go the opposite direction. Because if the guy doing the throwing throws left, then jumping into the trench on the left is not helpful. I wonder if those guys volunteer for that job.

[matthewb0051]

Originally Posted by masraum

L

Right. Or if you're going to do something stupid, at least go outside. And throw the damn thing for all of the good that it would do. I can't even imagine what that would do to the inside of a wood frame and drywall home. I have to imagine that a large portion of the inside of the home is fubar.

Last time I threw a grenade I had to wait in a bunker with thick windows. I remember every time someone else would throw getting huge thud on side of bunker walls and lots of stuff that sounded like frags hitting the bunker walls. If it were wood and drywall I'd imagine it going through the walls if close enough.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by matthewb0051

Last time I threw a grenade I had to wait in a bunker with thick windows. I remember every time someone else would throw getting huge thud on side of bunker walls and lots of stuff that sounded like frags hitting the bunker walls. If it were wood and drywall I'd imagine it going through the walls if close enough.

Exactly. I assume a frag grenade going off is essentially like a handgun that fires 50-100 "bullets" in a sphere. And on top of the "bullets" there's also the explosion.

My assumption that a grenade going off in a drywall room would destroy/remove most of the drywall in that room, probably mostly ending up in the next rooms from the explosion.

Then the "bullets would probably travel through most of the rooms in the house. I have no idea of the specifics of a grenade, eg, how large/small/heavy the fragments are or the speed at which they are propelled. I assume that the weight varies from fairly heavy (compared to a handgun round) to on the light side - various sizes. I assume that the speed is probably more like a rifle than a handgun. So (lots of assumptions) I suspect the entire house, at least it if's 1 story and not enormous or sporting stone clad interior walls, probably ends up with holes and bits of metal. Closets full of clothes probably have holes, walls, furniture, etc... There may be spots that are shielded enough, bathtub 3 walls away or 3 or 4 rooms away with HVAC and/or water heater and heavy wooden furniture and behind a large heavy mattress.

My guess is that the entire interior of the house, every room will need repairs, and it's possible and maybe likely that there could be structural issues near ground central.

Sad, that an entire family's lives have been destroyed by a moment of poor judgement.

[masraum]

If you all believe wikipedia for a more modern grenade.

The M67 grenade has a spheroidal steel body that contains 6.5 oz (180 g) of composition B explosive. The M67 grenade weighs 14 oz (400 g) in total.

The M67 can be thrown 30 to 35 metres (98 to 115 ft) by the average male soldier.[citation needed] Its fuse delays detonation between 4 and 5 seconds after the spoon is released. Steel fragments (not to be confused with shrapnel) are provided by the grenade body and produce an injury radius of 15 metres (49 ft), with a fatality radius of 5 metres (16 ft), though some fragments can disperse as far out as 250 metres (820 ft).[4]

There's less info on wikipedia about the old "pineapple" style grenade.

total weight - About 1 lb 5 oz (600 g) depending upon filling

the explosive filling, either 1.85 oz (52 g) of TNT, 2.33 oz (66 g) of Trojan explosive (a mixture of 40% nitrostarch, ammonium nitrate, and sodium nitrate), 1.85 oz (52 g) of a 50/50 amatol/nitrostarch mixture, or 1.85 oz (52 g) of Grenite (a mixture of 95% nitrostarch and binders). Some early Mk 2 grenades were filled with 0.74 oz (21 g) of smokeless EC powder. The improved "Mk 2A1" (a designation used informally by armorers, historians, and collectors, but never by the US military[3]) introduced in 1942 was filled through the fuse well instead. The Mk 2A1 was initially filled with 0.74 oz (21 g) of EC powder. In 1944, the EC powder filling was replaced with 1.85 oz (52 g) of TNT.

I found some random dude that posted the following.

But what makes grenade shrapnel so deadly is the speed with which it is dispersed. No shotgun round could match the burn velocity of the average frag grenade’s charge. Grenade shrapnel also has a good bit of kinetic energy from the velocity that the shotgun charge could not create. Not only create, but the maximum pressure a shotgun could withstand is magnitudes below the brief pressures generated within the average frag grenade. The US M67 frag uses Composition B as its ‘filler’ (explosive). This is the same filling in US Howitzer HE artillery shells. Composition B is a binary explosive, using 59.5% RDX and 39.4% TNT actives and is stabilized by parrafin wax. RDX detonates at 8,750 meters per second; TNT, 6,900. They detonate at the combined velocity of 8,050 mps, or about 24,000 feet per second. That means the blast wave, the expanding combustion gases, and the flame front (small) are moving at about 4–3/4 miles per second. A good .30-’06 bullet moves out at about 2,500 fps or about a half-mile per second. The grenade charge is thus in practicality about 10X as forceful. This velocity, combined with the intense pressure it creates just prior to the grenade body disintegrating, propels fragments outward at about 5,000 fps briefly, before air resistance to the irregular shaped shrapnel causes rapid deceleration. Grenade frags can travel about 600 feet, but are usually lethal only out to about 150 feet.

A good shotgun load pushes the ballistic mass out of the barrel at about 1200–1400 fps. It develops a chamber pressure of about 11,500psi. That’s why shotguns are not machined as heavy as rifles (.30-’06 generates up to 48,000psi and the barrels and receivers look much heavier and thicker along their entire length than in shotguns). You can fire a shotgun with the sun behind you and even see the slow-poke shot in flight.

Additionally, modern frags are not your Granddaddy’s ‘pineapple’ grenade—the shell is thinner and the ‘shrapnel’ is a packing of various materials inside the grenade. Most of these materials (including pieces of wire) would fly poorly at the snail’s pace a puny shotgun charge could push them. Firing grenade fragments through a shotgun with a max-pressure shotgun load would most likely not result in a more lethal shotgun round, but probably a lesser one.

So if you’re positing a shotgun as your primary weapon, it would be far better to fire 12-ga 00-buck from 3 or 3–1/2 inch magnum shells.

I found some interesting photos.

[Norm K]

I've thrown a good number of hand-grenades, though never a single one in anger.

On my first trip to the range I remember being amazed during instruction how many guys seemed to have never thrown anything in their lives. If I was an instructor, I'd take all the guys who grew up playing baseball (although a slightly different arm motion is generally taught), thank you very much.

_

[stevej37]

My favorite episode of Combat....which I last watched 50 years ago, was the one where they had a new drafted soldier that was a MLB pitcher.

He could land those grenades anywhere he was asked to.

[flatbutt]

Do Boots train with frags or flash bangs?

[craigster59]

Originally Posted by flatbutt

Do Boots train with frags or flash bangs?

We trained a little bit with frags but first practiced with inert (painted blue) practice grenades. I think it depends on your MOS, but as a Combat Engineer and I'm sure Infantry also did a little more explosives training.

I just remember the Drill Sergeant saying that if a grenade was dropped, the safest thing to do was drop to the ground as far away as possible as the grenade had a "V" shaped blast zone.

Didn't sound very convincing to me but I grew up playing baseball so throwing at a target was a breeze.