Figure 1.--This wire service photo shows a partisan boy. The caption read, "This 13-year old Russian lad, Misha N. is wagering bhis life against the Germans. As part of a band of Russian child gurrillas he has killed four NAZI soldiers at the time this portrait was made. It appeared in an American newspaper February 7, 1944. Notice the stick grenade. It was the Soviet RGD-33 anti-personnel fragmentation grenade showing an obvious German influence. The Soviets had both stick and non-stick grenade. The RGD-33 was complicated to use and manufacture. After the German invasion, the Soviets adopted the more effective RG-42 as their stadard infantry grenade. Partisans used, however, what ever they could lay their hands on.

The grenade is essebtially a small bomb. The term comes from the French word for 'pomegranate' because of the shape. Americans called it a 'pineapple' because of its serrated shell. There were several different kinds of grenades. The principal World War II hand grenade given to infantrymen was the fragmentation weapon which because of its compact size and light weight could be carried by the individual infantry soldier. Fragmentation are designed to produce casualties by high velocity projection of fragments produced by the shell of the grenade. The hand grenade is a fairly simple weapon. It has three components. The body contains filler and the shell provides the fragmentation material. The filler is composed of a chemical or explosive substance, which determines the type of hand grenade for employment factors. Thermite was the standard filler charge used during World War II. The fuze with aime delay is what causes the grenade to ignite by detonating the eplosive filler. The grenade has medieval origins, but was not perfected for equipping individual infantrymen in quantity until World War I. Development continued as the grenade was a major armament of World War II infantrymen. It was mostly used in close combat as its range was ordinanly limited to how far a man could throw it. This is a far shorter distance than the range of a rifle. Thus it could be dangerous to use. There were considerable differences as to the grnades used by different countries. The Germans continued to use a stick grenade as in World War I. The Americans probably becuse soldier were accustiomed to bthrowing baseballs used a more rounded oval shped grenade without a stick. The United States manufactured some 50 million fragmentation grenades which it provided to its soldiers an allies. The range of the grenade could be extended by launchers.

Created: 11:09 AM 1/29/2012
Last updated: 11:09 AM 1/29/2012