Identifying Type of Minenwerfer

[veriste]

All,

I would really appreciate help narrowing down the type of ordnance used to injure some infantry members in an old French medical thesis I found. I am a PhD student researching shell shock, and I would really like to include these cases in my study but can't unless I can narrow down the charge types so that I can make a reasonable estimate of the blast strength.

The words consistently used in the thesis are "crapouillot" and "torpille," which both seem to refer to German Minenwerfer shells. Based on the injury dates (April-October 1915), it seems reasonable that these men were hit with either the 25 cm or 17 cm versions, but I don't have any leads on how to narrow it down further by shell type. The details on the cases that I have pieced together so far:

- April 28: charge type was a crapouillot, patient was a member of the 113th infantry (all cases French)

- April 18: crapouillot, 89th infantry

- June 18: crapouillot, 141st infantry

- June 22: crapouillot, 91st infantry

- May 21: crapouillot, service info unknown

- Nov 4: crapouillot, 31st infantry

- May 11: crapouillot, 5th colonial infantry

- May 8: crapouillot, 6th colonial infantry

- May 16: crapouillot, 46th infantry

- June 26: crapouillot, 131st infantry

- July 21: crapouillot, 76th infantry

- July 12: torpille, 131st infantry

- July 3: crapouillot, 4th infantry

- Sept 28: shell, unknown weight, 4th infantry

- Oct 22: crapouillot, 113th infantry

- Oct 12: torpille, 31st infantry

I am also trying to find a French-language forum to ask the same question, but my French is very choppy and the people on this forum were incredibly helpful in helping me find an old ship identification a few months ago. Again, any help or direction is appreciated!

[centurion]

These are generic French categories and mean little toad - a nickname for a couple of small French trench mortars and an (aerial) torpedo rather larger trench mortar type missiles. The rounds probably came from a light minenwerfer and a medium or heavy one respectively. The Germans had a lot of different models of trench mortar and if you were on the receiving end it would be impossible to tell which model but you might have some idea as to its size.

[veriste]

I have been working more and discovered that all the infantries listed would have been fighting in the Argonne at the dates of the casualties. The exact battles varied somewhat, but by far the most common were La Bolante (aka Bois de Bolante) and Courte-Chausses. Does this help? I would love a resource telling me when/where the artillery types were used so I can compare to these battles.

[centurion]

Unfortunately the German use of trench mortars was so wide spread and there were so many types that it doesn't help.By !918 the German Army had some 12,329 light MW 2,361 Medium MW and 1,234 heavy MW in service (and an unknown number of super heavy MW) and there were about 15 'regular' (manufactured in factories or in German Army workshops) types plus all sorts of things improvised by front line soldiers. At the time that you give the German army was using many such improvised trench mortars.to supplement the standard light, medium and heavy designs, Herbert Jäger makes the point in German Artillery of WW1 that almost any manufacturing organisation who could design one did.

However Aerial Torpedoes to the French usually meant fin stabilised missiles. These were called by the Germans Flügenminenwerfer and again there were a number of designs