Today's harvest with the diggers in Boezinghe

[frans]

This part of the side wall which is about three meters deep shows very clearly what effect the explosion had on the ground.

[frans]

This grenade which is the one on a previous photo creates another puzzle. It clearly has a date of 19.11.1916. The other markings on the grenade is that you have 5.5 seconds time to throw the grenade.

The good condition of the grenade is because it was pushed into the clay.

[frans]

A peace of shell casing from a very heavy grenade found at the bottom of the pit.

Edited 31 July , 2005 by frans

[marina]

It is actually very chilling to see deadly shrapnel, weapons, and all the effects of the explosions and such. But fascinating too.

Marina

[Max Poilu]

Being a little anal and Angie999 will back me up but shrapnel is a very mis-used term. It only really applies to the shrapnel balls found inside a shrapnel shell. A large piece of shell case as above is just that (shell casing) or a shell shard.

 

 

[marina]

Thanks for the explanation, Giles. Learned something from you anyway- I always thought shrapnel was any bit of metal, including casing, that might fly from an explosion. Still, that bit of casing looks as if it might do considerable damage. It really gave me the shivers - it is meant to tear human flesh. It made me think how fragile people are.

Marina

[Max Poilu]

Absolutely Marina. It comes up all the time on the forum but it is in such common usage - so many WW2 era London children talk of collecting 'shrapnel' during the blitz for instance. As you say the effects of a large piece of shell casing travelling at hundreds of miles an hour and impacting on a human body do not bear thinking about.

[frans]

Being a little anal    and Angie999 will back me up but shrapnel is a very mis-used term.  It only really applies to the shrapnel balls found inside a shrapnel shell.  A large piece of shell case as above is just that (shell casing) or a shell shard.

http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/i...597&hl=shrapnel

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Giles thank you for pointing this out, I am too on a learning curve I will use the correct term in the future.

From a posting of Angie 999 I learned about the correct use of the term cartridge. I look and learn.

Kind regards Frans.

[Max Poilu]

Frans - thanks for taking my post in a friendly manner - some nice grenades you are pulling out there, that's my real interest. Those Newton Pippens are rare beasts indeed.

[marina]

OK, Giles! lIf you don't mind, can I pick your brains again? What's a Newton Pippen, why is it a rare beast, and in what way it is different from other grenades?

Marina

[Max Poilu]

Marina,

I am on hold this week so cannot show any pictures or scans but it was a basic and rather dangerous (in lack of effective safety) grenade made for a short period beginning in 1915 when there was a lack of grenades available and before the various Mills really killed off most other designs. The one found by Frans (post 265) is a hand thrown version - the other Pippen, the Pippen rifle grenade (No.22 in the numerical series) is quite common. Both were invented by a British officer Captain Newton who also designed the rather more sucessful Newton trench mortar.

Here is a period sketch of the rifle version. The head on the hand grenade was a similar shape but more rounded at the head.

[Max Poilu]

And here is a picture of a Besozzi as also found by Frans - another rare grenade and hard to find a decent one today. They were made for the Italian army but were also supplied to the French (and made In France IIRC) for a period. Made of two steel hemispheres screwed together with a basic match fuze. Painted in the correct blue as many French grenades were after 1915.

[Max Poilu]

And dissasembled:

[marina]

You've taken a fair bit of trouble here, Giles - thank you.

To my amateur eye, the Besozzi looks more 'modern' somehow than the rifle version. Was it the model for 'improved' future versions?

Reading the 'ingredients' of the rifle version - wax, paper, tin strip, high explosive - it hardly seems possible that it could cause so much damage. Quite terrifying really that these small neatly made objects were actually mayhem. Shudder!

Thanks again, Giles.

[frans]

I was sorting my photo's from July this morning and found this one which was taken at the end of the month. I did not realise when I took the picture that while the Diggers are taking a break in the 1915 trench that it must have been exactly 90 years that on the same spot very heavy fighting was going on here.

[marina]

Spooky!

Marina

[J T Gray]

To my amateur eye, the Besozzi looks more 'modern' somehow than the rifle version.  Was it the model for 'improved' future versions?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If I remember my "Weapons of the Trench War" right, the Besozzi only looks more modern in the sense if it's overall shape and the casing - I suspect modern hand grenades probably tend to have smooth casings as it was found that the corrugations had no effect at all on the fragmentation. Anyone out there know better?

The item that looks like a wick hung over the side of the grenade is just about that - a wick! It's a length of fuse cord which was ignited by striking it on a striker plate - much like the side of a matchbox - on a sort of glorified signet ring on the throwers other hand. You then presumably threw it while it was still fizzing and before it went BANG!

Grenades like this have one major potential problem - wet! The new British grenades introduced in 1915 (the No5 & No6? - book not to hand) *EDIT: No 15 - so sez Giles Poilu* failed dismally at Loos because they would not strike in the rain.

Adrian

[marina]

Thanks, Adrian - I see what Giles means by safety aspects from what you say - lighting that fuse and throwing while it fizzed seems dangerous to me! When did they get rid of the fuse so that they could throw in the rain? Was the rife greande any more efficient, do you know?

Marina

[Max Poilu]

As Adrian says the look is modern maybe but the effect and workings are not. The non-automatic lighting grenades such as the Besozzi (No.15 'Cricket Ball', Battye and various emergency patterns) were effectively made reduntant by the automatic Mills grenades. The No.15 was the grenade that failed at Loos in the wet. It had previously been used with some sucess in the dry campaign of Gallipoli. The equivilent of the Mills in France was the F1 series (copied and developed later by the US into the familiar 'Pineapple' style). The F1's had percussion lighters to begin followed by automatic lighters a la Mills. The Besozzi is not a dangerous grenade as such, the fuze cord has a phosporous head (like a big match) that as Adrian says was struck or more often lit from a Poilu's pipe.

The rifle Pippen is dangerous though, as was the hand thrown version. It has no time fuse as it is designed to explode on impact. The 'hat' you see above sits over a percussion cap with a tin safety strip inbetween, this strip is removed before launching but once this is done the grenade is not safe and an accidental knock to the hat will trigger the grenade...bang. Virtually all other rifle launched grenades were only armed automatically on leaving the rifle by the force of firing.

Most modern grenades are smaller and have a smooth body. The small charge of HE is surrounded by a long segmented wire wrapped round and round. As it explodes small fragements are sent out with lethal force.

For more on grenades have a search for 'grenade' - (See here - grenades) I don't want to clog up Frans's topic and many grenade types have been discussed on the forum.

[frans]

Giles you are not clogging up the topic, I find it very complementing to the finds we make.

Frans.

[J T Gray]

Giles you are not clogging up the topic, I find it very complementing to the finds we make.

Frans.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

OK, I'll add a few comments!

In post #262 in the picture there are three spherical grenades just to the left of top centre. I think these MIGHT be the aforesaid No15s that failed so dismally at Loos.

Next to the Newton Pippin on top of the heap in the centre are a pair of No1 or No2 grenades. These had a brass body, hence the different colour, with a cast-iron fragmentation ring and really were nasty in a trench environment. Having been designed pre-war they had a long cane handle rather like the German "potato masher" with a streamer attached to ensure they landed nose-down on their percussion fuse. The problem with this was that it was very easy to touch the back wall of the trench as you drew it back ready to throw - BANG! Of course prior to WW1 no thought had been given to the possibility of trench warfare...

In the absence of better grenades the solution adopted was to throw it like a dart - a big heavy dart! This seriously reduced the range to b*****-all and it would probably have been equally effective if trying to stop an attack with one to keep the pin in, wait for the German to leap into your trench and then belt him round the nut with it!

No doubt others who really KNOW can add more - this is just what I recall from Anthony Saunders' book.

Adrian

[marina]

Thanks to Giles, Frans (glad you don't mind!), and Adrian.

Had a look at the suspected No 15's, Adrian. Also tried to imagine the 'dart throwing' and I just KNOW I'd have hit the back of the trench. I find it a truly scary thought that there could be danger from your own actions,as well as from the other side. But that was a feature of this war, wasn't it? Developing new weapons or modifying old ones to suit the particulars of trench warfare. I suppose it also explains the boring repetitive training the men had to undergo to try and minimise the risks of clumsiness and carelessness. Sorry, I'm rambling a bit - just some thoughts in an effort to understand the effects these weapons would have apart from the obvious.

Marina

[Max Poilu]

Ok, grenade discussion it is!

Adrian,

Interesting comments, the three spherical grenades look like French M1914 'Ball' grenades I think rather than No.15's. These were the standard French grenades at the outbreak of the war and (in design) dated back to the 19th century. The brass fuse holder can be seen which marks them out as such. The two grenades to the right of the Pippen are Hales No.2s, could be hand thrown or rifle launched (sometimes referred to as 'Mexican' pattern). As you say quite dangerous in a trench due to the percussion ignition. I must say I have never heard of them launched like 'darts'. They usually required a certain trajectory and height to ensure a sucessful landing and ignition. Interestingly Marten Hale trialled these very same grenades to the Germans in 1911 at the Spandau testing ground (I am lucky enough to own his personal photo album of this trial! Picture below). Some research suggests these trials were part of deliberations by the German Army Commission to study the use of grenades following their employment in the Russo-Japanese War.

Trench warfare did infact exist long before the Great War but never in such a static, long-lived and wide reaching manner. Certainly it was recorded in the American Civil War but it's real impact was during the Russo-Japanese war when many lessons were learned by the European observers not least a resurgent interest in grenades and their effectiveness as above.

There was a recent discussion on the term 'Grenadiers' - I have copied and pasted my comments from there as am too lazy to type it again:

Just a bit more background info. The term 'grenade' itself is now generally agreed to be a derivation of the Spanish word for a pomegranate fruit to which early grenades resembled. History describes the use of grenades from the 16th century but simpler non-explosive projectiles were used from earlier times containing flammable materials or even poison.

The first grenades in general use were incredibly similar to the French ball grenade (the main service grenade in the French army at the start of the Great War) basically an iron sphere, filled with black powder and a simple length of fuze.

'Grenadiers' themselves were first introduced into the French army in 1667 with four highly trained men per company. The British introduced a grenade company per regiment in 1684. The grenades then were poorly manufactured and required skill and great courage in use. The grenade throwers would typically lead the attack - Grenadiers were the bravest, strongest soldiers hand picked and well trained and the reputation that goes with their name obviously remains to this day.

It was following the battle of Waterloo that the flaming badge was introduced when the victorious First Regiment of Foot Guards became the Grenadier Guards.

The use of grenades in anything other than siege warfare really died out in the 17th century with the improvenments in musketry. It's renaissance came in the Russo-Japanese war and of course in the entrenched Great War the grenade really became the infantryman's principal weapon above the rifle.

[PhilB]

Being a little anal    and Angie999 will back me up but shrapnel is a very mis-used term.  It only really applies to the shrapnel balls found inside a shrapnel shell.  A large piece of shell case as above is just that (shell casing) or a shell shard.

http://1914-1918.invisionzone.com/forums/i...597&hl=shrapnel

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Whilst you are technically correct, Giles (& the difference bugs me too!), I`m afraid the New Oxford Dictionary of English defines shrapnel as "fragments of a bomb, shell or other object thrown out by an explosion". I have a dictionary from the 1920s that defines it as "bullets enclosed in a shell with a small charge for bursting in front of the enemy and spreading in a shower". So it looks like the definition has changed somewhat and we`ll have to let Marina get away with it!

Phil B

[marina]

Whilst you are technically correct, Giles (& the difference bugs me too!), I`m afraid the New Oxford Dictionary of English defines shrapnel as "fragments of a bomb, shell or other object thrown out by an explosion". I have a dictionary from the 1920s that defines it as "bullets enclosed in a shell with a small charge for bursting in front of the enemy and spreading in a shower". So it looks like the definition has changed somewhat and we`ll have to let Marina get away with it!

                                                                    Phil B

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

In futue, if I'm talking about the Great War, it's Giles's definition. In later periods, it's Phil's!

Marina