Anarchist Bomb?

[BLUEHAWK]

:cd:

I saw an editorial cartoonist today on CSPAN showing one of his cartoons for the Baltimore Sun newspaper, part of the image was one of those stereoptypical black spherical "bombs" with a fuse coming out of it fizzling like, I guess, a firecracker fuse.

Those things appear all throughout the 20th century in cartooons, I think mainly to represent anarchist bombs, whatever that means or meant at one time.

Was there ever such a device as that, actually? If so, when and what was it made of, how big was it really? How did that whole image get started, in other words?

[revwardoc]

The cartoons represent original hand grenades which were somewhat larger than a softball but smaller than a cantelope melon.It was made of iron and filled with black powder. The military term, grenadier, comes from the days when armies took the largest, strongest men, gave them a haversack full of grenades, put a brass-plated, smoldering linstockholder on their cartouche pouch strapsand had them march up to enemy breastworks. They would then, under a series of commands, pull out a grenade, apply the fuse to the smoldering linstock, then hurl it over the breastworks. It was quickly learned that the average lifespan in battle for a grenadier was roughly 30 seconds, so the grenade became a more defensive weapon to be thrown at an approaching enemy or dropped from a battlement. It had sort of a cowardly implication in that a relatively untrained man could kill or maim several of the enemy with just one grenade as opposed to fighting in a more manly hand-to-hand style. This same thinking made the Catholic Church attempt to ban crossbows from European battlefields because a commoner armed with one could easily kill an armored knight. Of course the Church was also hurt financially by the deaths of so many wealthy knights by the average poor workingvassal who was ordered into the army by his prince, duke, earl, etc.

So what it amounts to is that the cartoon anarchist, representing the forces of evil, uses a coward's weapon that can "spray" death onto innocent victims (women and children) as opposed to the uniformed enemy soldier who at least identifies himself rather than hide behind a black cloak and hat.

[BLUEHAWK]

Thanks Dan -

So, I take it those devices came into use during the 17th & 18th centuries, roughly? Or was it much earlier than that...

And, now I understand where the term "grenadier" came from, and why the "anarchist" bomb is depicted as it is.

[revwardoc]

To tell you the truth, Bluehawk, I'm not exactly sure when hand grenades started but it was more than likely attempted in the 15th century when they started using simple hand held iron pipes to propel a projectile with powder. I would assume that the explosive power of a tightly contained quantity of gunpowder was discovered by accident and was duely noted by the survivors who finally figured a way to harness that power in a more productive (or destructive) manner.

The term "mortar" comes from the old mortar and pestle used by apothocaries to grind dried herbs into powder. The first cannons were cast using that idea but were used in a similar manner to catapults, simply throwing a large stone onto or over enemy battlements. The early cannons (mortars) were about as accurate as catapults but were psychologically more effective since they produced the loud report and great quantities of smoke and fire.

[BLUEHAWK]

Dan -
I saw an old (I think) U.S. hand grenade yesterday on display at my American Legion Post, practically every Post I've ever visited has at least one for people to look at.

It was one with that grid shell... Carol and I just looked at it, trying to imagine what the effect would be when those little squares explode into high velocity tiny pieces.

I wasn't in the infantry, and the USAF doesn't show recruits anything resembling a grenade. But, I can guess that infantry, of any era, would regard the weapon as being very useful.

Is that grid type the one our guys are using today? Or, do they even have grenades?

[revwardoc]

Bluehawk,
You're gonna have to wait for a "dogface" or a "jarhead" to tell you about contemporary grenades. Like you, I only received rudimentary training on an M-16 twice a year and nothing with explosives, except what I bought at the local fireworks stands on the 4th of July. And after a couple of "too-damned-close-for-comfort" incidents with those babies I've decided to leave the explosives for combat engineers! Except of course for my musket.

[colmurph]

Grenades arose during the end of the 14th century. They were a spherical iron ball filled with blackpowder and set off by a fuse being lit by a match (smoking piece of nitrated rope that smouldered, similar to the match used in a "Match Lock") The shape pretty much stayed the same until the end of the Civil War. The size "Bomb" depicted in anacharist cartoons is the size that was used in Coehorn Mortars of the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. The "Bomb" was placed in the Mortar with the fuse pointing outward and lit then the mortar being fired. Somewhere along the line someone either got killed by one of the bombs detonating prematurely in the mortar or a mortar was fired before the fuze was lit and they discovered that the blowby gasses would light the fuse as it was fired. At any rate, during the Civil War, the "Bombs" were loaded into the mortar with the fuse facing forward and then the mortar was just fired. The fuse would be lit by the hot gasses escaping around the projectile and after a pre-determined time (this is where the term to "Cut a fuse" comes from) the bomb would explode. If you look at the "New Toy" thread, it will show you one of these Mortars.

[BLUEHAWK]

Thanks Murph -

Does the infantry today still use those grid-shell type grenades?

[sfga6970]

The contemporary grenade does not have the grid shape. It is smooth on the outside but has wire laced within the explosive charge giving it a more symmetrical killing radius. The older "pineapple" grenades were a little less effective. Since explosive force is released to the weakest point, as in a shaped charge, the old grenades could send all their shrapnel in one direction. The newer ones are more effective.

[BLUEHAWK]

sfga-
Thanks - I'm so curious about those because we never trained on anything of the kind...I'm still not real clear why the AF bothered to even show us the M-1 in those days. Now I can see why for the way things are set up, but not back then.

So, both kinds fragment, but the new ones fragment better, maybe (it sounds like) because somehow the wire inside kind of momentarily holds the shape of the grenade, long enough to distribute the explosion 360 degrees, or something like that?

Are those new smooth grenades used also on rifles still, or is there a different kind? And how in the world does a rifle shoot a grenade out from it? In old films it looks like there was some kind of a charge inside the barrel. But, I cannot reason out how the charge would not explode the grenade when it blew it out of the barrel... does the rifle grenade (if there even is such a thing anymore) have a back-end like a bullet has, where some kind of a pin hits on it? I have all sorts of questions about the grenade now that people have actually been answering them, probably best not to ask too many really.

It's just that I've never been routinely around firearms. In service I was on cargo aircraft in a Training Command, so rarely ever saw weapons or even fighters.