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Discharger Handheld One Shot Practice L1A1

P

Petrock

Member
Hello all,

We found one of these and it appears to be a 40mm ish launcher for some kind of grenade. Supposedly it is British in origin, but I can't find anything on the Net other than one for sale in the UK.

The NSN on it is:

1330-12-373-1044

And is marked Discharger Hand Held One Shot Practice L1A1.

Can anyone tell me what this thing is and what it does/is used for?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Petrock
 
It looks like one of those single shot German flame thrower things, going by the grip and trigger. Is this British? I thought we weren't allowed to use flame thrower type things, or am I completely wrong and this is something completely different?
 
With a name like "Discharger" wouldn't it be more likely to be - in it's live configuration - something like an RCA device?
 
This is what I got off of the Probert Encyclopedia page. Researching the NSN, and with a country code of "12", it is indeed made in Germany as smle2009 stated. Cheers, Bruce.

L1A1 Grenade Discharger.jpg


"The L1A1 Grenade Discharger is a British light weight, single-shot, muzzle loading, shoulder fired grenade launcher designed for 66 mm diameter grenades. The L1A1 Grenade Discharger has a range of 100 metres and is operated by two U2 batteries."
 
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As we mentioned on another thread the 12 is not the maker but the one who got firstly assigned a NSN to the item.

This one here is a launcher related to the Buck Handflammpatrone. Have never seen this version, in particular not in German service. The original 2 designs got phased out from German service long ago.
Would be interesting to see more about this one.
 
Petrock said:
The stock class of the NSN, marked directly on the item, is for Grenades.
Click to expand...

By RCA I am referring to the fill - Riot Control Agent - be it grenade, artillery, etc. Often times tear gas munitions are referred to as "dischargers", as a description of action (discharging the agent), not specifically the munition.
 
Like somebody already stated here that the handle portion belongs on the "Hafla 35mm Hand held flame grenade" This one though was meant to fire a WP mass. It still appears to me to be all German on the one being shown here. Not much else to give here unless you want the specs to the WP launcher?
 
If the discharger has the same markings as the one ammocat provided a link to,it was indeed manufactured in England as it is marked PSH (something to do with Pains Wessex?) they also make the current issue L12A2 hand held para flare,but as EOD mentioned the 12 in the NSN refers to original country,Germany, that this NSN was assigned to,the L1A1 marking proves it is of British use.
I would think this is a hand held practice version that eliminates the use of the grenade discharger, that bacarnal kindly provided a photo/info on,while on 'dry' training areas.

Tony
 
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