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Hello,
I send you this 3 pics which are unusual grenades. The third seem to be the DEWANDER'S dvelopement of the original Belgium that inspired the mills, but the others are unknow for me. Could you help me?
Best regards
Delhomme refers to these in his book on British grenades. I don't have it to hand but I think he labelled them as 'unknown' or experimental.
The 'gas checks' would suggest 1916 earliest (French).
In fact they at least one is the subject of British Patents 141741 to 141742 in the names of Dewandre and Lamine 15th June 1916. By this time they are more akin to the Mills than the Roland but national interests might disagree.
I'd suggest that they are all from the same stable.
Hello,
I send you this 3 pics which are unusual grenades. The third seem to be the DEWANDER'S dvelopement of the original Belgium that inspired the mills, but the others are unknow for me. Could you help me?
Best regards
The third definitely appears to be Dewandre's development model of 1916. It certainly seems to be marked BMM (Compagnie Belge des Munitions Militaires), of which Dewandre was managing director.
Is the lever made of metal, or a type of plastic? Looks metal, but just in case it might not be...
hi,
Effectively, in France, we think they could be french experimental grenades, but not sure! On the third grenade, there is a label : "allumeur automatique" without any name, sorry! I send you a drawing of the second grenade.
B.regards
Dewandre was an engineer and I think he was a Belgian national so perhaps we should say that the grenades are Belgian. But he likely did the work in France or the UK (he was living in London in 1915)....
Mills and Dewandre took out a provisional Patent together in February 1915 but they fell out soon afterwards (I think Mills saw no reason to share ideas with him) and the Patent 1776 of 1915 was taken no further.
I thought it was interesting that Dewandre stayed in the field of grenade inventing. His 1916 design is pretty neat with internal segmentation but as far as I am aware it was not tested by the British agencies (MID, MDC, WO, etc). Someone whould do a proper research job on him.
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