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Mills, Time Fuzed
- Thread starter Bonnex
- Start date
John,
It was basically an experimental design late 1917 by the Munitions Inventions Department to give the infanteers a grenade with a variable time fuze. The thought being that the new cup discharger would require the Mills grenade to have a number igniter sets with different timings. The 121 fuze (which was modified for the trials -don't know how) was selected presumably because of the 'ease of setting'. The idea was not taken up as we know. A thousand igniters for the Mills would have cost about 9 10 shillings and, although I cannot find the cost of a 121 fuze I guess you didn't get many for a tenner - not that this had anything to do with the decision! The problem of fiddling with a delicate fuze, in the mud with frozen fingers, just to get 7 seconds of delay should have influenced the result.
One was found on an EOD task in the late 1980's.
The photograph is of a mock-up (made just to produce a photograph for an ID guide) and is likely wrong on some minor details.
[Tom, I took your advice - it was a 1 1/16 x 16 in the absence of a 1.046 - obliged]
Norman,
The obvious question then - what would the insides have comprised? A modified centre piece but without the det sleeve and its hole in the bottom cup section? Thereby an axial detonator, which would have rectified the Mills issue of the off axis detonator?
Tom.
The obvious question then - what would the insides have comprised? A modified centre piece but without the det sleeve and its hole in the bottom cup section? Thereby an axial detonator, which would have rectified the Mills issue of the off axis detonator?
Tom.
pointblank0
BOCN Supporter
A very good point. Maybe solve the uneven and partial fragmentation issues
Tom,
Yes what indeed? Unfortunately I did not get the chance to physically examine the EOD find and in any case it would not have been allowed to give up its internal secrets prior to disposal. As you say it would have had some sort of centre-piece to seal the filling and the fuze would most certainly have screwed into this mating with a central det cavity below. The det cavity could have been designed to be accessible from either the base or the fuze end (or both). Alternatively some sort of gaine the full diameter of the fuze could have been used.
Having said this I am not sure if the trials of this grenade used HE filled bodies; quite a number of MID grenade experiments were conducted with 'live' fuzes and weighted bodies.
As you know 1917/18 was an interesting period for grenade experimentation. A fair amount of work was done on 'allways' fuzed grenades, and bullet-through and rebounding grenades were trialled. The MID devised a grenade gun to be fitted to the back of aircraft to surprise 'The Hun' (used a large version of the No 34 Grenade called a No 48 ( later reallocated)).Etc etc. All of the MID detailed documentation disappeared in 1926 so information on these experimental patterns, including the Mills-121 Fuzed model is essentially lost - unless someone knows otherwise!