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No 44 Anti Tank Grenade
- Thread starter siegfreid
- Start date
Tony . That one was damaged when I got it . Looked like it might have been run over or something . We had to melt all the solder to get it apart & then panel beat the body back into shape . Came up quite well .
John . They're actually made from 24 Mk II parts except for the needle pellet which is a No 35 with a wooden dowel spacer . I suppose they had loads of spare parts left over from the 24's & they used them when the 44 was being developed . There must be a reason they used the 35 pellet but I don't know what it was . Perhaps Norman has something on it . Mike
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John . I don't know who made them apart from RL . It's said they would have had a makers mark stamped into the top but I've never seen one with any stamped marks . That's not to say they didn't exist , of course ! Mike .
Thanks Tony . It was a very tough job . The steel they are made from is very heavy guage & difficult to work .
I don't believe that a 'Mark II' was designed but I will check with some notes I made years ago. Formally only the Mark I was introduced into service but it was a version 2. The first version of the No 44 Grenade did not have a fabric tail and you can tell an early No 44 by the fact that the base plug does not have a groove (which on the production versions was used to 'wire-on' the fabric tail). Before you start looking at your plentiful examples only one of the early tail-less No 44s is known to exist in the UK.
The No 46 could have started life as a 44 Mark II but the significant operational difference must have necessitated an advance in Number rather than just Mark.
Hope some that makes sense.
I have just checked my notes and there is no formal use of 'Mark II'. Interestingly it seems that the Tank Corps called for an anti-tank grenade to be produced because they were worried that the Germans would use tanks in their 1918 offensive, of course by this time the Germans had more British tanks than we did because the Tank Corps kept giving them away!
The Experimental Section in France worked up a configuration for the anti-tank grenade using a tin mounted with a Hales mechanism on a rod. The body of the grenade collapsed on impact so they produced a very substantial container (as Mike observed). They may have been so very close to producing a HESH warhead if they had let the collapsing container do its stuff. The addition of a fabric tail was to stop the 'wobble' (observed for the first 20 feet of travel) which was prevalent in the early grenades. The requirement was for half a million grenades but only 98,000 were made by the end of the war. No idea who made them.
By introducing cast TNT in lieu of Amatol or Ammonal a very much greater blast effect was achieved and this gave rise to the No 46 Grenade. I suspect the poor infanteer given the task of firing a large chunk of explosive at a tank 20 feet away would be less enthusiastic about the contraption.
The Experimental Section in France worked up a configuration for the anti-tank grenade using a tin mounted with a Hales mechanism on a rod. The body of the grenade collapsed on impact so they produced a very substantial container (as Mike observed). They may have been so very close to producing a HESH warhead if they had let the collapsing container do its stuff. The addition of a fabric tail was to stop the 'wobble' (observed for the first 20 feet of travel) which was prevalent in the early grenades. The requirement was for half a million grenades but only 98,000 were made by the end of the war. No idea who made them.
By introducing cast TNT in lieu of Amatol or Ammonal a very much greater blast effect was achieved and this gave rise to the No 46 Grenade. I suspect the poor infanteer given the task of firing a large chunk of explosive at a tank 20 feet away would be less enthusiastic about the contraption.
Sloppy original description ! Apologies it should have been version two rather than Mk II . Here are pics of the first version without the groove , second version showing the canvas drogue in place & then another example with the drogue removed . Last picture is a close up of the first & third ones