Ring Airfoil Grenades

[HAZORD]

I have attached some photos of three ring airfoil grenades. They are approximately 60mm in diameter. The grenade design, is to take an airfoil shape (airplane wing), and wrap it around on itself to make a circle. They are fired horizontally from a launcher, and are supposed to have a very flat trajectory.

The first is a dummy made from metal and plastic. The other two are designed to carry CS powder. Their bodies are made from a flexible rubber, and have pockets all around the outside to carry the CS powder. The pockets can be seen in the unlabeled one, as shadows under the tape.

There were supposed to be HE versions, but I have never seen one.

If anyone has more info, I would greatly appreciate them sharing.

John

 

[proditto]

Ring Airfoil

The ring concept was designed and patented by Abe Flateu a very talented designer.
These examples work on the principle of the ring altering its angle of attack (increasing lift) as the velocity decays. They worked very well. There was indeed an HE version but it suffered from the problem of providing an efficient fuse system. Incidentally one version used a special 5.56 blank.
Another version of the ring uses another feature of the ring is the STUP. This was used as an A/T training round. The hole in the ring was designed to allow air flow at high velocities but choke at lower one and thus provide a massive increase in drag This reduced the required safety range.
Abe's work included cannon ammunition (the tube had very good terminal ballistics on aircraft) and even small arms.