WW1 No36 Mills

[Millsman]

Tom

Thanks for the photo which perhaps confirms 1940's production before 1944. I'm sorry I've not yet travelled to Isreal to dig out the history of this grenade but I do have a life!

Mike,

The production figures quoted in the Isreali document Tom and I have referred to are 53,000 Mills grenades produced between 1944 and 1947 with a total production of 150,000 in the same period. From this I concede that there were other grenade types in production.

Can we now put this to bed? These grenades were produced from the mid 1940's and not in the 1950's. They were probably still used in the 1950's as training (throwing practice) grenades, but had probably been too labour intensive to produce on an ongoing basis, when simpler grenades were available.

John

 

[sgtlynn]

Sorry, I'm still not convinced that all the Isreali Mills were produced in the 1940's in underground factories. I do not dispute the fact that they produced 150 K in that period but nothing says they didn't continue to make them after that. It also seems there are an awful lot of them around when total production was supposedly only 150 K. It seems reasonable that they would continue to make grenades that they knew and were trained to use rather that converting over to something else immediately after formation of the State of Israel.

 

[Snufkin]

Although one book on the history of Israel makes mention of 150,000 "mills" grenades made by Haganah in 1947-8, it doesn't mean they were Mills grenades or copies thereof. The term Mills (along with US Mk2) has often been used generically, and erroneously, to describe any cast iron, externally segmented grenade. Keeping a totally open mind in the absence of hard evidence, it is quite possible the 150,000 were of the home-made type shown in the photos of post #32 of this thread, and were conveniently described as Mills grenades in the absence of any other obvious designation.

One of the few facts that has appeared in this protracted discussion is the extract from a 1971 manual, where limited translation of some of the words confirms the diagram as being of Grenade, Hand, No.4. Interesting how these pages in post #30 can be selectively ignored.




Tom.