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Swiss rifle grenades

good tip - been watching the vids. I want an inert one for the collection now :) never seen any examples on the collectors market though...
 
Thanks for posting the link to that great video. I doubt anyone alive knows more about the history and technical details of Swiss rifle grenades than the guy in the videos. An amazingly in-depth presentation.

While the grenades are very scarce in the U.S., I was lucky about 25 years ago to connect with a Swiss rifle collector in Seattle with great contacts in Switzerland. He supplied me with the orange "carrot" practice grenade and beautiful inert samples of the tactical types. Of course, I had no idea there were 12 or 15 other variations of the practice grenade, as noted in the second video linked from the first. The earliest Swiss practice grenade on the far left was a recent find at the St. Louis Cartridge show last year.

I thought it might be fun to add a WWII U.S M9A1 HEAT grenade to the photo to help illustrate just how huge the Swiss grenades are. And watching the videos, you can also see how heavy the recoil forces are when launched. They really cannot be much fun to shoot.

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nice collection there - jealous! am looking to collect some Swiss army gear (just got unissued M70 load bearing parka and backpack) so would be great to find some of these (the rifle grens were carried in the side pockets of backpack I got)... don't suppose anyone knows of a Swiss militaria/surplus store online?
 
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