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WW1 Message Rifle Grenade?

E

EnfieldMills

Well-Known Member
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Afternoon All,

I bought this from a private collection at the beginning of the year (someone who has been selling his WW1 collection after years of collecting). Its appears to be a Rifle grenade version of the message rocket.

I have asked various people about this and no one ever ever heard of a rifle grenade variant.

I have taken pictures from all sides. The bases section appears to be filled with some hard slag kind of material (picture 5).

Rod is 17 inches with a little band on the base (picture 6).

What do you all think?

Luke
 
It's certainly the whistle from the top of a message rocket but I'm not sure they would have produced a device where it was only a push fit on the top of the body like your one but who knows ? I've never seen any British rod with an end like that . Can you measure the diameter & post it here ? Thanks for showing us an intriguing item .
 
siegfreid said:
It's certainly the whistle from the top of a message rocket but I'm not sure they would have produced a device where it was only a push fit on the top of the body like your one but who knows ? I've never seen any British rod with an end like that . Can you measure the diameter & post it here ? Thanks for showing us an intriguing item .
Click to expand...

7mm for the rod. 7.6mm for the band at the base of the rod
 
kiwieod said:
shouldnt it have some colored canvas streamers so you can find it in the mud
Click to expand...

Possibly, though it may have cut the range by quite a bit. The rocket version has a smoke generating composition in the rod to show where it landed.
 
The link I posted in post #9 is not the whole story.

I found that there were two versions of the Geake rocket.

The first version was the Geake Cable thrower which carried a telephone wire up to 350 yards. This was very useful as telephone cables were regularly cut by artillery fire. In 1917 there was already a message rocket called the 'Wynne pattern'. It could carry a message 2500 yards and was accurate to within 200-300 yards. This was in service in early 1918 and the Geake message rocket and the Geake Cable thrower were introduced afterwards. The Germans actually copied the Geake rockets but made them heavier and better built (of course).

A later version of the Geake message carrier was fitted with a standard 2 1/2" gas check and was fired from the Burn Cup Discharger from the standard service rifle.
 
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