Some observation on a couple of No5 Mills. I document this stuff for my own records but might as well share it with the members as it might mean something to somebody and then they could share their findings here too. The Mills on the left ,with the pink filling band, came out of France and appears to be all original (as put together during the war components). It has a concave lever, brass filler plug, steel pin, unvented striker, and the cup type base plug marked; No.5. I. 5/16 and with the unattributed manufacturer marking of what looks to be a J I intertwined logo with LTD after that. Where the lever rests along the back of the body it is debossed verticaly on the 2 middle segments; L F. I'd always assumed this was a manufacturer's mark. Then I get the Mills on the right, which appears to have been together forever, (but possibly never filled), it has a pierced lever, aluminum filler plug, brass pin, vented striker and an aluminum plug marked: No5.1 / S.B.&CO (Seimens Bros) / 1916. Cast into the body the same way as the first but this time with the initials; Z F. Any ideas of what these marking might represent? The only other difference between the 2 is that the body of the LF has been finished better with the casting marks ground off smooth and the casting seams in the segment grooves ground away to leave nice sharp edges. The ZF is left more as it came out of the mold.
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No5 Mills Notes
- Thread starter FNG61
- Start date
gothica7
Well-Known Member
Hi there,
i reccon the larger letters on your Mills grens are just casting letters/marks or mold numbers. Quite a few of my no 5s have them, very few with makers marks.
As to the levers, the earliest is the slab sided one, known as a channeled lever and this was produced for the very earliest grens only, in fact they were discontinued from August 1915, being expensive to produce and having a major design fault which in some cases caused the 'bomber' to be unable to pull the pin.
It is very difficult to say what or which lever went with what gren as so many were made and i suppose the only way is to either have one thats been dug with all its components intact or just hope thats the case. Nice grens by the way.
Andy
i reccon the larger letters on your Mills grens are just casting letters/marks or mold numbers. Quite a few of my no 5s have them, very few with makers marks.
As to the levers, the earliest is the slab sided one, known as a channeled lever and this was produced for the very earliest grens only, in fact they were discontinued from August 1915, being expensive to produce and having a major design fault which in some cases caused the 'bomber' to be unable to pull the pin.
It is very difficult to say what or which lever went with what gren as so many were made and i suppose the only way is to either have one thats been dug with all its components intact or just hope thats the case. Nice grens by the way.
Andy
Last edited:
]Hi there,
i reccon the larger letters on your Mills grens are just casting letters/marks or mold numbers. Quite a few of my no 5s have them, very few with makers marks.
Hey Andy. The letters we see cast into the early Mills bodies may just be casting numbers but they may also be manufacturer's markings. As far as i know nobody has undertaken a study of them. As most early bodies are unmarked it is not such a huge undertaking to make note of the ones that are. The grenade collecting hobby is a relativley new one and pioneer works like Delhommes have helped identify the various marks of the Mills. Later collectors have helped to attribute the various maker marked base plugs of which there a few left left to be identified and probably a few left to be discovered as well. The last frontier in the collecting of WW1 Mills bombs is to try and match up casting marks with manufacturers or to prove that they are in fact nothing but manufacturer marks. Its easier to make a casting without a mark than with one and the war office may have specified that grenade bodies must have identifying marks (like the 36s would subsequently have). With the internet and this website, the time is ripe to start documenting the different Mills body marks. Dont you want to know where the bodies came from and to match up the right components? Ive got a few notes, not enough to make any certain declarations but if enough collectors report what they have seen around then we can start to come to some conclusions. Have to start somewhere. And on the 2 Mills pictured in the first post, those casting marks are remarkably familiar looking in that the French Foug Citron grenades often have large deep letters cast into them. Maybe they are some of the French contract bodies?
As to the levers, the earliest is the slab sided one, known as a channeled lever and this was produced for the very earliest grens only, in fact they were discontinued from August 1915, being expensive to produce and having a major design fault which in some cases caused the 'bomber' to be unable to pull the pin.
"Channeled lever", I like that, is that your word or a war office one? Id picked up the term "pierced" from Siegfried's Ebay listings. Do you mean "1916" when you say they were discontinued? I know of no 1915 Mills with the channeled lever and see them up into the middle of 1916 on the No23s. Never seen anything written for certain but it seems like smooth levers start to show up early 1916. There's that Aug 3 1916 instruction on launching the No23s warning that "care must be taken when firing bombs with the smooth levers to insure that the lever is secure on the bayonet" (pretty sober advice), the inferance being that channeled levers where still expected to be encountered.
It is very difficult to say what or which lever went with what gren as so many were made and i suppose the only way is to either have one thats been dug with all its components intact or just hope thats the case.
Andy[/quote]
Yeah, battlefield recovered relics are pretty hard to argue with. Unless the deactivating crew has been throwing all the parts into a box for reassembly and sale later. BFN Rob
i reccon the larger letters on your Mills grens are just casting letters/marks or mold numbers. Quite a few of my no 5s have them, very few with makers marks.
Hey Andy. The letters we see cast into the early Mills bodies may just be casting numbers but they may also be manufacturer's markings. As far as i know nobody has undertaken a study of them. As most early bodies are unmarked it is not such a huge undertaking to make note of the ones that are. The grenade collecting hobby is a relativley new one and pioneer works like Delhommes have helped identify the various marks of the Mills. Later collectors have helped to attribute the various maker marked base plugs of which there a few left left to be identified and probably a few left to be discovered as well. The last frontier in the collecting of WW1 Mills bombs is to try and match up casting marks with manufacturers or to prove that they are in fact nothing but manufacturer marks. Its easier to make a casting without a mark than with one and the war office may have specified that grenade bodies must have identifying marks (like the 36s would subsequently have). With the internet and this website, the time is ripe to start documenting the different Mills body marks. Dont you want to know where the bodies came from and to match up the right components? Ive got a few notes, not enough to make any certain declarations but if enough collectors report what they have seen around then we can start to come to some conclusions. Have to start somewhere. And on the 2 Mills pictured in the first post, those casting marks are remarkably familiar looking in that the French Foug Citron grenades often have large deep letters cast into them. Maybe they are some of the French contract bodies?
As to the levers, the earliest is the slab sided one, known as a channeled lever and this was produced for the very earliest grens only, in fact they were discontinued from August 1915, being expensive to produce and having a major design fault which in some cases caused the 'bomber' to be unable to pull the pin.
"Channeled lever", I like that, is that your word or a war office one? Id picked up the term "pierced" from Siegfried's Ebay listings. Do you mean "1916" when you say they were discontinued? I know of no 1915 Mills with the channeled lever and see them up into the middle of 1916 on the No23s. Never seen anything written for certain but it seems like smooth levers start to show up early 1916. There's that Aug 3 1916 instruction on launching the No23s warning that "care must be taken when firing bombs with the smooth levers to insure that the lever is secure on the bayonet" (pretty sober advice), the inferance being that channeled levers where still expected to be encountered.
It is very difficult to say what or which lever went with what gren as so many were made and i suppose the only way is to either have one thats been dug with all its components intact or just hope thats the case.
Andy[/quote]
Yeah, battlefield recovered relics are pretty hard to argue with. Unless the deactivating crew has been throwing all the parts into a box for reassembly and sale later. BFN Rob
gothica7
Well-Known Member
Hi Buddy,
the term 'channelled' lever is in fact the official term for the lever, not my own and it was the first type of lever produced and because of the reasons i gave you it was discontinued from August 1915 thereafter a flat lever was used. Of course they would have used all the remaining stocks up as they did when changing from the no 5 to the 23. In fact many thousands if not millions of no 5 bodies were changed to 23/1s by just changing the base plug.
Looking at my info here, there was no requirement to mark no 5 bodies with any details, these were only to be placed on the base plug which of course may not have been made by the same maker. I have only seen a no 5 body[i assume its a no 5, could have been a 23] marked CAV, C. A. Vandervell, Acton Vale, many with casting or foundry marks. I have a document here dated 15 Nov 1917 for the 23/2 that the contractors initials or trade mark to be imprinted on the cast or malleable iron base plug and also on the lever. From another document of the same batch for the 23/3 dated 27/11/17 states the same info re the plug but that this info is also to be cast onto the body and the lever. This is the same for the 36.
I think it would be very hard to find out all the makers for the no 5s, although there have been some very good lists made by various authors, especially as i believe a huge amount of this information was lost during the Blitz in the last war with most of the records being destroyed.
The majority of no 5 bodies were unmarked and with 56 million no 5s and 23 1/2s being produced i dont think this is suprising. However ime sure there are some grens out there with unknown makers names on them just waiting to be found.
Andy
the term 'channelled' lever is in fact the official term for the lever, not my own and it was the first type of lever produced and because of the reasons i gave you it was discontinued from August 1915 thereafter a flat lever was used. Of course they would have used all the remaining stocks up as they did when changing from the no 5 to the 23. In fact many thousands if not millions of no 5 bodies were changed to 23/1s by just changing the base plug.
Looking at my info here, there was no requirement to mark no 5 bodies with any details, these were only to be placed on the base plug which of course may not have been made by the same maker. I have only seen a no 5 body[i assume its a no 5, could have been a 23] marked CAV, C. A. Vandervell, Acton Vale, many with casting or foundry marks. I have a document here dated 15 Nov 1917 for the 23/2 that the contractors initials or trade mark to be imprinted on the cast or malleable iron base plug and also on the lever. From another document of the same batch for the 23/3 dated 27/11/17 states the same info re the plug but that this info is also to be cast onto the body and the lever. This is the same for the 36.
I think it would be very hard to find out all the makers for the no 5s, although there have been some very good lists made by various authors, especially as i believe a huge amount of this information was lost during the Blitz in the last war with most of the records being destroyed.
The majority of no 5 bodies were unmarked and with 56 million no 5s and 23 1/2s being produced i dont think this is suprising. However ime sure there are some grens out there with unknown makers names on them just waiting to be found.
Andy