Eihandgranate

On the eve of World War II , German designers were tasked with creating a lightweight hand grenade for use by infantry in offensive combat, suitable for long-range throw and slightly increasing the weight of the soldier's ammunition, since the Wehrmacht was armed with a 1924 offensive hand grenade with a wooden handle too heavy.

The result was a compact and almost three times lighter “Egg” hand grenade based on the 1917 model, which entered the army in 1939 . This grenade was developed as a dual-use ammunition: when replacing a conventional fuse with a special tube, it could be fired from a 26-mm Walter flare gun.

The main disadvantage of this grenade, in addition to common grenades with a precision detonator, was its low power and small radius of continuous destruction with fragments (up to 3 meters), and therefore the main (manual) version was not popular with soldiers, while as a shot for The Eihandgranate signal pistol was successfully used in street battles, as well as at guard posts (when detecting signs of enemy movement in a protected area).

The grenade has an egg-shaped metal case, consisting of rolled upper and lower hemispheres, which could be painted in green, gray or ocher (from the middle of the war the bodies were only covered with drying oil, and from the fall of 1944 they were produced without paintwork). On the lower hemisphere of the case, there might (optionally) be a metal ring designed to carry a grenade (for example, hanging from a belt, since, due to the use of a blasting explosive, the risk of detonation from collision was excluded); grenades without a ring were worn in pouches or camping bags.

The grenade is equipped with an explosive charge - trinitrotoluene or ammotol - weighing 110 g, which was detonated by a detonator capsule No. 8 inserted through an opening in the upper hemisphere, ignited by the Brennzunder Eifer 39 universal fuse.

The fuse of the grater type consisted of a cup with a grouted composition, a cup cup, a grater with a wire ring connected to a silk pull cord attached to a screw-on metal cap painted in blue or yellow.

To use the grenade, you should unscrew the cap, grasp it and vigorously pull the cord, then immediately throw the grenade at the target.

The delay in the time of the explosion depended on the fuse: the blue cap denoted a delay of 4.5 seconds, yellow - 7.5 seconds. The fuse of the Brennzunder Eifer 39 with a red cap (1 second delay) and a similarly designed precision instant igniter Zundschuranzunder 39 with a gray cap in grenades were not used, since there was no time for a throw after pulling the cord.

If the cord was not pulled out sharply enough, the grater mechanism did not work, as evidenced by the absence of an explosion after 30 seconds, after which the grenade was no longer dangerous.

Theoretically, when replacing a fuse, an unexploded grenade could be used again.

According to some reports, ^[2] at the end of 1944, to strengthen the grenade's striking ability, a shirt was developed from steel or a cermet composition with notches, consisting of two parts fastened by a ring, however, there is no information on the use of such grenades.

Grenades entered the troops in wooden boxes weighing 12.5 kg (30 pieces each, with the fuses extracted there).

• Army Anatomy Site
• Reibert.info Project
• Inert-Ord.Net
• military.china.com (China)