Sipsey Street Irregulars: When a "grenade" is not a grenade but just as deadly.

Monday, March 5, 2012

When a "grenade" is not a grenade but just as deadly.

What the guy found.

Lonoke man finds grenade in car.

The Lonoke County Sheriff's Office says a man called them saying he just recently bought a car from a local scrap yard. While cleaning out the car he found an item in the wheel well in the trunk inside a plastic cup.

The man says he took the item and placed it under a trash can in his yard. When the Sheriff's Office inspected the item, they say it looks like some type of a grenade with an extremely rusted pin which was still intact.

The Sheriff's Office called the Arkansas State Police bomb squad who took the grenade. The bomb squad says it doesn't appear to be a live grenade. The grenade was turned over to the ATF.

Well, based on my limited experience this looks like a M49A1 Trip Flare, without the mounting bracket:

The M49A1 Trip Flare is an early warning signaling device used to warn of infiltrating troops by illuminating the area surrounding the trip flare.

The M49A1 Trip Flare consists of an illuminant assembly, cover loading assembly and a mounting bracket assembly. The illuminant assembly is an aluminum case containing an ignition increment and three illuminant increments. The waterproof cover loading assembly contains a percussion primer, intermediate charge and a spring-loaded striker.

The Flare is armed by attaching a Trip-Wire to either the trigger or pull-pin. Once the Trip-Wire has been breached, either the trigger tongue or pull pin will release the lever, which in turn permits the firing pin to strike the primer. The primer sets off the intermediate charge, and the intermediate charge ignites the First-Fire composition on the ignition increment of the Flare. The M49A1 Trip Flare will provide a light intensity exceeding 35,000 candle power for approximately one minute.

Unlike hand grenades, the ignition is instantaneous without a delay and they burn hot as hell. I mention them in the Absolved chapter Black and Tans and also discuss them in the praxis post on military pyrotechnics. In order to use them to break contact at night, you have to carry them without the bracket and pull the pin and throw them behind you in one fluid motion while running away -- unless you want your hand burned off. Personally, I would be made more nervous by finding a rusty one of these than I would a live frag.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...: Yep, definitely nervous-making. Was on a training area in about ’89, and we had been told repeatedly not to mess with anything we found, as the area had been used alternately as a training and impact area since ’42. There’s always one in every crowd, and some moke picked one of these up off the ground, pin out with the trip mechanism rusted up, and put it in a thigh pocket. He finally mentions picking it up within earshot of the Smaj, who demanded to see it. The thing went off just as the idiot cleared his pocket with it and the thing let off a hella scary metallic burn right between the moke and the Smaj. Pucker! No one was hurt, we never figured out how.; March 5, 2012 at 1:59 PM
bondmen said...: Mike,

It just occurred to me after reading your analysis of this found object that you'd be an excellent asset to the BATFE as an experienced, hands on field agent; offices are so boring and only deadly bad ideas seem to come from meetings there. DOJ could silence you with a high paying job, real responsibility and authority! Maybe Eric Holder and crew haven't yet thought of this. It figures!

We all wish you well on Wednesday with a quick and full recovery. I'll be praying for you, your doctors and your wife.; March 5, 2012 at 9:37 PM
CowboyDan said...: I am real leery of those, also.

They light fast, burn hard and hot, and I don't think you can put them out. The minute or so that you say they burn for is a LONG minute.; March 6, 2012 at 2:28 AM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Monday, March 5, 2012

When a "grenade" is not a grenade but just as deadly.

3 comments:

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