Do YOU know where all your grenades and mortar rounds are?

[Thor]

[video=youtube_share;x10eF7JrDic]http://youtu.be/x10eF7JrDic[/video]

Had almost that same thing happen to me at Ft Knox. Guy down the line threw his grenade down the line, it bounced off the top of my retaining wall and fell on the far side. Boom close. I was not amused, DS was not amused. I never saw that particular recruit again. Some people are too stupid to even be cannon fodder...at least armed cannon fodder.

 

[IndyDave1776]

Had almost that same thing happen to me at Ft Knox. Guy down the line threw his grenade down the line, it bounced off the top of my retaining wall and fell on the far side. Boom close. I was not amused, DS was not amused. I never saw that particular recruit again. Some people are too stupid to even be cannon fodder...at least armed cannon fodder.

Perhaps this is the reason why the front end of the human waves in Korea were armed with sticks.

 

[Trigger Time]

Throwing grenades uphill..... baaaaad

 

[actaeon277]

Slightly off topic. Don't you just hate it when the characters on a movie throw a grenade at a moving car, and it ALWAYS blows up at the right time?

 

[Trigger Time]

Slightly off topic. Don't you just hate it when the characters on a movie throw a grenade at a moving car, and it ALWAYS blows up at the right time?

Yes.
Hey you might know about this being a navy guy. My dad told me they would throw grenades over the side of the ship in Vietnam to blow up saanpans or whatever because they would try to get up close to tghe side of the ship and detonate. Because of the contour of the ship they used grenades. I'm sure he wasn't lying but damn that seems like it would rock the world of anyone inside sleeping next to the explosion lol

 

[actaeon277]

Yes.
Hey you might know about this being a navy guy. My dad told me they would throw grenades over the side of the ship in Vietnam to blow up saanpans or whatever because they would try to get up close to tghe side of the ship and detonate. Because of the contour of the ship they used grenades. I'm sure he wasn't lying but damn that seems like it would rock the world of anyone inside sleeping next to the explosion lol

I don't know TT. Frigates and Destroyers are pretty thin skinned ships. I'd hate to wonder if a grenade would puncture. And a riverboat.... well, they probably are low enough they wouldn't need to "drop one over the side".

Most destroyers and frigates would have .50s stationed around the ship for this possibility. Okay, some do. I don't know about "most".



I'm more knowledgeable about the "submersibles".
Maneuvering into a port/harbor, we had no one with a weapon stationed. That may have changed now. But, other than adding a guy with a rifle, not really room on the bridge for another watchstander, or a weapon. Everyone there is keeping a lookout. Subs tend to not fair well in a collision.
While we were in port, there was a watchstander with a pistol, and one with a rifle. In our day, a 1911 and a M-14. Nowadays, probably a M-9 and M-16/M-14. I like the M-14 more in this case for punching through a small boats sheet metal.

One of the problems the Navy has, is divers. How do you detect and stop them? Not so much cause they're going to climb on board like the movies, it's harder than you think. More along the lines of planting mines. Mines can be set off by water flow, water pressure, timers, command detonation (sound wave combination), etc.

While we were in St. Croix (US Virgin Islands) during the day, we had divers approaching. In a Naval Port, Port Security would be after them in a small boat. But we were in a civilian slip.
So, how do we get their attention? What are their intentions? How do we stop them, especially since we don't know if they're innocent civvie divers, or terrorists?
A lot of the time, we had SEALS, but of course, now that we could use them, we didn't.
We had 2 "ship's divers", regular sailors that had been qualified SCUBA for emergency repairs and looking for mines, but they were on the town, getting wasted.
We debated using the Sonar, and were in fact warming it up. Upside, the Sonar is non-directional, don't have to aim it, can take out a bunch of divers. Downside, if they're civvies, we blew out their eardrums, or worse, for nothing.
Shooting into the water, almost useless. Bullets only submerge a few feet. And the gun's report doesn't transfer to the water very well. The air to water interface doesn't transmit sound very well.
Also, a worry if they are civvies, the underside of the reactor is mostly unshielded. Why shield it, when water is the shielding and the ocean is filled with water. So, we had to worry about these guys frying themselves.
Well we lucked out, they surfaced, and we could convey that coming closer would be "BAD".

 

[actaeon277]

Yes.
Hey you might know about this being a navy guy. My dad told me they would throw grenades over the side of the ship in Vietnam to blow up saanpans or whatever because they would try to get up close to tghe side of the ship and detonate. Because of the contour of the ship they used grenades. I'm sure he wasn't lying but damn that seems like it would rock the world of anyone inside sleeping next to the explosion lol

And yes, it would be loud. Sound transmission from air to water doesn't transmit very well. But.. sound transmission from water to steel and steel to air works pretty well.

 

[actaeon277]

"At anchor" you can't shut down the engineering plant. So engineering gets VERY little liberty.

 

[Nazgul]

"At anchor" you can't shut down the engineering plant. So engineering gets VERY little liberty.

Ran into a Navy vet yesterday who was in Engineering, as we talked about ports we visited, he expressed the same sentiment.

Don

 

[Thor]

Slightly off topic. Don't you just hate it when the characters on a movie throw a grenade at a moving car, and it ALWAYS blows up at the right time?

Reminds me of Rat Patrol...they threw grenades like they were anti-tank guns and never missed...and took out tanks with them too. The Jeeps now, they were invincible. Apparently, Potato Mashers couldn't achieve Pineapple velocities.

 

[IndyTom]

Also, a worry if they are civvies, the underside of the reactor is mostly unshielded. Why shield it, when water is the shielding and the ocean is filled with water. So, we had to worry about these guys frying themselves.

Aha! So that guy who was saying that we knew where all the subs were because of the nuc-u-ler radiation was right! We just have to watch for the bottoms of the subs from space. No more of those breach surfacing maneuvers like they have in the movies all the time.

 

[actaeon277]

Aha! So that guy who was saying that we knew where all the subs were because of the nuc-u-ler radiation was right! We just have to watch for the bottoms of the subs from space. No more of those breach surfacing maneuvers like they have in the movies all the time.

 

[actaeon277]

Reminds me of Rat Patrol...they threw grenades like they were anti-tank guns and never missed...and took out tanks with them too. The Jeeps now, they were invincible. Apparently, Potato Mashers couldn't achieve Pineapple velocities.

Yup.

 

[ScouT6a]

I had a friend, years ago, that had an old gentleman that he knew call him over to his house. Seems the old guy had a couple of WW II pineapple grenades that he wanted to dispose of. My friend, who had many years of military experience, disposed of the grenades for the old guy. It is my understanding that the grenades were just as lethal as the day that they were made.
Murphy's Law of Combat #55
When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is not your friend.

 

[Vigilant]

Alas, the last of my 'nades (ALS Pocket Smokes) are all gone. Anyone got a replacement for the M18 or the ALS yet?

 

[JAL]

I had a friend, years ago, that had an old gentleman that he knew call him over to his house. Seems the old guy had a couple of WW II pineapple grenades that he wanted to dispose of. My friend, who had many years of military experience, disposed of the grenades for the old guy. It is my understanding that the grenades were just as lethal as the day that they were made.
Murphy's Law of Combat #55
When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is not your friend.

Yup. Once the safety clip is removed and the pin is pulled, you really, really, really do NOT want to try to safe arm it unless absolutely necessary. Much better to just let it go boom if you can heave it to someplace that won't do you or any friendlies any harm. Trying to safe arm one by putting the pin back in is not as easy as it sounds. You also don't want to stand around holding the damn thing. Don't pull the pin until you're ready to throw it!

There are ways of disarming, dismantling and demilitarizing them, but it requires knowing exactly what you're doing. The older they are, the greater the possibility of instability and volatility. You ALWAYS throw letting the spoon fly off in flight. Letting it go for a second or two risks an ugly death if it has a short fuze which is rather rare but still has occurred. Why take the risk. When you use them for real and see what they can do, along with some of the other munitions that go boom, you get an appreciation for their lethality.

I was on a range training with lobbing them through rectangular bunker openings and over objects that could be used for cover, and one idiot dropped it after pulling the pin. The NCO kicked it down into the pit and pulled the numb nuts down to the platform. We got to see the blast come up around them.

Even with the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch you'd never get to five.

[video=youtube;ashgP4YMdJw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ashgP4YMdJw[/video]

Sorry! The hand grenade discussion brought this scene to mind immediately.

John

 

[Thor]

There's no need to apologize for humor...it's what keeps some of us around. We don't get paid to come here, so the number of angry rants or random technical dissertations we'll put up with is probably small.