Effective range of the Steilhandgranate question(s)

[Foxbat]

I think I have a pretty good idea of the effective throwing and blast ranges of pine-apple type grenades, but the german Steilhandgranate is so different from modern stuff I'm not sure how it would work out.

I guess you could probably accuratly throw them up to 50 meters, the handle should give it slightly better range then a normal grenade but not extremely so. And I wopuld guess that effective blast range would be 20 meters max, with kill range being nearly point-blank only.

That's my guesses, but what's the truth?

[ December 29, 2002, 12:47 PM: Message edited by: Foxbat ]

[winkelried]

We used similar grenades in the Swiss Army until the 90s. To throw over 20 to 30 meters with good accuracy would be ok. But not farther except for some execptionally gifted soldiers.

The lethacy without additional splinter mantle (is this correct in English for Splittermantel ?) is very limited outside of foxholes, trenches or buildings. One of our proofs of courage was to lie flat on the ground (with helmet ) 10 meters away from an exploding grenade and to emerge without a scratch. Almost all the explosive power goes up ...

In trenches, foxholes and buildings the effect is quite devastating though

[ December 29, 2002, 02:42 PM: Message edited by: winkelried ]

[Egbert]

10m

Well, that's pretty telling.

'nuff said.

[Michael Dorosh]

Winkelried - your translation is accurate; in English we usually say "fragmentation sleeve", but your literal translation also works.

[SgtMuhammed]

The handle didn't really improve range but many soldiers felt it imporved accuracy. One complaint our guys had in Western Europe was that our grenades put out too much shrapnel. The Germans were able to throw theirs closer to their position and so it was a better assault grenade.

[K_Tiger]

Something to laugh, in pre war germany, there existed a sport discipline named "Stiehlhandgranatenweitwurf" it was comparable with other olympic trowing disciplines. The record holder trow the grenade, if i remember correctly, over 79 meters.

[Hans]

One of the legends of WWII is that American soldiers, with arms strengthen, and eyes sharpened by years of baseball and football playing were better hand grenadiers than the true footballers (soccer)players of Europe.

[Engel]

Teaching men to throw hand grenades better was one of the reasons why baseball was introduced in Finland back in the day (Finnish "pesäpallo" is not quite the same as the American version, but close enough).

[flamingknives]

The baseball analogy works with modern grenades, but, IIRC, the WWI and WWII "Mills' bomb" were thrown in an overarm lob - not dissimilar to a cricket bowl.

They were pretty heavy and throwing them like you would a baseball or 'football' would do unto your elbow.

[Foxbat]

Thanks for the answers, seems like my own guesses were actually rather optimistic

Still I suppose it makes sense for an offensive grenade to have a small blast range (10 meters, yikes!) so you can drop it in the trench and jump into the fray immediatly after. And for that you'd need accuracy rather than range I s'ppose.