Why are grenades taped?

[SOG]

i was doing research for a gei little military shareware game im making. when drawing up the design etc i came to grenades. i 1st thought of the dozens of movies ive seen where the hero always has grenades strapped to his chest. this seemed personally hazardous if you were to get snagged and the spoon came flying off so i thought there had to be another way. after some research i found grenade pouches in which you could put a couple grenades. so i thought cool ive figured it out. then i go visit my cousins and im watching black hawk down and a delta guy wraps either electrical tape or duck tape around the grenade. now, yeah, i know its a movie, but one, this was supposed to be a well researched movie, and two, they made a slight emphasis as to him doing it in the movie so it struck me as something they might do in the real world.

so in short, how the @*^~! do you carry nades? in a pouch, on your chest, what do u tape them for, wouldnt that make them hard to un-tape in a battle? is there more than one accepted way ala different forces different styles? TIA.

[Vance]

Well I beileve you tape them so that the pin won't fly out when you don't want it to.

[Trigger]

I haven't seen the movie lately, but I have heard of using black electical tape around the spoon and body of the grenade as an improvised delayed fuse. Basically you wrap the grenade and spoon, and if possible place it in a tank of gasoline or fuel. After a short while the gas will dissolve the glue on the tape thus releasing the spoon. I seem to remember reading this somewhere a long time ago...Any of the BTDTs in here please correct me if I'm wrong. :D

[Chet Mystery]

Yea, tape the pin ring to the side of the fuse housing because if its just flopping around, especially in the well exposed types of pouches for frags (I.E. the ones on the sides of ALICE M16 mag pouches). because say your walking along, the ring snaggs on something, pulls out, the fuse ignights, and the grenade is still stuck in your gear!

Its a simple added procaution. And when using the grenade, you still just pull the pin, breaking the tape as you do so.

[Apogee]

Just to clarify what Chet said. The pin coming out of the grenade doen't ignite the fuze. Its the spring loaded spoon coming off the grenade that does that.

[SOG]

awesome, thanx. for some reason i thought he was taping around the spoon which in my mind would mean some work for the spoon to release. taping the ring makes way mroe sense and much more logical in pulling it off fast.

[HumanShield]

Safety first kids!

[catalyst]

the pin will not begin the detonation process by itself...Instead when the plunger reaches the firing cap....that is wehn the grenade will detonate....The period of this process is regulated in a fairly technical way...sometimes using chemicals and so on.....

Thus if u are moving in a complex environment such a Jungle or Urban and the pin is accidentally pulled out....Tape around the spoon will stop a accidental detonation of the grenade....The first australian KIA in Vietnam died this way when a Yank 101st AB did not tape this and his grenade exploded inside a truck...Killing a Aussie soldier and WIA several more aussies and yanks.....An example of the usefullness of tape!

[Royal]

The above reasons are perfectly valid. Another one that springs to mind; western grenades are usually issued in two parts (the body and the fuse mechanism) down to sub-unit level. The two parts are then joined prior to a patrol/Op. They are thus inherantly safer at this stage (the fuse cannot detonate the body). Eastern grenades come fused from the factory (usually in pastic box, or in a plasticised wrapper). It is then the SOP to tape these for storage as well as carriage when removed from their factory packaging.

[GazB]

"Eastern grenades come fused from the factory (usually in pastic box, or in a plasticised wrapper)."

Not sure about which "Eastern" grenades you are talking about. The standard F-1 Soviet hand grenade comes 20 to a wooden crate. They have the fuzes packed in one end of the crate wrapped in wax paper. The ring itself is a split wire and this split wire is spread to make pulling the pin near impossible as it is. Once the fuse is screwed into the grenade body you have to pinch the two halves of the wire together to be able to pull the pin. The handle releases a spring loaded hammer that hits a firing cap.. much like the primer of a rifle round. This burns a short fuse to the detonator which detonates the primary and main charge in the grenade body. There was much controversy in the 80s about Russian fuses. They come with numbers stamped on them. Numbers from 0 to about 13. Originally it was assumed these numbers denoted the time delay (zero of course being used for ****y traps with tripwires). I haven't found any information to support or refute that, though I do have a book on order that is based on the weapons manual for the F-1.

[BMF]

i dont know about other units/armies, etc, but i generally tape the spoon/pin down on grenades whether or not they are in a pouch or whatever. takes all of 3 seconds to take the tape off, and it makes the thing even safer. i tape down both the spoon and pin because the M67 fuse is known to occasionally snap(hense begin to burn) as soon as the spoon comes even the tiniest bit lose. so if you dont have a super tight grip, when you pull the pin, the fuse may well start burning even though the spoon is still on the grenade.

[Skyranger]

the tape is also used so the pins dont make noise bouncing of the side of the grenade as you run.

[Sean333]

Hey SOG, is your game going to be a First Person Shooter?

[Royal]

Gaz, My experience of these in quantity is mostly in Bosnia, Kosovo and Macedonia - so former-Yugoslav M57, M69 and M75 among others.

However I've also come across this type of packaging in the Czech Republic, the Baltic States, Ukraine and in Africa...

[Pakrat]

Pins don't just fall out..anyone who carries one hooked to the ring on his LBE,LBV,MOLLE,is looking for trouble..pins have quite a good pull..yes they can get caught on something and be pulled out.Now we have pouches to put them in..plus I put rubber bands around the spoons..easier to slide off when making ready to use..Just like Gunny said to do! LOL!

[SOG]

Hey SOG, is your game going to be a First Person Shooter?


nah man, i said its a gei shareware game. overhead shoot em up and stuff. kinda a watered down metal gear type story (not as fanatsy). you get to shoot in with a kool chopper in parts of the game then you control one guy of a four man strike team while the other members go off and do thier scripted killing. this was really research just because im adding lots of art to the game like still pics and cool load screens and characters and while i want to go a little fanatsy with guns etc some things i just needed to sort logically. like the grenade thing and why a guy was taping the spoon etc.

so i figure asking here wouldnt hurt as i snag pics from here all the time and god help me if i get sucked into other posts :)

[Scrim]

Was going to the grenade range (after the first time!) boring or what?

[California Joe]

I usually tape them if I'm not going to be around and I want to watch them later when the wife's gone.

[BMF]

the grenade range in real life is kinda fun the first time, but after that its a big hassle. too many safety checks and all that sort of insanity. the fun part is the assault course that is usually included at most grenade ranges. you run, crawl, dive, etc to various positions to toss grenades at targets, and are graded. fun times

drive on

[James]

I was always tempted to watch the explosion. Of course, that wasn't allowed. :lol:

[Upfrontreporting]

He he, I was also interested in seeing the detonation, so one day i took a videocamera to the handgrenade range, placed it on a lower laying point about 30 meters from the "target zone". It worked fine and after two grenades I put it in my bergen (too much risk of destruction), later the same evening we watched it at the local soldiers home and two MP's almost wet themselves, saying "S--t that guy doing the recording is cool, lying down without cover on the range"
Of course we didn't tell them the truth :lol:

[reverence]

The new grenade used in Australia is called the F1 and replaced the M26 a few years ago. The pin design requires it to be twisted first out of a recess and then pulled negating the need to be taped for extra safety. We also have purpose designed grenade pouches which further add to its safety. In the heat of battle even well trained operators may(and have)throw the grenade without removing the tape. There was a fatality in the 6th Battalion RAR in the 90's when one of four M26's stored in a Minimi pouch together had its pin pulled during fire and movement by another grenade resulting in the rest also going off. I feel a lot safer with the F1 and am glad they dont have to be taped. The steel pellets will penetrate a kevlar vest at 7m and the casualty radius is 15m not a bad bit of kit.

[digrar]

The bloke was from 8/9 RAR not 6 RAR. The 4 blokes from 6 RAR who were injured by a grenade blast were burning rubish in East Timor when 2 F1 grenades and some other controlled stores left in a rubish bag were burnt.
The 8/9 RAR incident was caused by the boys flattening out the crimp in the pins and then splaying them. This weakened the pins, one snapped and resulted in the grenade detonating inside the basic pouch.
Another bloke from Townsville (I think he was from 1 RAR) was killed during a grenade assult practice in Malasia. We stopped doing grenade assult practises then untill the F1 grenade came in. The saftey supervisor from the 8/9 RAR accident was also present at the Malasia incident. Poor bugger, I heard he sits out as the sentry now during grenade practises.
Along with the new pin system the F1 grenade also comes with a individual pouch so they are pretty safe. They also have a limited roll distance after impact with the ground (about 1 and a 1/2 metres).