Wooden Machine Gun Bullets?

[SIGSHR]

The version in my day was that an AK could fire a round of 5.56.
In all my reading about the Wehrmacht I have never seen a picture of their rifle grenade. Like ours, a Great Idea That Didn't Work. The soldier was supposed to fire it only with blank ammo, you know that somebody tried it with live ammo-more than once.
The Germans had months-years-to prepare for the Normandy Invasion, never read any accounts of units running out of ammunition.
The "Ost" battalions were "static defense" units, little if any transport, assigned to coastal positions. By 1943 the TO&E of German divisions on the Eastern Front was a division of about 10,000 with about 20% "Hiwis" filling as many non-combatant roles as possible.

 

[Mike Irwin]

"the only place I've found (in the modern era) where it is sorta true is 81/82mm Mortars. The US, Britain, France, even Germany used an 81mm mortar (at various times) The Soviet version was 82mm bore, and could fire 81mm ammo. Or so I've heard...."


I've discussed the reasons for that many times here and at other sites.

Many of the French, British, Soviet, Polish, and US mortars used during World War II had their origins with the Edgar Brandt company of France.

In the 1920s they started developing what became the gold standard for 60 and 81-mm mortars from the 1930s to the 1970s.

Most nations were working on developing their own home grown mortars at the time, with varying degrees of success. When the Brandt designs started making it into circulation, a lot of those efforts stopped.

As for why the Soviets chose an 82mm mortar round instead of 81mm?

Shell design, most likely. Soviet mortar shells tended to be squatter and shorter than Western mortar shells, which seems to have been continuing the trend from mortars used by the Russian Army in World War I.

So, a purely functional choice based on historic considerations and NOT a bunch of Soviet Political Commissars sitting around a Kremlin table cackling and saying "Nekulturny Amerikansy! We can use their shells, but they can't use ours!"

 

[Mike Irwin]

"In all my reading about the Wehrmacht I have never seen a picture of their rifle grenade. Like ours, a Great Idea That Didn't Work. The soldier was supposed to fire it only with blank ammo, you know that somebody tried it with live ammo-more than once."

Really? I've seen many pictures of German rifle grenades over the years, including one or two wartime pictures that show German soldiers with the grenade launcher attached to their rifle.

Ah, here's one from Wikipedia. Actually shows a grenade loaded in the launcher.

As shown in the following picture, the Germans actually had a pretty extensive array of rifle grenades and, it would seem, distributed them fairly liberally.

I believe it was the French who developed a rifle grenade that could be fired using a standard ball round -- no need for a special blank cartridge...

Ah, yes, the Viven-Bessières rifle grenade, developed during World War I.

 

[4V50 Gary]

I happen to have a German launcher device and there's a picture of museum display with one in my book that will be released next year. Picture has a sniper rifle on the top of the display case and the German K98k with grenade launcher happens to be on the bottom of the display case. Editor decided not to crop the image.

I thought it was the Belgians who developed a grenade that could be fired with a regular bullet. The center of the grenade was hollow along with boreline and an endcap would trap the gases with sufficient force to launch it. The bullet could pass through the cap without any Boom!

 

[105kw]

I thought it was the French VB grenade launcher that fired using a standard ball round.
The bullet went through the grenade as described, muzzle blast launched it out of the cup.
We adopted it during WW1.
I found this in Canfields book of WW1 US weapons.

 

[4V50 Gary]

OK, what I read was much later and involved the FN.

 

[Mike Irwin]

"I thought it was the French VB grenade launcher that fired using a standard ball round."

Yes. As I noted, it was the the Viven-Bessières rifle grenade, developed during World War I.

 

[4V50 Gary]

The other French weapons invention that may be found in most modern American kitchens is the socket bayonet mount. KitchenAid mixers uses that technology today.