Product Description

The British No. 69 was a hand grenade developed and used during the Second World War It was adopted into service due to the need for a grenade with a smaller destructive radius than the No36 Mills Bomb This allowed the thrower to use a grenade even when there was little in the way of defensive cover. In contrast, the much greater destructive radius of the Mills bomb than its throwing range forced users to choose their throwing point carefully, in order to ensure that they would not be wounded by the shrapnel explosion of their own grenade.

Externals and internals

The shell of the No. 69 grenade was composed entirely of the hard plastic, Bakelite which shattered without producing fragments like a metal-bodied grenade. Metal fragmenting sleeves were available to increase the grenade's lethality.

Using the No. 69 bomb was very simple: the screw-off cap was removed and discarded, and the grenade was then thrown. When the grenade was thrown, a linen tape with a curved lead weight on the end automatically unwrapped in flight, freeing a ball bearing inside the fuze. In this manner, the "all ways" action impact fuze was armed in flight and the grenade exploded on impact; and like the Gammon Grenade, which used the same fuze design, it was withdrawn from service soon after the Second World War ended