Mk1 No35 RIFLE GRENADE, 1918

Rifle Grenade used during WW1 A Hales Grenade produced towards the end of the War. It is similar to a No24 Mk2 type. Range with 15 inch rod 350-380 yards with 11 inch rod 220-240 yards.

Your comments:

• This grenade meets the same safety objective as the No 3 Hales but with economy and elegance of design.
  
  The shock of the discharge from the rifle slips the brass collet (normally retained by a pin) off the brass tail piece. This allows two lugs to fall out and to arm the grenade in flight by freeing a striker up to hit the detonator on impact.
  
  Safer of course with the pin in, there is nevertheless a click-on-click-off interference between the collet and the tailpiece so it is unlikely to become dislodged in circumstances short of the discharge of the grenade from a rifle.
  
  Just consider the practical economies over the No 3, the No 35 body is cast and threaded instead of machined overall, those fantastically intricate machined vanes on the No 3 are dispensed with, the tailpiece of the 35 is not threaded but uses half the materials of the No 3. There is no metal clip.
  
  The only possible residual advantage of the No3 is that the vanes might impart a spin to the grenade in flight improving its accuracy - but who was aiming these things anyway? At best the rifle was laid in an improvised wooden cradle. At worst the rifle was fired from the shoulder or rested with its butt on the ground, the firer hoping for the best. There are reports of an inclinometer type aiming device but no meaningful noted survivals.
  .......... concordia.victrix, Epsom, Surrey, 14th of November 2017
  
  

A1541