"US 60mm Mortars Rounds as Rifle Grenades" Topic

A few years ago I was reading Charles B. MacDonald's classic "Company Commander" which recounts his experience commanding a US rifle company during the Battle of the Bulge and later in Germany to the end of the war. MacDonald went on to become one the most respected military historians in the country. At one point in "Company Commander" MacDonald mentions that sometimes he had problems getting all the supplies he wanted. In particular he was upset that he couldn't get any 60mm mortar shells which had been modified to fire as rifle grenades. That caught my attention because I'd never heard of that being done. I tried to research this and came up blank. I made a post here on TMP and other places to see if anyone else had heard of this. No luck. This really puzzled me because MacDonald was not only a very good historian, but he was writing of his own experiences. I couldn't believe that he'd just made it up or made a mistake. Still, no one seemed to have heard of this practice.

Well today I happened to look at the cover of a book, "No Victory in Valhalla" and what should be on the cover but this:

A US soldier with what appears to be an M-49 mortar round attached to the tail end of an M19 or M11 rifle grenade! Exactly as MacDonald described. Interesting.

I had no clue that you'd even get enough lift from a rifle grenade's charge to throw a mortar shell far enough to clear blast radius!

It would be interesting to know the effective range, as well as who modified them and how long it took to do so.

@Scott: Congrats, you just gave Battlefront a reason to put out a new codex.

The U.S. 60mm mortar round was authorized to be used with the M1 Projection Adapter as a rifle grenade! The shell was fitted into the adapter, the adapter & shell placed on the grenade launcher (M1 or M1903 rifles only, no M1 carbines) the pin / safety wire removed and fired with the standard Grenade Projection Cartridge M3. The set back on firing released the spring loaded cross through safety pin and the fuse was armed to explode on impact…. Here is a WWII photo of a solider with a 60mm motar round as a rifle grenade. The second photo is my resin dummy 60mm mortar shell in a M1 adapter. The third photo shows the Training Bulletin (TB 9-1985-2) which was issued showing how to do this.

Found this on a website, check posting #9:

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I had no clue that you'd even get enough lift from a rifle grenade's charge to throw a mortar shell far enough to clear blast radius!

Exactly my thoughts. Just looking at that picture makes me think, "War is dangerous enough without improvising like that!"

If you were firing from a foxhole or were behind heavy cover, okay. Otherwise it seems dicey.

Well, shooting it like that probably propels it farther away than throwing it.

I guess that could have some uses in urban combat.

I also read where it was possible use 60mm mortar rounds AS hand grenades. This is supposedly shown in "Private Ryan".

@Tango, Yes, the US had a number of different rifle grenades. Anti-personnel, Anti-tank, smoke, etc. They also had a carrier gizmo which would allow an ordinary hand grenade to be fired off as a rifle grenade. The link that tberry provides indicates that it was a modification of that gizmo that allows the mortar round to be used. That same link has two links to descriptions of Medal of Honor winners who used mortar rounds as hand grenades.

Never underestimate the ingenuity of the GIs.

So how was this thing fired? Looks like a shoulder-buster to my untrained eye. Was the rifle butt planted on the ground? What about the regular rifle grenade, was that shoulder fired?

warhawkwind:

Here you go

link

If you have explosives and bad guys, someone will find a way to combine the two

If you have explosives and bad guys, someone will find a way to combine the two

You mean "someone will find a way to get the explosives to the bad guys"!

Seems to be a bit excessive for a rifle grenade, but I'd bet that the 60mm mortar crews may have kept one or two rounds prepped for rifle-grenade use once the fighting got into the cities. Lots easier to put a rifle grenade trajectory through a window than a mortar trajectory.

@tberry:
I cant remember the book now but I did read about 60mm rounds being used in desperation like in SPR and thinking this is where they got it from.

Saltflats, Two men were awarded the Medal of Honor in WW2 for hand throwing 60mm mortar rounds, exactly as shown in SPR. That scene is often pooh-poohed by "experts" who say that he was ahistorical but it did happen at least twice in the war, once in the Pacific and once in the ETO.

In High School ROTC we had an M-1 Rifle with a circular metal stamping attached to the right side. Our crusty Staff Sergeant Instructor said it was the mount for a rifle grenade sight. He shook the rifle and it rattled like it was going to fall apart. He said firing the grenades ruined the rifle after awhile. He handed it to me to field strip and it just came to pieces way too easy. When used as a rifle it must have been very inaccurate.

There was one us infantry unit which (reportedly) used 60mm mortar rounds fired from rifles in this way.
For a period when they fought in a particularly prolonged bit of street fighting.
It's unclear just how well this worked for them.
I forget which but if you search long and hard enough I've posted about it before.

When I asked my Dad about rifle grenades he was pretty dismissive of them. His company didn't use them at all because of the (perceived) risk of damaging their rifles.
That was with regular rifle grenades so you do have to wonder whether a 60mm mortar round is going to have a higher chance of breaking your weapon.

Another thing which seems kind of odd is that I've read people saying the Chindits really liked to use rifle grenades since they didn't go off on impact in jungle.
Dad was a Chindit.

To my mind, the obvious explanation is someone's been telling some porkies in their war stories.
Which in turn makes me wonder just how much usage of honking great mortar rounds that US unit really actually made.
My Dad's logic that firing something that might break your personal weapon was so bad you just shouldn't do it.
That seems a winning argument to me.

In what way did firing a rifle grenade damage the rifle? scour the rifling? or what?

Rifle grenades seem to have been pretty polarizing. Some soldiers seem to have liked them a lot, while others disliked them greatly.

Didn't the Germans modify obsolete anti-tank rifles into grenade launchers? Seems that may have been a more popular option than wrecking your rifle.

In what way did firing a rifle grenade damage the rifle? scour the rifling? or what?

Massive recoil, far above what the standard round would deliver or what the rifle was designed to handle (for the most part). Repeated excessive recoil will break things, or at the very least mash the recoil lug-to-wood fit. Changing the recoil lug-to-wood fit will demolish accuracy.

Rifle grenades were either launched from a full-length blank (I believe with extra powder inside), or some were bullet-trap designs that didn't require a blank cartridge (dunno if any bullet-trap designs made it to service in WW2), so there shouldn't be any extra damage to the rifling.

Not sure about any other problems specific to an M1 Garand, but you can really hurt a semi-auto if your gas pressures are too high. If the rifle-grenade blank delivered higher pressures into the gas system, that would beat the hell out of the rifle even if the recoil was within design specs.

I have read of some platoons that kept an extra rifle (reinforced with metal wire wound around it) specifically for the purpose of launching rifle grenades. This would have the advantage of not spoiling anybodys personal weapon.

On the other hand, it might mean that some poor rifle grenadier might end up hauling two rifles with him, unless one of the two would be left somewhere behind due to mission needs. Less of an issue when sitting in a comfortable foxhole, though.

Okay, I finally found the quote in MacDonald's "Company Commander":

"The main request was for several types of ammunition, including 60mm mortar shells adapted for firing from the M1 rifle with the aid of a grenade launcher. My men had found the expedient to be most effective in street fighting in Brest and swore that it was more effective than either hand grenades or fragmentation rifle grenades. It, in effect, put the equivalent of 60mm mortars in the forward foxholes." (pgs 20-21)

As far as utility goes, I absolutely believe it. If I was a grunt, I'd want a way to put that 60mm shell right into the window of a house sheltering a sniper or MG.

My step father was a veteran of ww-II and served 3 months on the front line during the Bulge, before getting frost bite and pulled off the line by a medic. Here is what he said about rifle grenades. You had to place an adaptor on the end of the barrel and use a special blank ammunition to fire the thing. Donnie said the only time he saw them successfully used was when the soldier had a chance to get it set up before the fighting started. He said in his platoon, while under fire, a guy put the adaptor on the end of the barrel but forgot to swap out live ammunition for the blank rounds. When he fired it, the grenade exploded killing him and wounded two other guys that were nearby. Donnie said he only shot one while in training in Georgia. But he said you placed the butt of the rifle on the ground cause the thing kicked like a mule.

Marines in WWII: The M1903A3 rifle was declared as substitute standard with the adoption of the M1 and as limited standard in November 1944. But large numbers of Springfield rifles remained in service throughout the FMF during the war, especially to equip grenadiers. The D-series Marine division was authorized 456 M1903 rifles and an identical number of M1 rifle grenade launchers.

When using the M1 Garand with the grenade launcher the semiautomatic gas operating system for semi-automatic fire was disabled effectively making the M1 a bolt action rifle. The M1 Carbine could also be fitted with a grenade launcher adapter.

The first part of WWII the Marines did have a TOE of one Grenadier per Squad using a Springfield.

Everything you'd want to know about the US grenade launchers is here about 3/4 of the way down:
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chestnutridge.com/gchart.asp

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Wolfhag