"AWI hand grenades found in musuem collection" Topic

"I didn't even know they had hand grenades during the Revolutionary War," said Mark Castillo, the Richmond bomb squad commander.

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Did anyone really have the courage to use hand grenades before WWI? I know you got to wear a mitre or a bearskin hat, which could be very fetching, but did anyone really…ever…light a fuse and chuck such a thing? Indeed who would be do dumb as to go into action carrying a bag of such?

FIBUA I can see the idea, but that was fairly rare in 18th and 19th C and I have never read any account of their use. (OK the recipients died to a man and the throwers did not record their experiences…maybe?)

Did anyone really have the courage to use hand grenades before WWI?

Why do you think Grenadiers were called Grenadiers?

By the AWI, grenades weren't the job of the grenadiers, grenades were handed out as needed, mostly on the defence of forts or towns, sometimes on the offence.
Often grenadiers would get grenades as they often did spearhead attacks, but anyone could use them.

The last war I know of were grenadiers actually carried grenades as regular equipment was the great northern war.

Grenades were essentially weapons of positional warfare, their use popularised by the Ottomans, who had specialist artillery units that managed the use of ceramic and glass grenades. These were useful in the wars in the Danube borderland that ebbed and flowed around frontier fortresses. The Italian general Monteccucoli introduced grenadier units into the Hapsburg army in the mid-C17th.

Troops did, however, need to be trained in the use of grenades. It wasn't simply a question of handing out bombs and slow matches, then letting the men get on with it. Grenadiers were not only trained in the use of grenades but had to be robust enough to lug a satchel of three or four of the metal bombs into the siege lines, as well as slung musket, ammunition pouch and perhaps a hatchet. This became possible with the introduction of the flintlock musket

While artillery troops were savvy enough to use grenades defensively, grenadiers specialised in the assault role, lobbing granadoes into enemy-held trenches and hacking at palisadoes and generally getting in among the enemy.

By early in the 18th century, this specialised form of assault had fallen into disuse and the grenadier's distinctions and appointments simply became emblematic of the toughest, most experienced soldiers of a battalion (in British usage). Certainly this was so by the time of the AWI.

Grenades did stay in fashion for naval warfare, though.

Even proved decisive on occasion.

The most famous use of grenades during the AWI was the duel between the Bonhomme Richard and the Serapis. A grenade thrown from the American ship set off powder on the gun deck of the Serapis which ended the fight.

Were they still called 'grenades' in naval use and were their use alloted to certain category of crewman? Or Marines?

"When we are commanded to storm the palisades, our leaders march with fuzees and we with hand grenades.
We hurl theim from the glacis, about the enemy's ears,
to the tow row row row row row row of the British Grenadiers."

As an aside. When grenades came back in use during the Great War, the Grenadier Guards objected to the use of the term "grenadier" for the grenade chuckers. Hence the term "bomber" was introduced.

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Recent find in UK

Interesting.

"These types of grenades weighed around 1.5 kg and were equivalent in size to a four-pound cannonball'

At four pounds a go, I suspect these would have been more suited to dropping from fighting tops than for throwing.

"Grenadiers were a specific type of soldier during the late 18th century to the early 19th century" tut tut.

A reconstructor showed me a grenade launcher from that era. It weighed a ton and looked like it was very dangerous to use!

"Here, Benjamin. Hold my flip and watch this."

I believe one is briefly on view carried by a grenadier serjeant in the Ft William Henry section of Michael Mann's 'The Last of the Mohicans.' Not that different from a WW2-era rifle grenadeattachment.

"Were they still called 'grenades' in naval use and were their use alloted to certain category of crewman? Or Marines?"

I believe they were used by whoever wanted them. I read once of them being hoisted into the fighting tops and thus were available to whoever was up there.

Jean Lucas of the 'Redoubtable' claimed that he had special pouches made to hold two grenades…at Trafalgar each gun-captain was issued one.

"I believe they were used by whoever wanted them. I read once of them being hoisted into the fighting tops and thus were available to whoever was up there."

But igniting fuses in those days was not simply a matter of striking a match, so I doubt it could have been such a spontaneous business.

Nor was it a risk-free one, especially once bits of rigging, sail, splintered wood and other easily-combustible wreck started to clutter the deck.

At Trafalgar, Redoutable's grenade-throwers managed to set their own ship on fire at least once.

Still did better than the musketmen in Achille's tops. Their gear succeeded in setting fire to their own ship's mast, and started a chain of events which ended in Achille blowing up.