Booby-trapped hand grenades
- Thread starter Oleg Volk
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280PLUS
Member
A lot of those young officers had a lot of smarts BUT NO COMMON SENSE!
I could bore you and take us off topic with a good Ensign story. But I won't.
I could bore you and take us off topic with a good Ensign story. But I won't.
Im not sure if i really buy a lot of the booby-trap stories.
Really ask yourself this; If you were fighting in a country and you came upon a pile of enemy ordnance do you:
A) destroy it
or
B) Sabotogue a few of them, knowing that 90% of the box contains ordinance that will be used against your fellow soldiers.
Our enemies generally dont have a problem with dying. If you hand them a box of 10 grenades with one of them being trapped, they still have 9 grenades to kill your guys with.
Really ask yourself this; If you were fighting in a country and you came upon a pile of enemy ordnance do you:
A) destroy it
or
B) Sabotogue a few of them, knowing that 90% of the box contains ordinance that will be used against your fellow soldiers.
Our enemies generally dont have a problem with dying. If you hand them a box of 10 grenades with one of them being trapped, they still have 9 grenades to kill your guys with.
Preacherman
Member
c_yeager, you've got it wrong. Imagine you're an insurgent/guerilla/terrorist/whatever. You know that in past incidents, your comrades have found that a certain proportion of their weapons have been sabotaged, and some of them have come to sticky ends as a result. You now can't trust your arms caches, as you have no idea which one(s) have been found by your enemy and "treated". Are you going to risk using any of those 10 grenades? Sure, only 1 may be booby-trapped, but how do you know which one? Are you willing to take a chance?
Not me, if I were in that situation...
Not me, if I were in that situation...
cracked butt
Member
I can see the enemy developing a serious flinch when shooting their rrifles after seeing a few of their buddies blown up by boobytrapped ammo. 
I wouldnt take the chance either, Preacherman. I think though, that our enemies have changed a bit these days. We are fighting people who are perfectly willing to use themselves as human bombs, I dont think a 1 in 10 chance of death is going to be insurmountable, they are going to view it as a 9 in 10 chance of killing someone. Those odds may not be good enough for rational people, but rational enemies are a thing of the past.
280PLUS
Member
IIRC there were Japanese pilots flying their explosive loaded planes into our ships about 60 years ago...
That turned out to be a bringback that went wrong. The Iraqis didn't do that, the Air Force guy who had it did it. His bunk mate shot it not knowing what he had done to demill the weapon. There was quite the 15-6 over that.
The Russian F-1s we recovered had a number on the bottom that denoted the delay. The Chinese grenades on the otherhand were packaged in such a way that when you un-crated them you would see the booby trap grenade. We still had 2 or 3 people get hurt and killed throwning grenades they knew nothing about. The other way to tell is to unscrew the fuse assembly. The 0 second fuse is different than the 3-5 second fuse. There is no danger (99% of the time) in unscrewing the fuse assembly. They are shipped unassembled and have to be put together in the field.
When we left, the policy was that if it could be recovered safely then do so and put it to use with the ASF or ANA. If it could not be recovered safely blow it in place. Booby trapping the enemies ammo will never take place in the modern military. It is also not very smart in that the rest of the ammo can still be used. We leave nothing behind that may fall into and be used by the enemy. Period.
Vitamin G
Member
I feel as though the trouble into giving our enemies booby-trapped explosive devices, is that they usually set out to blow themselves up anyways.
Hawken50
Member
anybody heard of this?
i read a book, i think it was w.e.b. griffen, in wich green berets in the congo in the sixitys who were tracking che gueverra (sp). they would take zero delay grenades, put them in mason jars and pull the pin. the jar held the spoon in place. then they would drop them out of small unarmed reconnisance planes onto gueverra's "freedom fighters". jar would break when it hit the ground and the grenade would go boom. sounds pretty ingenious to me. i know i would never have though of it.
i read a book, i think it was w.e.b. griffen, in wich green berets in the congo in the sixitys who were tracking che gueverra (sp). they would take zero delay grenades, put them in mason jars and pull the pin. the jar held the spoon in place. then they would drop them out of small unarmed reconnisance planes onto gueverra's "freedom fighters". jar would break when it hit the ground and the grenade would go boom. sounds pretty ingenious to me. i know i would never have though of it.
280PLUS
Member
I recall hearing simlilar stories from Nam. Only I heard they were using mayonaise jars. Mason / mayonaise? Sounds like variations on a theme.
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