Mills 36 Mk 7

[CINDERS]

Had this for a while colors are my own choosing so may be incorrect, the det is a repro and stamped as such. By chance the grenade launcher plate matches the grenades manufacture date a pure jag but a good one at that.
Can anyone tell me who the manufacturer is Aust or British. TIA

Information

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[BruceHMX]

That is really neat!

[browningautorifle]

Very nice. It's getting harder to find them with all the parts...

[Peter Laidler]

I wonder of Bombdoc could tell us when the last ones were contracted for, certainly in the UK. I seem to recall that the last cast casings I ever saw were marked BFL. There never seemed to be a shortage of them for training.

[bombdoc]

Gawd Peter.. you are making me dredge up stuff from a long way back...!

I THINK the last filling plant was at Gascoed, as I am sure I remember looking at it in '81! I don't think it was still running at that time, but it had been retained because of all the problems they were having with the L2 grenade... I will have a look and see if I can find my "Boys Book of filling/manufacturers codes" and see if I can find it..

Just for passing interest, the problems with the L2 took a long time to unravel.. The L2 was basically a UK version of the US M62 grenade, which is a good grenade, with a pre-fragmented wire coil. The problems arose because the UK Ordnance Board would not allow the grenades to be stored fuzed, unlike the M62 which came "ready to use" sealed in a can. To be able to remove the fuse, an additional threaded housing had to be fitted to the grenade body. The fuzes were packaged separately and had to be screwed into the grenade body when they were prepared for use..

Now screwing down what was a plain detonator into a blind housing came with a certain risk, therefore a strict minimal length was specified for the housing, which was tested on assembly and inspection. This, along with strict limits on the maximum length of the detonator assembly ensured that our user could not screw a detonator into the base of the housing, which would probably have been an exciting, if short lived experience!

Soon after the grenade came into service, there was a steady trickle of ammunition failure reports.. grenades were failing to function or going off with a very much reduced performance.. indeed I suspect the only reason it got reported was that collections of the (intact!) coiled spring fragmentation sleeves started to get noticed on the grenade ranges. It should be said at this time that grenade performance failures do not often get reported by the Infantry, mainly because they don't like doing the paperwork, and tend to just blow any blinds up so as to get rid of the demolition box...!

The reason for the failures took some time to unravel.. it came down to two issues.. the first was that although a very tight spec was specified for the minimum length of the detonator housing, there was no such spec for the maximum length! The contractor therefore added an additional allowance to the length of the tube thereby ensuring that none of the housings failed inspections. Secondly someone had specified that the inside of the grenade had to be coated with a wax preservative prior to being filled. This is normally done on explosive shell to key the explosive filling to the shell body to stop it moving on firing. This was not really an issue with the grenades, however it was a standard filling specification, so it was done. This wax was a black goo somewhat similar to the material that your grandad used to get sprayed to the bottom of his car to (try to) stop it rusting. The empty grenade bodies were filled through the base and a slug of hot wax was placed in first, swilled around and upended to drain on a rack. When the wax was set, the body was then filled with hot TNT and allowed to set. The problem arose because when the grenade body was upended to drain, a drip of black goo wax formed on the end of the detonator housing which ran down the axis of the grenade!

Now, the detonator on the L2 Fuze was not the strongest known to man, it was however able to initiate the TNT fillings on the (hand made) L2 grenades used on trials, and in the carefully supervised pilot production examples.. However once the main production had started, and the sub contractor had added the extra length to the housing and the lumps of goo had been allowed to set on the end of the outside of the housing, the poor shock pulse from the det, having jumped the gap and fought its way through the inert goo could not persuade the TNT to detonate at high order...!

I'm sure there is a lesson in there somewhere.. ( perhaps about ripping off Yankee designs without understanding the basic design principles perchance?) ...we would never do that eh?

Anyhow this is why we hung on to the 36 somewhat longer than intended...!

[browningautorifle]

grenades were failing to function or going off with a very much reduced performance.. indeed I suspect the only reason it got reported was that collections of the (intact!) coiled spring fragmentation sleeves started to get noticed on the grenade ranges. It should be said at this time that grenade performance failures do not often get reported by the Infantry, mainly because they don't like doing the paperwork, and tend to just blow any blinds up so as to get rid of the demolition box...!

I remember that sort of thing, and yes the last part is to a degree true. We also like to make things blow up... WE threw our last stocks of M36 in 1977. A friend of mine, still serving as a Capt (after the ranks), was in a training Pl to learn and throw them.

[CINDERS]

Thanks for a most interesting reply bombdoc.

[Aussie48]

Body is British made by A Marston, base plate is Australian made by P.D. Davies a mismatch of parts

Dick

[browningautorifle]

a mismatch of parts

As many, probably parts procured over time. Hard with this much time to match them up now, it's been so long.

[Aussie48]

Honestly Jim after all this time I'm surprised you would still find any let alone in reasonable nick

Dick