Something you don't see every day...
As fate would have it, when the BEF was driven back to Dunkirk in 1940 (26 May 1940–4 June 1940), a great deal of that failure was due to a lack of armored formations with which to counteract the German Blitzkrieg. All of this had a rather profound effect upon the British who began to immediately try and counteract their disadvantage in tanks by developing ways to destroy German tanks which could be employed by the private soldier in infantry regiments.
One such way was the Boys rifle, which unfortunately was nearly obsolete by the time the war started as its armor penetration was lackluster where panzers were concerned.
Another way was the rather novel No.68 Anti-Tank (AT) grenade. This often forgotten rifle-fired projectile was developed for use in the venerable Lee-Enfield grenade firing cup discharger with the sole aim of penetrating armor - it had negligible anti-personnel effectiveness. By June 1940 10,000 grenades had been delivered and issued out of a requested 2 million grenades - not nearly enough to save the situation in France.
And without further ado, here are not one, but TWO original examples of this rather uncommon Lee Enfield "accessory".
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As you can see, one is painted and the other appears to have never been painted. Both retain original cotter pins and brass instruction tags. The unpainted example is, unfortunately, missing the screw-on cap that held the brass disc which kept the shape charge in the grenade's cup. The second (painted) grenade retains the cap, but is also missing the brass disc. Both retain their fuze mechanisms.
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The unpainted grenade resides in my personal collection, while the more complete painted grenade is on temporary loan to me so that I can manufacture a replica cover for my example, and for photographing for this post. Interestingly, the unpainted grenade appears to have never been painted, leading me to believe that not all originals wore paint when issued. This is not really surprising since the body of the grenade is made from some form of cast aluminum alloy.
Unlike the angled trajectory of the No.36 Mills Bomb more commonly used in the discharger cup, the No.68 was aimed directly at the enemy vehicle, usually within FIFTY YARDS (yikes!). To be effective, the grenade had to strike the vehicle +/- 15 degrees of perpendicular, else the blast from the shape charge could glance off the target. The charge was ignited by inerita as a tungsten firing pin would act against spring pressure, shearing a soft copper retaining pin, and striking the primer which would then ignite the high-explosive packed into the cup. this would then fire a dart of molten metal through the armor plate, much like a modern RPG.
These grenades would have been fired with a ballestite grenade-firing cartridge identical to that used with the Mills Bomb.
Hope you all liked the pics!
