Peter are there uses for line throwers other than Naval?

[breakeyp]

Were line throwing rifles and gear issued to land based units? Engineers for river crossing/ bridge building. Signals units for wire stringing?

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[Peter Laidler]

Not that I ever saw. The Engineers had special things attached to their Armoured vehicles for throwing hooked lines.

[Sentryduty]

Signals units for wire stringing?

Now that is something I'd like to see, a linesman catapulting field telephone wire around the defensive like a child throwing a roll of toilet paper.

[dbelham]

Signals units used them quite a bit with an L1A1 to get antennas up as high as they could. The string comes wound around a hollow core bobbin inside a grenade canister and you would unwind the string into your bush hat and fire the bobbin straight off the end of the rifle using a standard blank round. Tie the end to the antenna and pull it up. Same for telephone line crossings. Tie the string to the end of the cable and away you go. The biggest problem was getting the liney to remember to tie the end down before firing. They usually only forgot once.

[browningautorifle]

a linesman catapulting field telephone wire

Platoon Comd signaller and the 60 mm mortar. You could launch a line about 400 m with it...use a pop can full of sand as the bomb and a T flash to launch.