If we approach the issue formally, then the service life of this, undoubtedly, an outstanding representative of the classic type of hand grenades, will not be one hundred, but eighty-nine years. In 1928, the F-1 antipersonnel defensive grenade - "lemon" was adopted by the Red Army. But let's not rush things.
A bit of history
The prototype of the hand grenade has been known since the 9th century. These were earthen vessels of various shapes filled with energy-rich materials known at that time (lime, resin, "Greek fire"). It is clear that before the appearance of the first blasting explosives, there is no need to talk about a serious damaging effect of these ancient products. The first mentions of explosive throwing hand projectiles date back to the X-XI centuries. The material for them was copper, bronze, iron, glass. Presumably Arab merchants brought them from China or India.
An example of such a device is the bann - developed in China in the first millennium AD. an incendiary grenade with a body made from a piece of hollow bamboo stalk. A charge of resin and black powder was placed inside. From above, the bann was plugged with a bundle of tow and used as a reinforced torch, sometimes a primitive wick containing saltpeter was used. The Arabic "bortab" was a glass ball with a mixture of sulfur, saltpeter and charcoal, equipped with a wick and a chain. attached to the shaft. In any case, this is how the manuscript of Nejim-Edlin-Chassan Alram "A Guide to the Art of Fighting on Horseback and on Various War Machines" describes him. Such grenades provided not so much a striking as a psychological and demoralizing effect on the advancing enemy.
The era of classical fragmentation grenades began in 1405, when the German inventor Konrad Kaiser von Eichstadt proposed using brittle cast iron as a body material, due to which the number of fragments formed during an explosion increases significantly. He also came up with the idea of creating a cavity in the center of the powder charge, which significantly accelerated the combustion of the mixture and increased the likelihood of scattering pieces of the grenade body into small fragmentation striking elements. The weak blasting action of black powder required an increase in the size of the grenade, while the physical capabilities of a person limited such an increase. Only highly trained fighters could throw a cast-iron ball weighing from one to four kilograms. The lighter shells used by cavalry and boarding teams were much less effective.
Grenades were used mainly in assaults and defenses of fortresses, in boarding battles, and during the war of the Holy League (1511-1514) they proved to be very good. But there was also a significant drawback - the fuse. The smoldering fuse in the form of a wooden tube with powder pulp often extinguished when hitting the ground, did not give an accurate idea of the time before the explosion, detonating too early, before the throw, or too late, allowed the enemy to scatter or even return the grenade back. In the 16th century, the familiar term “pomegranate” also appears. It was first used in one of his books by the famous gunsmith from Salzburg, Sebastian Gele, comparing the new weapon with a subtropical fruit that, falling to the ground, scatters its seeds.
In the middle of the 17th century, grenades are equipped with the prototype of an inertial fuse. During the Civil War in England (1642-1652), Cromwell's soldiers began to tie a bullet to the wick inside the projectile, which, when it hit the ground, continued to move by inertia and pulled the wick inward. They also proposed a primitive stabilizer to ensure the grenade's flight with a wick back.
The beginning of the intensive use of grenades in field battles dates back to the 17th century. In 1667, the British troops were assigned soldiers (4 people per company) specifically for throwing shells. These fighters were called "grenadiers". They could only be soldiers with excellent physical shape and training. After all, the higher the soldier and the stronger, the further he will be able to throw a grenade. Following the example of the British, this type of weapon was introduced in the armies of almost all states. However, the development of linear tactics gradually nullified the advantage of using grenades, and by the middle of the 18th century they were removed from the equipment of field units, the grenadiers became only elite infantry units. Grenades remained only in service with the garrison troops.
War of empires
The 20th century met the hand grenade as a little used, old and forgotten weapon. In fact, these were the same black powder ammunition used by the 17th century grenadiers. The only improvement made to the design of grenades in almost 300 years is the appearance of a grating fuse.
In Russia, in 1896, the Artillery Committee ordered the general withdrawal of hand grenades from use "… in view of the appearance of more advanced means of defeating the enemy, strengthening the defense of fortresses in ditches and the insecurity of hand grenades for the defenders themselves …".
And eight years later, the Russian-Japanese war began. This was the first battle in the history of war, in which massive armies met, equipped with rapid-fire artillery, magazine rifles and machine guns. The availability of new weapons, and especially the increase in the range of fire weapons, increased the capabilities of the troops and made it necessary to use new methods of action on the battlefield. Field shelters reliably hid opponents from each other, making firearms practically useless. This forced both sides of the conflict to recall the forgotten type of infantry weapons. And given the lack of grenades in service, improvisations began.
For the first time, the use of grenades by the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese War was recorded on May 12, 1904, near Qingzhou. Japanese grenades were cut-off shells, bamboo tubes filled with an explosive charge, standard explosive charges wrapped in cloth, into the ignition sockets of which incendiary tubes were inserted.
Following the Japanese, Russian troops began to use grenades. The first mention of their use dates back to August 1904.
The production of grenades in the besieged city was carried out by the staff captain of the mine company Melik-Parsadanov and the lieutenant of the Kwantung fortress engineer company Debigory-Mokrievich. In the naval department, this work was entrusted to Captain 2nd Rank Gerasimov and Lieutenant Podgursky. During the defense of Port Arthur, 67,000 hand grenades were produced and used.
Russian grenades were cuttings of lead pipes, shells, in which 2-3 pyroxylin bombs were inserted. The ends of the body were closed with wooden covers with a hole for the ignition pipe. Such grenades were supplied with an incendiary tube designed for 5-6 seconds of burning. Due to the high hygroscopicity of pyroxylin, the grenades equipped with it had to be used within a certain time after manufacture. If dry pyroxylin, containing 1-3% moisture, exploded from a capsule containing 2 g of explosive mercury, then pyroxylin containing 5-8% moisture already required an additional detonator from dry pyroxylin.
The illustration shows a grenade equipped with a torch igniter. It was made from a 37-mm or 47-mm artillery shell. A sleeve from a rifle cartridge, in which a grater igniter was located, is soldered to the body of the grenade. In the muzzle of the cartridge
a fuse cord was inserted into the sleeves and fixed there by crimping the muzzle. The grater string came out through the hole in the bottom of the sleeve. The grating device itself consisted of two split goose feathers, cutting into one another. The contacting surfaces of the feathers were covered with a flammable compound. For the convenience of pulling, a ring or stick was tied to the lace.
To ignite the fuse of such a grenade, it was necessary to pull the grater igniter ring. Friction between the goose feathers during mutual movement caused the ignition of the grater compound, and the beam of fire set fire to the fuse.
In 1904, for the first time in the Russian army, a shock grenade was used. The creator of the grenade was the staff captain of the East Siberian mine company Lishin.
The lessons of the war
Intelligence agencies around the world were interested in the development of events and the course of hostilities in Manchuria. Britain sent most of the observers to the Far East - it was tormented by the tragic experience of the war with the Boers. The Russian army received three British observers; from the Japanese side, 13 British officers watched the fighting. Together with the British, military attaches from Germany, France, Sweden and other countries watched the development of events. Even Argentina sent Captain Second Rank José Moneta to Port Arthur.
The analysis of combat operations showed that it is necessary to make significant changes in the technical equipment, organization of combat training of troops and their equipment. The war required the mass production of all types of weapons and equipment. The role of the rear has grown immeasurably. Uninterrupted supply of troops with ammunition and food began to play a decisive role in achieving success on the battlefield.
With the advent of more advanced weapons, positional forms of combat in the field were born. Machine guns and magazine rifles forced to completely abandon the dense combat formations of troops, the chains became more rare. The machine gun and powerful fortifications sharply increased the possibility of defense, forced the attackers to combine fire and movement, use the terrain more thoroughly, dig in, conduct reconnaissance, conduct fire preparation of the attack, widely use detours and envelopes, conduct battle at night, and better organize the interaction of troops on the field battle. Artillery began to practice firing from closed positions. The war required an increase in the caliber of guns and the widespread use of howitzers.
The Russo-Japanese war made a much stronger impression on German observers than on the French, British and military of other countries. The reason for this was not so much the better receptivity of the Germans to new ideas, as the tendency of the German army to view military operations from a slightly different angle. After the signing of the Anglo-French agreement (Entente cordiale) in 1904, Kaiser Wilhelm asked Alfred von Schlieffen to develop a plan that would allow Germany to wage war on two fronts at the same time, and in December 1905 von Schlieffen began work on his famous plan. The example of the use of grenades and trench mortars during the siege of Port Arthur showed the Germans that such weapons can be effectively used in the German army if it has to face similar tasks during the invasion of neighboring countries.
Already by 1913, the German military industry began the serial production of the Kugelhandgranate 13 grenade. However, it cannot be said that it was a revolutionary model. Affected by the traditional inertia of thinking of military strategists of that time, which led to the fact that grenades continued to be considered only as a means of siege war. Model 1913 grenades were of little use as an infantry weapon, primarily because of their spherical shape, which made them uncomfortable for a soldier to carry.
The body of the grenade was a revised, but almost unchanged as a whole, the idea of three hundred years ago - a cast iron ball with a diameter of 80 mm with a ribbed notch of a symmetrical shape and a fuse point. The charge of the grenade was a mixed explosive based on black powder, that is, it had a low high-explosive effect, although due to the shape and material of the body of the grenade it gave rather heavy fragments.
The grenade fuse was quite compact and not bad for its time. It was a tube protruding from the body of a grenade by 40 mm with a grating and spacer composition inside. A safety ring was attached to the tube, and there was a wire loop on top, which activated the fuse. The deceleration time was assumed to be about 5-6 seconds. An unconditional positive was the absence of any detonator in the grenade, since its powder charge was ignited by the force of the flame from the remote composition of the fuse itself. This increased the safety of handling the grenade and helped to reduce the number of accidents. In addition, the charge, which had a low blasting rate, crushed the hull into relatively large fragments, giving less "dust" harmless to the enemy than grenades in melinite or TNT equipment.
Russia also took into account the experience of the war. In 1909-1910, artillery captain Rdultovsky developed two samples of remote-fired grenades - a small (two-pound) "for hunting teams" and a large (three-pound) "for a fortress war." The small grenade, as described by Rdultovsky, had a wooden handle, a rectangular box-shaped body made of zinc sheet, and was loaded with a quarter pound of melinite. Plates with cruciform cutouts were placed between the prismatic explosive charge and the walls of the case, and ready-made triangular fragments (0.4 g each in weight) were placed in the corners. On tests, the fragments "pierced an inch board 1-3 sazhens from the explosion site", the throwing range reached 40-50 steps.
Grenades were then considered an engineering tool and belonged to the Main Engineering Directorate (GIU). On September 22, 1911, the SMI Engineering Committee reviewed hand grenades of several systems - Captain Rdultovsky, Lieutenant Timinsky, Lieutenant Colonel Gruzevich-Nechai. The remark about Timinsky's grenade was characteristic: "It can be recommended in case you have to make grenades in the troops," - this is how this ammunition was then treated. But the most interesting was the Rdultovsky sample, although it required factory production. After the revision, the Rdultovsky grenade was accepted into service under the designation "grenade arr. 1912" (WG-12).
Before the outbreak of the First World War, Rdultovsky improved the design of his grenade mod. 1912, and a grenade mod. 1914 (RG-14).
By design, a hand grenade mod. The 1914 grenade did not fundamentally differ from the 1912 model grenade. But there were still changes in the design.
The 1912 model grenade did not have an additional detonator. In a 1914 grenade, when it was loaded with TNT or melinite, an additional detonator made of pressed tetryl was used, but when it was loaded with ammonal, an additional detonator was not used. Equipping grenades with different types of explosives led to a scatter of their weight characteristics: a grenade loaded with TNT weighed 720 grams, with melinite - 716-717 grams.
The grenade was stored without a fuse and with a deflated drummer. Before the throw, the fighter had to put the grenade on the safety and load it. The first meant: remove the ring, pull back the hammer, drown the lever in the handle (the hook of the lever grabbed the head of the drummer), put the safety pin across the trigger window and put the ring back on the handle and the lever. The second is to move the funnel lid and insert the fuse with the long shoulder into the funnel, with the short one into the chute and fix the fuse with the lid.
For throwing, the grenade was clamped in the hand, the ring was moved forward, and the safety pin was moved with the thumb of the free hand. At the same time, the lever compressed the spring and pulled the drummer back with the hook. The mainspring was compressed between the clutch and the trigger. When thrown, the lever was squeezed out, the mainspring pushed the drummer, and he pricked the primer-igniter with a striking edge. The fire was transmitted along the stopin threads to the retarding compound, and then to the detonator cap, which detonated the explosive charge. Here, perhaps, are all modern at that time samples of hand grenades that were in the arsenals of the military when the Great War broke out.
World War I
On July 28, 1914, the First World War began, one of the largest armed conflicts in the history of mankind, as a result of which four empires ceased to exist. When, after an extremely dynamic campaign, the front lines froze in trench warfare and the opponents sat in their deep trenches almost at a stone's throw distance, the history of the Russo-Japanese war repeated itself again, but with one exception - Germany. The Kugelhandgranate spherical grenade was the very first, which was mass-produced in large enough quantities and supplied to the troops. The rest had to improvise again. The troops began to help themselves and began to produce various homemade grenades. More or less effective explosive devices were produced using empty cans, wooden boxes, cartons, pipe scraps and the like, often with wire or nailing. Also, the most diverse were the charges, as well as detonators - simple fuse cords, grating fuses, and so on. The use of such ersatz was often associated with a risk for the throwers themselves. It required a certain dexterity and composure, therefore it was limited to sapper units and small, specially trained infantry units.
In relation to the effort expended on production, the effectiveness of homemade grenades left much to be desired. Therefore, with an increasing pace, more effective and convenient grenades began to be developed, suitable, in addition, for mass production.
It is not possible to consider all the samples that the designers created during the First World War in the volume of one article. Only in the German army during this period 23 types of various hand grenades were used. Therefore, we will focus on two designs that ultimately led to the appearance of the F-1 grenade.
Taking into account the experience of hostilities in 1914, the British designer William Mills has developed a very successful, one might say, a classic model of a grenade. The Mills grenade was adopted by the British Army in 1915 under the name "Mills Bomb No. 5".
The Mills grenade is a defensive anti-personnel fragmentation hand grenade.
Grenade No. 5 consists of a body, explosive charge, shock-safety mechanism, fuse. The body of the grenade is designed to accommodate the explosive charge and the formation of fragments during an explosion. The body is made of cast iron, has transverse and longitudinal notches on the outside. At the bottom of the body there is a hole into which the central tube is screwed. A drummer with a mainspring and a primer igniter are located in the central channel of the tube. The fuse itself is a piece of a fire-conducting cord, at one end of which a primer-igniter is fixed, and at the other end a detonator cap. It is inserted into the side channel of the tube. The housing bore is closed with a screw plug. To use the Mills Bomb # 5 grenade, unscrew the washer on the underside of the grenade, insert the detonator cap into it, and screw the washer back into place. To use the grenade, you need to take the grenade in your right hand, pressing the lever to the body of the grenade; with your left hand, bring together the tendrils of the safety pin (cotter pin) and, pulling the ring, pull the cotter pin out of the lever hole. After that, swinging, throw a grenade at the target and take cover.
The British managed to create a truly outstanding weapon. The Mills grenade embodied the tactical requirements of "trench warfare" for this type of weapon. Small, convenient, this grenade was conveniently thrown from any position, despite its size, it gave a lot of heavy fragments, creating a sufficient area of destruction. But the grenade's greatest advantage was its fuse. This consisted in the simplicity of its design, compactness (there were no protruding parts), and in the fact that by pulling out the ring with the check, the fighter could safely hold the grenade in his hand, waiting for the most favorable moment for throwing, since until the lever held by the hand rises, the retarder will not ignite. German, Austro-Hungarian and some French grenade samples did not have this truly necessary feature. The Russian Rdultovsky grenade, which had such a feature, was very difficult to use, its preparation for the throw required more than a dozen operations.
The French, who suffered no less than the British from German grenades in 1914, also decided to create a grenade with balanced characteristics. Correctly taking into account the shortcomings of German grenades, such as a large in diameter, inconvenient for the arm to cover the body, like a grenade of the 1913 model of the year, an unreliable fuse and weak fragmentation action, the French developed a revolutionary grenade design for its time, known as F1.
Initially, the F1 was produced with a shock ignition fuse, but soon it was equipped with an automatic lever fuse, the design of which, with minor changes, is still used in many fuses of the NATO armies to this day. The grenade consisted of a cast, ribbed, egg-shaped body of steel cast iron, with a fuse hole that was more comfortable to throw than the round or disc-shaped body of German grenades. The charge consisted of 64 grams of explosive (TNT, Schneiderite or less powerful substitutes), and the mass of the grenade was 690 grams.
Initially, the fuse was a design with a percussion igniter and a retarder, after which the detonator primer was burned out, causing the grenade to detonate. It was activated by hitting the fuse cap on a solid object (wood, stone, butt, etc.). The cap was made of steel or brass, had a firing pin on the inside that broke the capsule, like a rifle one, which set fire to the retarder. For safety, the fuses of the F1 grenades were supplied with a wire check that prevented the drummer from touching the capsule. Before the throw, this fuse was removed. Such a simple design was good for mass production, but the use of a grenade outside the trench, when it was not possible to find the same hard object, clearly made it difficult to use the grenade. Nevertheless, its compactness, simplicity and high efficiency have made the grenade immensely popular.
At the moment of the explosion, the body of the grenade explodes into more than 200 large heavy fragments, the initial velocity of which is about 730 m / s. At the same time, 38% of the body mass is used for the formation of lethal fragments, the rest is simply sprayed. The reduced scattering area of the fragments is 75–82 m2.
The F1 hand grenade was quite technological, did not require scarce raw materials, carried a moderate explosive charge and at the same time had great power and gave a large number of lethal fragments for those times. Trying to solve the problem of correct crushing of the hull during an explosion, the designers used a deep notch on the hull. However, combat experience has shown that with modern high-explosive explosives, the body of this shape is fragmented unpredictably during an explosion, and the main number of fragments has a low mass and are low-destructive already within a radius of 20-25 meters, while heavy fragments of the bottom, upper part of the grenade and the fuse have a high energy due to its mass and are dangerous up to 200 m. Therefore, all statements about the fact that the notch has as its purpose the formation of fragments in the shape of the protruding ribs is at least incorrect. The same should be said about the obviously overestimated hitting distance, since the range of continuous destruction by shrapnel does not exceed 10-15 meters, and the effective range, that is, one where at least half of the targets will be hit, is 25-30 meters. The figure of 200 meters is not the range of destruction, but the range of safe removal for their units. Therefore, a grenade should be thrown from behind cover, which was quite convenient in the event of trench warfare.
The shortcomings of the F1 with a shock fuse were quickly addressed. The imperfect fuse was the Achilles' heel of the entire design, and was clearly outdated compared to the Mills grenade. The very design of the grenade, its efficiency and production features did not cause any complaints, on the contrary, they were outstanding.
At the same time, in 1915, in a short time, French designers invented an automatic spring fuse of the Mills type, however, in many respects superior to it.
Now the grenade, ready to throw, could be held in hand for an unlimited time - until a more favorable moment for throwing came, which is especially valuable in a fleeting battle.
A new automatic fuse was combined with a retarder and a detonator. The fuse was screwed into the grenade from above, while Mills's firing mechanism was integral to the body, and the detonator was inserted from below, which was very impractical - it was impossible to visually determine whether the grenade was charged. The new F1 did not have this problem - the presence of a fuse was easily determined and meant that the grenade was ready for use. The rest of the parameters, including the charge and the rate of combustion of the moderator, remained the same, as in the F1 grenade with the ignition of impact ignition. In this form, the French F1 hand grenade, like the Mills grenade, was a truly revolutionary technical solution. Its shape and weight and dimensions were so successful that they served as an example to follow and embodied in many modern models of pomegranates.
During the First World War, F 1 grenades were supplied in large quantities to the Russian army. As in the west, the fighting soon revealed an urgent need to arm the Russian army with hand grenades. They did this in the Main Military-Technical Directorate (GVTU) - the successor of the GIU. Despite the new proposals, grenades arr. 1912 and 1914 Their production is being adjusted in state technical artillery establishments - but, alas, too slowly. From the beginning of the war to January 1, 1915, a total of 395,930 grenades were sent to the troops, mainly arr. 1912 Since the spring of 1915, grenades are gradually transferred to the jurisdiction of the Main Artillery Directorate (GAU) and are included in the number of "main means of artillery supply."
By May 1, 1915, 454,800 grenades mod. 1912 and 155 720 - arr. 1914 Meanwhile, in July of the same year, the Chief of GAU estimates only the monthly need for hand grenades at 1,800,000 pieces, and the Chief of Staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief informs the Chief of the Ministry of War of the Supreme Commander's opinion on the need to procure "revolvers, daggers and, especially, grenades" with reference to experience of the French army. Portable weapons and hand grenades are indeed becoming the main armament of the infantry in trench warfare (at the same time, by the way, there were also means of protection against hand grenades in the form of nets over the trenches).
In August 1915, a demand was made to bring the supply of grenades to 3.5 million pieces per month. The range of use of grenades is growing - on August 25, the Commander-in-Chief of the armies of the North-Western Front asks for the supply of "hand bombs" to the partisan hundred for operations behind enemy lines. By this time, the Okhta and Samara factories of explosives had delivered 577,290 grenades, mod. 1912 and 780 336 garnet arr. 1914, i.e. their production for the whole year of the war was only 2,307,626 pieces. To solve the problem, placing orders for grenades abroad begins. Among other samples supplied to Russia and F1. And along with others, after the end of the World War and the Civil War, the Red Army is inherited.
F1 to F1
In 1922, the Red Army was armed with seventeen types of hand grenades. Moreover, not a single defensive fragmentation grenade of its own production.
As a temporary measure, a Mills system grenade was adopted, the stocks of which in warehouses were about 200,000 pieces. As a last resort, it was allowed to issue French F1 grenades to the troops. French grenades were supplied to Russia with Swiss shock fuses. Their cardboard housings did not provide tightness and the detonation composition became damp, which led to massive grenade failures, and even worse, to lumbago, which was fraught with an explosion in the hands. But given that the stock of these grenades was 1,000,000 pieces, it was decided to equip them with a more perfect fuse. Such a fuse was created by F. Koveshnikov in 1927. The tests carried out made it possible to eliminate the identified shortcomings, and in 1928 the F1 grenade with a new fuse was adopted by the Red Army under the name of the F-1 brand hand grenade with the fuse of the F. V. Koveshnikov.
In 1939, military engineer F. I. Khrameev of the plant of the People's Commissariat of Defense, based on the model of the French F-1 fragmentation grenade, developed a sample of the F-1 domestic defensive grenade, which was soon mastered in mass production. The F-1 grenade, like the French F1 model, is designed to defeat enemy manpower in defensive operations. During its combat use, the throwing fighter had to take cover in a trench or other protective structures.
In 1941, the designers E. M. Viceni and A. A. Poor people developed and put into service instead of Koveshnikov's fuse, a new, safer and simpler fuse for the F-1 hand grenade. In 1942, the new fuse became the same for the F-1 and RG-42 hand grenades, it was named UZRG - "unified fuse for hand grenades." The fuse of an UZRGM type grenade was intended to detonate an explosive charge of a grenade. The principle of operation of the mechanism was remote.
The manufacture of F-1 grenades during the war years was carried out at the plant number 254 (since 1942), 230 ("Tizpribor"), 53, in the workshops of the Povenetsky shipyard, a mechanical plant and a railway junction in Kandalaksha, the central repair shops of the Soroklag NKVD, artel "Primus" (Leningrad), many other non-core other domestic enterprises.
At the beginning of World War II, grenades were equipped with black powder instead of TNT. A pomegranate with such a filling is quite effective, although less reliable. After World War II, the modernized more reliable fuses UZRGM and UZRGM-2 began to be used on F-1 grenades.
Currently, the F-1 grenade is in service in all armies of the countries of the former USSR, and it is also widely used in Africa and Latin America. There are also Bulgarian, Chinese and Iranian copies. Copies of the F-1 can be considered the Polish F-1, the Taiwanese defensive grenade, the Chilean Mk2.
It would seem that the F-1 grenade, as a representative of the classic type of hand grenades with a solid cast iron body of virtually natural crushing and a simple, reliable remote fuse, cannot compete with modern grenades of the same purpose - both in terms of optimal fragmentation action and the versatility of the fuse. … All these tasks are solved in a different way at the modern technical, scientific and production levels. So, in the Russian Army, the RGO grenade (defensive hand grenade) was created, largely unified with the RGN grenade (offensive hand grenade). The unified fuse of these grenades has a more complex device: its design combines distance and percussion mechanisms. Grenade bodies also have a significantly greater efficiency of fragmentation.
However, the F-1 grenade has not been removed from service and will probably be in service for a long time. There is a simple explanation for this: simplicity, cheapness and reliability, as well as time-tested qualities are the most valuable qualities for weapons. And in a combat situation, these qualities are not always possible to oppose the technical perfection that requires large production and economic costs. In support of this, we can say that the British Mills grenade mentioned in the article is formally still in service with the armies of the NATO countries, so in 2015 the grenade also celebrated its 100th anniversary.
Why "lemon"? There is no consensus about the origin of the nickname "lemon", which is called the F-1 grenade. Some people associate this with the similarity of the pomegranate with lemon, but there are opinions that this is a distortion from the surname "Lemon", who was the designer of the English grenades, which is not entirely true, because the French invented F1.
