Dutch V40 mini fragment grenade

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Newfoundlandrover

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Hi Lads, Just acquired a Dutch V40 mini fragment grenade. I've never encountered one of these before and was quite surprised at its golfball size. I was told that these were made for American and Canadian special forces use and there quite rare. This is not like the dummy practice grenades we all see @ gun shows,...its actually mechanically functional with its spring striker still operational. The detonator and charge have of course been removed,but the detonator collar and retention screw are still present. Anyone else have one of these little wonders in their collection?
 
For Newfoundlandrover, here is the photo of his grenade:

8137246017_3688e82b09.jpg


-Steve
 
In 1983 I was posted to CFE and with Recce Sqn RCD, the Sqn threw the last of the V40s in CFE stocks and the CF never bought any more (so I was told) as they had a high failure rate. It took a very long day to throw the lot with an inordinate number blinds. The beauty of the V40 was one could carry a load of them. The down sides are the rubberized rip open package left no room to inspect the device unlike the cardboard tubed grenades when opening the package so the person packing the V40 at the plant better be doing that job right. The small size also does not "fit" in a hand very well and the aforementioned rubber package hardened with time and was a ##### to open (not uncommon to see a V40 drop to the ground upon opening) and being small it lacked a certain "omphah" when going off. Lastly I had heard that there where cases of the V40 detonating, without any delay, once thrown. Others no doubt could add to this posting. BTW the safety ring is not off a V40 on your greande as the V40 was black and had a "pointed" area on it, the whole ring passed around the body of the grenade as a safety feature. I used the rings for the zippers on my rubber gum boots for the longest time, I will see if I could find one for you.
 
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Wow!....very interesting read...thanks for sharing. There's nothing like first hand experience with a piece of ordinance to validate it. I'm aware that the safety ring is missing, I was able to find some very detailed schematics online. Very interesting little unit.
 
What was its intended use? Yes, I know, "blowing s**t up". I am just wondering if they were a special use type of grenade, with a specific mission such as clearing rooms without bringing the house down or some such thing?


Mark
 
Back in 1982/83/84 we used them in live fire training (bunker clearing ) in the Airborne Regt .
But they were dangerous due to being too small to fit in hand well and get a good grip on in the cold,outside.
I heard they were deemed too dangerous to use and we never saw them after 1984 if i remember correctly.
But yes the pull rings were great for coat zippers.
But I remember the pull ring being a different shape than the one in the photo.They had a pointed corner off the circle.which held the safety pin, i think.
 
I know quite a bit about the V40 story. I was involved in its being taken out of service. It was purchased because some wizard of a staff officer who figured out that, if a grenade weighed only 1/4 lb, a soldier could carry 4 of them as easily as he could an M67 (the US grenade at the time) which weighed 1 lb. Grenades are only effective if thrown into a trench, bunker or some other enclosed space. If someone has four chances to hit his target, the probability of doing so increases dramatically.

The first problem with this theory is that the practical range of a handthrown grenade is not much more than 30 metres. If you are that close to an enemy that is trying his very best to kill you, do you think you are going to get a chance to throw a second grenade, let alone a third or fourth?

The second problem is that the target effect of any high explosive, fragmenting device - bomb, shell or grenade - increases exponentially with an increase in the weight of framenting metal and the weight of explosive driving it. For example, if you double the weight of an HE fragmenting device, you will get perhaps four times the target effect. That's why hand grenades all weight about 1 lb - it's the most an average man can throw, bending his elbow. (The big exceptions, of course were the No.5 Mills bomb or the No. 36 that replaced it, which both weighed about 1 1/2 lb. They had to be thrown with a stiff arm much as one would throw a cricket ball.) The V40 weighed only 1/4 lb so was not likely to be very lethal.

At that time the V40s were all held in war reserve. What a dumb idea! If we went to war, our soldiers would be given hand grenades they had never seen before. We decided to start issuing V40s for training and both they and the M67s were allocated half and half. Then the trouble started.

The first incident was when we a V40 explode in a soldier's hand on a grenade range in Germany. He lost most of one arm and part of his other (mainly because of a trained first aider being on the scene) but survived. I have never heard of anyone else ever surviving when a grenade exploding in his hand. We thought we should get rid of the V40 then because it was obviously not effective but the ammunition folks objected because they had just spent a lot on a completed a contract to replace all the detonators and didn't want to waste all that money.
((I've got to tell the rest of this story in another pot because I can't fit it in here. ))
 
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