Did M24 or M43 Grenade ever have Ball Bearings?

[Persian Gulf]

Has anyone ever heard of German Grenades, M24 or M43, containing Ball Bearings inside the exploding head to increase the anti-personal effect?

[oberjaeger]

no Sir....there are only fragmentation sleeves produced.....

[WWIIBuff]

Has anyone ever heard of German Grenades, M24 or M43, containing Ball Bearings inside the exploding head to increase the anti-personal effect?

That probably would not work anyway. If you replace the explosive material in the head with ball bearings, how would it explode? Even reducing 1/2 of the explosive would really lower the explosive strength wouldn't it?

[MikeP]

These were designed to be offensive weapons. High explosive and concussion.
Idea was to be able to throw them ahead of you while on the advance. The stick helped to do this.
Read a discussion awhile back mentioning that some types throwing were not part of German sports.
Like we throw baseballs and footballs, etc.
One could actually get hurt trying to throw one of our pineapples like a baseball. Note of that was taken in training. Apparently our military has eliminated the grenade toss recently.

[timg]

That probably would not work anyway. If you replace the explosive material in the head with ball bearings, how would it explode? Even reducing 1/2 of the explosive would really lower the explosive strength wouldn't it?

It obviously would if you reduce by 50%, however their would be no need for that reduction.

A proportion of modern kit uses a wound wire liner that is then scored to produce the fragmentation.

If the above method were used on the M24 or even a lining of very small bearings lacquered to the inner face of the can would mean the charge would be little affected ( I believe the charge was contained in a small bag that was placed in the can prior to crimping the threaded end on) However, as stated the grenade was designed for blast and not fragmentation as they wanted that. It made sense to overlay a fragment sleeve if required as you did not disrupt production line and had the best of both worlds as you wished.

The allies on the other hand had to design a blast grenade as our standard ones could not be changed. For instance the small Bakelite example produced by the brits would give mainly blast with Ltd fragments.

Regards

Tim