@setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world
@setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world avatar

setsneedtofeed

@setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world

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US anti-armor grenade packed inside a foam football, 1973 (lemmy.world)

“Since a regulation-size football weighs 14 ounces, it was considered feasible to make a shaped charge grenade within this weight limitation. In addition, most US troops are familiar with throwing footballs,” according to the Army’s test report for the weapon....

setsneedtofeed, (edited )
@setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world avatar

Unfortunately, not compatible with a shaped charge.

Squashhead, maybe, but squashheads need a lot of rotation to work well and I don’t think even a two time touchdown in one game high school quarterback has enough of a throwing arm for them.

setsneedtofeed,
@setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world avatar

Is there a link source to the body text?

I am curious how far this idea went in testing, and what if any scenario was conceived for this. I know the U.S. was staring down the idea of a tank rush in Europe at the time, but even as a last ditch weapon, this seems far fetched.

Most anti-tank grenades come with cute little parachutes with the most ideal deployment being tossed from above, from a building or bridge.

setsneedtofeed, (edited )
@setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world avatar

Well, this football thing is terrible for a lot of reasons, but the fragmentation radius of a shaped charge munition that is not designed to make secondary frag is actually very low. (Many munitions will intentionally tack some frag on because usually there’s no reason not to, but it’s easy to design a munition excluding extra frag) At that point the blast radius becomes the main factor, which again is relatively low.

Throwing this thing at a tank or armored vehicle is unlikely to make it instantly catastrophically explode. Even the later MPIM munitions, which were almost certainly better explosively designed were only really expected to score mobility kills consistently.

The bigger question is: Do you feel comfortable getting within throwing distance of a vehicle with at least one machinegun on it to toss this thing that will probably just make the crew angry at you?

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