Rifle Grenades

[shmitty]

The Over the Wire additions of the Panzerfaust, Molotov thingytails, and Satchel Charges got me thinking about other small arms equipment that would be appropriate for AE:WWII. One of the better ideas I came up with would be Rifle Grenades. They certainly had looked cool in Band of Brothers ayway. This gives a brief history of the US use of rifle grenades in WWII.

www.inert-ord.net/usa03a/usarg/



But, how does that relate to AE:WWII? Well, I can't find much about other countries use of them, but the US seemed to use them quite a bit. So, here were my thoughts for some rules on Rifle Grenades in AE:WWII.


Rifle Grenades

Any unit of US infantry equipped with an M1 Garand may trade their hand grenades for Rifle Grenades which have the following profile:

Rifle Grenades 12" Range 6+D6 1:2 .5" AoE, Minimum Range 6"



What do you think sirs? It is not as good as a Panzerfaust, so it seems fair for the soldier to keep his rifle. I considered Cumbersome also, but so few units would have the 3APs to move and shoot it I figured it didn't matter.

[skorzeny]

I know the Japanese also used them, but am uncertain about other nations. More digging to do

[lawndart]

I've got some historical American and German figures that are carrying grenade launchers - and would be interested in seeing stats for them. I would think that they would replace the regular rifle.

[evernevermore(john)]

Well here's a little historical background for how rifle grenades work. In WW2 the predominant type of rifle used to fire a grenade was a bolt action rifle. So in an American rifle squad there would be one man with a Springfield 1903 rifle. Now the reason for this was the predominant use of blank cartridges to fire the grenade, which would not properly cycle a gas operated semiautomatic rifle like a Garand, or something obscure like the rare late model StG45s that had the step in the barrel for a grenade. A gas operated rifle would have to be manually cycled to eject the spend cartridge, not to mention loaded before hand with the right cartridge. Now as to loading the grenade I dont know how many action points that would take but it consisted of slipping the grenade over the muzzle of the modified rifle and firing. I do know that there were grenades made with a special armored cup to catch a live bullet if fired by one accidentally - but I dont know any hard info for availability or distribution. I know that the rifles that were issued for the grenade launcher troops were specially modified with fixed grenade launching sights and a modified muzzle that was designed to accept the base of the grenade (standard rifles having different diameter barrels and occasionally front sights that got in the way). I know that the StG44 had a variant that was issued with a barrel modified to accept grenades but no sights for them and there is no record of the troopers issued those rifles ever being issued the grenades to go with them. The US used the Springfield rifle, Germans used Kar98k and the Russians the Mosin Nagant (these are the ones I have seen actual archival images of)

A quick internet search turned up these sites that have some additional info
grenadelauncher.com/
www.inert-ord.net/usa03a/usarg/ (US specifically)
www.lonesentry.com/articles/ttt/german-rifle-grenades.html (german)
www.inert-ord.net/index.html#home

[skorzeny]

Probably be a good idea then to have the mechanics work where it costs an AP to fit the rifle grenade to the weapon, but that you don't have to fire it in the same turn.

[recon63]

I believe that the British used bullet-trap grenades for the lee enfield, rather than using blank rounds to fire rifle grenades.

[sylvas]

rifle grenades were used by all the countries in WWII, with varying levels of success...the Soviet versions tended to explode either in the barrels or just after firing, so they were rarely used by any troops except the Ukrainians (who were given them by Commissars since the NKVD didn't care for them anyway)...

the Japanese versions were very short ranged due to production issues, but they saw service in Okinawa...

the most reliable versions were the American versions (of which they had 2 versions, including an AP version)...

[skorzeny]

The other nice thing about Japanese rifle grenades (and grenades in general) was their erratic timing system. Sometimes the grenade would explode before it hit, other times the target would have enough time to throw it back!