From: wwarf@copper.ucs.indiana.edu (wayne john warf)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: White Phosphorus
Date: 13 Apr 92 03:52:03 GMT
Organization: Indiana University


From wayne john warf <wwarf@copper.ucs.indiana.edu>

In article <1992Apr11.003529.20667@cbnews.cb.att.com> m91pma@bellatrix.tdb.uu.se (Patrik Manlig) writes:
>
>From m91pma@bellatrix.tdb.uu.se (Patrik Manlig)
>
>brims@bnkl01.astro.ucla.edu writes:
>
>:   During WWII there was a British anti-tank weapon which consisted of a
>: glass globe filled with white phosphorus and water. It had a handle
>: attached and was covered in some kind of glue. Some brave soul was
>: supposed to stick it to a tank as it passed. I think I'd rather throw
>: it.... Don't know if they were ever used in anger but now and again old
>: stockpiles from the Home Guard turn up. 
>
>  If you stuck it to a tank, how were you supposed to ignite it? Anyway,
> getting close enough to a tank to be able to place it on the tank maybe
> wouldn't be that horrible. The germans used an Anti-Tank Magnetic Mine
> that had to be placed on the tank to attack. It was apparently rather
> effective, too (once placed, that is).
>
Here's what "The Encyclopedia of Infantry Weapons of World War II" by
Ian Hogg had to say:

Grenade, Hand, No. 74, the sticky bomb:

Filling: 1lb, 4 oz. Nitroglycerin
Fusing: 5 second delay

The grenade no 4, known always as the "sticky bomb," was developed privately,
i.e. not in a govt. establishment, in the summer of 1940 as an anti-tank
grenade. It was offered for trial but turned down on grounds of safety;
the device was a spherical glass flask filled with nitro-glycerin; the
neck of the flask was formed into a screw-thread and a handle was attached
by a connecting ring. This handle contained a spring driven striker, fuse
and detonator, operated by a lever, similar to that used in the 36M 
grenade. The outer surface of the flask was covered in stockinette material
and coated with a tenacious adhesive bearing some resemblance to bird-lime.
Two thin metal hemispheres, spring loaded to fly apart when a pin was
released, were closed over the flask ansd secured to the handle so that 
the grenade could be carried and stored without sticking to everything it 
touched.

Aftefusal by the more conventional authorities, it was offered
to MD1, the dept. responsible for developing and producing less orthodox
weapons for clandestine organizations, and through them it entered service,
eventually being issued to the army and Home Guard, as well as being
supplied to partisan units in Occupied Europe.

The first design was not entirely satisfactory, the striker giving misfires 
and the glass flask being prone to leaks and breakage, and it came before 
the Ordnance Board in Sept. 1940 with a request that they improve the
design. Since they were the people who had refused it in the first place,
they were less than pleased to find themselves burdened with the problem 
of turning it into a workable proposition, and their first report contained
the phrase, "the whole article is most objectionable," which was a fair
comment. 
-- 
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