page_title: Grenade
section_title: Early grenades
hierarchical_section_title: Grenade / History / Early grenades
caption_attribution_description: Ελληνικά: Χειροβομβίδες υγρού πυρός του 10ου και 12ου αιώνα από το κάστρο των Χανίων. Εθνικό και Ιστορικό μουσείο Αθήνας English: Grenades that were filled with liquid fire (Υγρό Πυρ) and caltrops from the fortress of Chania (Χανιά) 10th and 12th century. National Historical Museum, Athens, Greece.
context_page_description: A grenade is an explosive weapon typically thrown by hand, but can also refer to projectiles shot out of grenade launchers. Generally, a grenade consists of an explosive charge, a detonating mechanism, and a firing pin inside the grenade to trigger the detonating mechanism. Once the soldier throws the grenade, the safety lever releases, the striker throws the safety lever away from the grenade body as it rotates to detonate the primer. The primer explodes and ignites the fuze. The fuze burns down to the detonator, which explodes the main charge.
  There are several types of grenades like the fragmentation, high explosive concussion and smoke grenades.
  Fragmentation grenades are probably the most common in modern armies. They are designed to disperse shrapnel on detonation. The body is generally made of a hard synthetic material or steel, which will provide limited fragmentation through sharding and splintering, though in modern grenades a pre-formed fragmentation matrix inside the grenade is commonly used. The pre-formed fragmentation may be spherical, cuboid, wire or notched wire. Most anti-personnel grenades are designed to detonate either after a time delay or on impact.
context_section_description: Rudimentary incendiary grenades appeared in the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, not long after the reign of Leo III (717–741). Byzantine soldiers learned that Greek fire, a Byzantine invention of the previous century, could not only be thrown by flamethrowers at the enemy but also in stone and ceramic jars. Later, glass containers were employed. The use of Greek fire spread to Muslim armies in the Near East, from where it reached China by the 10th century.
  In China, during the Song Dynasty (960–1279 AD), weapons known as Zhen Tian Lei (震天雷, "Sky-shaking Thunder") were created when Chinese soldiers packed gunpowder into ceramic or metal containers. In 1044, a military book Wujing Zongyao ("Compilation of Military Classics") described various gunpowder recipes in which one can find, according to Joseph Needham, the prototype of the modern hand grenade. The mid-14th-century book Huolongjing (火龍經, "Fire Dragon Manual"), written by Jiao Yu (焦玉), recorded an earlier Song-era cast iron cannon known as the "flying-cloud thunderclap cannon" (飛雲霹靂炮; feiyun pili pao). The manuscript stated that (Needham's modified Wade-Giles spelling):
  The shells (pào) are made of cast iron, as large as a bowl and shaped like a ball. Inside they contain half a pound of 'divine fire' (shén huǒ, gunpowder). They are sent flying towards the enemy camp from an eruptor (mu pào), and when they get there a sound like a thunder-clap is heard, and flashes of light appear. If ten of these shells are fired successfully into the enemy camp, the whole place will be set ablaze...
  Granade like devices were also known in ancient India. In a 12th century work Mujmalut Tawarikh based on an Arabic work which is itself based on original Sanskrit work, a terracotta elephant filled with explosives set with a fuse was placed hidden in the van and exploded as the invading army appraoached near.
  The first cast iron bombshells and grenades appeared in Europe in 1467. A hoard of several hundred ceramic hand grenades was discovered during construction in front of a bastion of the Bavarian city of Ingolstadt, Germany dated to the 17th century. Many of the grenades retained their original black powder loads and igniters. Most probably the grenades were intentionally dumped in the moat of the bastion prior to 1723.  In 1643, it is possible that "Grenados" were thrown amongst the Welsh at Holt Bridge during the English Civil War. The word "grenade" originated during the events surrounding the Glorious Revolution in 1688, where cricket ball-sized (8.81 to 9 in (224 to 229 mm) in circumference) iron spheres packed with gunpowder and fitted with slow-burning wicks were first used against the Jacobites in the battles of Killiecrankie and Glen Shiel. These grenades were not very effective (probably because a direct hit would be necessary for the grenade to have effect) and, as a result, saw little use. Grenades were also used during the Golden Age of Piracy: pirate Captain Thompson used "vast numbers of powder flasks, grenade shells, and stinkpots" to defeat two pirate-hunters sent by the Governor of Jamaica in 1721.
  Improvised grenades were increasingly used from the mid-19th century, being especially useful in trench warfare. In a letter to his sister, Colonel Hugh Robert Hibbert described an improvised grenade that was employed by British troops during the Crimean War (1854–1856):
  We have a new invention to annoy our friends in their pits. It consists in filling empty soda water bottles full of powder, old twisted nails and any other sharp or cutting thing we can find at the time, sticking a bit of tow-in for a fuse then lighting it and throwing it quickly into our neighbors’ pit where it bursts, to their great annoyance. You may imagine their rage at seeing a soda water bottle come tumbling into a hole full of men with a little fuse burning away as proud as a real shell exploding and burying itself into soft parts of the flesh.
  In the American Civil War, both sides used hand grenades equipped with a plunger that detonated the device on impact. The Union relied on experimental Ke
caption: Hand grenades filled with Greek fire; surrounded by caltrops. (10th–12th centuries National Historical Museum, Athens, Greece)
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