Cast Iron Body WWII MkII Style Pineapple Grenade with M10A2 Fuse - BACK-ORDER 4/2022
Sometimes you don't need a perfect replica for your programs. We offer this modified, cast iron body, copy of the post WWII M21 practice "pineapple" grenade at the request of museum staff and re-enactors looking for a reasonable facsimile of WWII MkII grenade with realistic weight for use in living history demonstrations, throwing, etc. Compared to WWII MkII and M21 grenade bodies, the post-war M21 practice grenade body had a more rounded, knobby, fragment shape. Cast, at the Richmond Foundry & Manufacturing Company, in Richmond, Virginia, perhaps as late as the early 1950s, they all bore a distinctive "RFX" cast into the side, vertically, on three adjoining fragments. Unlike the WWII era M21 training grenade bodies which were the same as those used on the live Mk II grenades, the "RFX" bodies were only used for training grenades and were all painted blue. That being said, they look more like a WWII fragmentation grenade than they do anything else, and most museum visitors will only notice, and remember, the weight and will never notice, much less know, the difference between flat and rounded fragments.
To make the M21 look more like the WWII Mk II, we painted it as such (olive drab body with yellow band) and added our reproduction M10A2 type fuse with pin, spring striker, and properly fitting spoon. (Unlike others, our reproduction spoons fit and stay on the fuse body.) When you pull the pin, the striker will flip the spoon off the fuse just like the originals.