Vintage Ordnance Company, LLC SPECIALIZING IN EXHIBIT GRADE HISTORIC ARMS & REPLICAS, MUSEUM & MOVIE CONSULTING AND MORE!
  • Cast Iron WWII MkII Pineapple Grenade with M212 / M228 Fuse

    $35.00
    Cast Iron Body WWII MkII Style Pineapple Grenade with a recent manufacture M212/M228 fuse body, spoon and pin

    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 fuse, which is similar to the M204A1 fuse used on post WWII production Mk II fragmentation grenades (as used in the Korean War), but the safety spoon on the old fuses was longer and curved like the WWII era ones were.  (The M206 fuse used on the M21 training grenades had the same fuse geometry too.)  This grenade has a functional spring striker mechanism in it that will flip the lever off when the pin is pulled out.

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