Posted 10 years ago
Fan45876
(3 items)
I bought this at a rummage sale. The owner told me that in WWI pilots would throw handfuls of these out of their plane as they passed over the trenches. Does anyone have any more information?
WWI aerial weapon? | ||
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Cute.......Does it make a small *Boom* ? Is it still live, or what??
I have never seen anything like it
does the lower end unscrew so u can put in a cap....?
Looks like a Lazy Dog Bomblet. I bought one when I was a kid, and the seller had the same WWI sales pitch. Actually these developed during WWII and used as late as the Vietnam war. They could be dropped by hand or packed into a projectile that would open and release them overhead.
Either way, they were non-explosive anti-personnel weapons that relied on dropping by gravity and those little tail fins to stabilize them on the way down.
Yep, thought the same thing...
http://www.collectorsweekly.com/stories/42783-trench-art-and-bullets
Chrisnp & Amber, you are both right. Had them before. Nasty weapons! I've seen long pencil style also.
The non-explosive anti-personnel weapons that relied on dropping by gravity as described by Chrisnp sounds about right. While the fins stabilized the fall they seem sharp enough to inflict their own damage.
This has gone on long enough! They are called flechettes (a french name). This is the U.S. version. When troops were being attacked with these, they looked for a piece of "zinc" or something hard to hide under. I was told that the long pencil shaped ones I mentioned in #5 was German. That's what I get for assuming that every weapons collector knew what flechettes were. Fan, you can clk. solved.