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grenade igniter ??????????

spotter

UBIQUE
Staff member
Premium Member
The igniter in the attached picture came in a box of grenades and other bits i got the other day,, can someone identify it for me please
 

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That is a Finnish grenade fuze. I do not recall the designation right now but if noone comes up with it I'll find it next week when I am back.
 
Allan. I think it's Finnish as well . I've had several of them over the years & there can be slight differences . Mike.
 
thanks for the quick response,,its the one at the bottom right of the page on Lex,s site ,minus the cover and clip
 
Connection thread looks too small and too coarse for Finnish. Finnish grenades have had since 1932 until present day only W 16,5mm x 1/18" thread, which is rather fine.

Allan, can you measure thread on yours to estimate in which grenade in the world it may fit.
 
Thanks to SPOTTER I now have one of these fuzes in my hands. In pictures you see on right an ordinary Finnish M32 egg grenade fuze for comparison. Thread connection in the "new" version is W"-12.
I have carefully measured and compared it to Finnish WW2 grenade manuals and have no doubts that it wouldn't be of Finnish origin. But the only grenade having been used here with the same thread is German M17 egg. However in all manuals only German BZ17 has been described for these.
Further not a single specimen of this fuze version has popped up here locally so far.
A normal length M32 fuze delay tube is too long to fit in M17 egg, therefore ( I think ) the body length has been extended outwards to maintain the same delay time. In first picture see the fuze attached on M17 egg.

Thus a wild estimation: In 1930's Finnish weapons and ordnance industry had very few orders from our army and they desparately tried to find export markets. Smaller lots of all kind of weapons and ordnace was delivered near all around the world.
So, this could also be an export project to somewhere ( also refer to Bulgarian made fuzes for M17 eggs ).
 

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