The Mills Grenade Collectors site.
Welcome to my Hand Grenade Web site, I have collected British Grenades for the past 12 years, My main interest is the Mills Grenade as you will see from the following pages. I also collect WW2 German Bombs, Bomb Fuses and SOE Items.
Experimentation pre- WWI by a Belgian designer named Roland led to the first self-igniting hand grenade. The War Department believed their use in trench-warfare would be invaluable and an engineer and designer named William Mills, of Birmingham was asked to look at improving both the mechanism and means of manufacture. Mills redesigned the grenade to make it safer and more efficient, and decided to manufacture it by casting. By 1916 the Mills, No.5 Mk 1 hand grenade was in wide scale production by four British contractors, including the Mills Manufacturing Company in Birmingham. During the course of WWI, some 75 million Mills grenades were manufactured and William Mills was knighted for his services in 1922. An improved variant of his grenade, the No. 36, remained in service as the standard British hand grenade until 1972.
Some of the pictures I have borrowed from other Collectors & friends, These are marked with a Red. X All the pictures are in high resolution so please be patient when loading a page, it will be worth it for the picture Quality.
About me. Up Dated 18th August 2008. i..lls bomb Mills bomber rocket propelled grenade v1 buss bomb v2 rocket
No5 Mills Grenade Reproduction Warning. detonator
Stuart Macrae's "Toy Box". Millsgrenade base
No5 Mk1 Grenades.mb box
No23 Mk1,2,3 Grenades.
No36 M Mk2 Grenades & Base plugs
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Books that are worth getting if you are into items on this site.
Weapons of the WW2 Tommy. David B. Gordon.
This is on of the best books on the market for a whole array of weapons and devices used by the Allies in WW2. http://www.visualcollector.com/Tommy/TommyWeapons/TommyWeapons.htm
Hits since 29-01-08