The Walkley Bomb - Sheffield 1937
The following report appeared in The Times dated 19th March 1937 under the title
SAVED BY THE BELT
A Mills Bomb by the way is the classic design of a grooved cast iron 'pineapple' hand grenade with a central striker held by a close hand lever and secured with a pin. Although the segmented body helps to create fragments when the grenade explodes, the casing was grooved to make it easier to grip and not as an aid to fragmentation. The Mills Bomb was a defensive grenade: after throwing the user had to take cover immediately. A competent thrower could manage thirty metres with reasonable accuracy, but the grenade could throw lethal fragments further than this. It could be fitted with a flat base and fired with a blank cartridge from a rifle with a 'cup' attachment, giving it a range of around 150 metres.
King James Street ran down from the bottom of Freedom Road in Walkley going towards the Barracks at Hillsborough.
"the bomb had been put out of the way under the kitchen copper by Miss Barlow" mmmm!
Sources
The Times dated 19th March 1937
This page was last updated on 09/06/08 10:07