Jam tin grenade
Australian improvised hand grenade
The double cylinder, Nos. 8 and No. 9 hand grenades, also known as the "jam tins", are a type of improvised explosive device used by the British and Commonwealth forces, notably the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) in World War I (1914–1918). The jam tin, or bully beef tin, was one of many grenades designed by ANZACs in the early part of the First World War in response to a lack of equipment suited to trench warfare.
Background
In late 1914, once the Germans superiority in grenades and trench mortars became apparent, the British appointed Colonel Louis Jackson, Assistant Director of Fortifications and Works to develop British equivalents, including the Jam tin in collaboration with the Roburite & Ammonal Company.
While some accounts including James Dunn's The War Infantry Knew (1938) suggests that improvised Jam tins were used in France as early as December 1914, Jackson's own account claimed that the No. 8 and No. 9 grenades were introduced first while the improvised versions appeared later. According to Saunders, the Bengal Sappers and Miners used their pre-war experience to build improvised grenades including the Jam tin grenade, which was later standardized for mass production as the Nos 8 and 9 until the Mills bomb could be produced in sufficient numbers for the troops.
Design
The grenade was an inner can of explosive with an outer can of metal fragments or bearing balls.
“Jam tin grenade” enters the record as australian improvised hand grenade. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what grenade, Australian and improvised can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Jam tin grenade” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.