While rifle-launched grenades date back hundreds of years, they first came into widespread use during World War One, on all sides of the conflict. The first years of the war saw the use of rod grenades, but their downsides (mediocre accuracy, bulkiness, and a propensity to damage rifle bores) led...

The Japanese Army and Navy of the 1920s and 30s often used quite different equipment, and had a substantial interservice rivalry. Flare guns were one example of this separation, with the services using not just different flare pistols, but totally different flare cartridges. The Navy used a 28mm ...

The Japanese Navy used several different types of flare pistols during World War Two (and in the decades before), but the most impressive looking of the bunch was the three-barreled Type 90 (not to be confused with the two-barreled model also designated Type 90). The three barrels were not simply...

The standard American grenade launching system in World War One was the Vivien-Bessiere, borrowed directly form the French. It had been adopted by France in 1916, replacing copies of the British Martin-Hale rod grenades. The V-B was a cup type launcher using a pass-through type of grenade and sta...

In 1928, the Italian army adopted a rifle-mounted grenade launcher. It was a potentially interesting weapon which wound up being fatally handicapped by the use of ineffective grenades. The basic idea was to mount a second rifle receiver to the side of a Model 91TS carbine, but with an integral gr...

In 1917, the German military issued a contract for the construction of 2500 of these unique and impressive 4-barreled flare launchers. They were manufactured by 7 different companies (this example being from Gebrüder Rempt), and were intended for the illumination of airfields. To this end, they d...

Once it became apparent that the MAS-36 was going to be used in a substantial amount of frontline combat (to the contrary of its intended role as a reserve or secondary rifle), it became important to provide it with grenade launching capability. The French military really liked rifle grenades as ...

The Mk18 Mod0 grenade launchers was developed by the Honeywell corporation in 1962, and was the first weapon in what would became a category of high volume grenade launchers used by the US military. The modern iterations are all self-loading, but this first example was fired by a manual crank han...

The Stopper is a simple 37mm single shot riot control gun designed by Andries Piek in 1980. The South African police services were at that time using 37mm guns made by Federal Labs in the US, dating back to the 1930s, and the international embargo on South Africa made it impossible to get parts a...

A new very light and portable mortar to replace the V-B rifle grenade was one of the facets of the French plan for rearmament and modernization after World War Two. The concept for the weapons that would become the L.Gr. Mle 37 was first requested in 1924 - but like so almost all the other parts ...

The OICW - Objective Individual Combat Weapon - was part of a program in the 1980s and 1990s to replace the whole lineup of uS small arms with a consolidated group of new high-tech ones. The M4, M16, and M203 would be replaced by the OICW, the M240, M2, and Mk 19 would be replaced by the Objectiv...

The Inkunzi PAW (Personal Assault Weapon) is a 20mm shoulder fired semiautomatic grenade launcher designed by Tony Neophytou (and previously known as the Neopup). It is a creative and very interesting weapon system, both from a mechanical perspective and also from a question of practical applicat...

Today we have a chance to take one of the reproduction China Lake 40mm grenade launchers out to the range! We are using practice chalk rounds...let's see how it goes! Only a handful of these were made, and perhaps we will find out why they were not more seriously considered by the military...

Possibly the coolest small arm used by the United States in the Vietnam War was the China Lake 40mm pump action grenade launcher. Only 24 of these were made, each fitted by hand. Of those, 2 went to MACVSOG, 2 to Army Force Recon, and the remaining 20 the the Navy SEALS. They were used as an ambu...

In 2004, a trio of small arms enthusiasts began an effort to reproduce the Vietnam-era China Lake 40mm pump action grenade launcher. They displayed their first prototype at SHOT Show, and (not surprisingly) got quite a lot of interest in it. Their production plans quickly went form 1 to 3 to 10 a...

*NOTE: Apologies for the sound issues, Vic had problems with his mic during filming and had to overdub* Before the now-famous M203 came the XM148, developed by Colt to fulfil the US Army's requirement for an underbarrel grenade launcher for the M16. Over 20,000 were made but, as Vic explains, a n...

Thanks to Milkor USA, I have a chance today to do some shooting with both the M32 and M32A1 rotary grenade launchers they make for the US military. I'm using 40mm chalk training ammunition, with some steel targets at about 75-85 meters. In live fire, it's quite clear how much of an improvement th...

The USMC adopted the Milkor USA M32A1 rotary multiple grenade launcher (MGL) in 2012. The history of this weapon goes back to South Africa, where designer Andries Piek was inspired to create it after building the 37mm "Stopper" for the South African police and then seeing a Manville 25mm gas laun...