German Rod Grenade
The Gewehrgranate M1913 was an early German rod grenade designed to let ordinary infantry throw explosive charges beyond hand range. Developed by the army’s ordnance branch before the First World War, it used a simple idea: an explosive head fixed to a long metal rod that was shoved down a rifle barrel and launched with a blank cartridge.
Production was handled by state arsenals and a number of private munitions firms; there’s no single factory famously linked to it because many workshops made parts and assembled rounds. The standard launcher was the Gewehr 98 and related Mauser carbines. To fire one, a soldier fitted the fuze, pushed the rod down the barrel so the head sat clear of the muzzle, chambered a blank, aimed by angle and fired — often from a sandbag or rest for safety and better accuracy.
The projectile was compact and fairly heavy, roughly 170–180 mm for the head and about a kilogram complete with rod. It could reach a few hundred metres in theory, though practical effective ranges were shorter because accuracy depended on firing angle, the blank used and the firer’s skill. The grenade used an impact-style fuze so it detonated on striking the ground or an obstacle; crews could fit a small brake disk for very short-range shots to prevent the round from burying itself.
In use the grenade revealed a key problem: its streamlined shape gave it good ballistics, but that often caused it to dig into the earth before exploding, reducing blast and fragmentation where troops needed them. That shortcoming led to redesigned patterns that sacrificed some flight efficiency to make the bursts more effective against trenches and light cover. Exact production totals for the original run are not recorded in common public accounts; it was made in modest batches before larger production moved to improved designs.
What made this rod grenade important was its low-tech practicality. It let riflemen place explosive effects at greater distances with gear they already had, taught important lessons about flight and terminal effect, and drove rapid improvements in rifle-launched ordnance during the war.
