2 replies to this topic

[Gene Ogden]

I just received the new (maybe not so new but new to me) Peter Pig French VB Rifle Grenade troops. Did they actually do any good (added firepower) or are they just a neat decoration on the battlefield? Is their added value included with the squad? Thanks in advance.

[Bob Benge]

I just received the new (maybe not so new but new to me) Peter Pig French VB Rifle Grenade troops. Did they actually do any good (added firepower) or are they just a neat decoration on the battlefield? Is their added value included with the squad? Thanks in advance.

Hi Gene,

We have stats for a few rifle grenades as I have found stats for them. Right now, German and US only and they were mostly for the AT grenades. Their usage was hit or miss in my opinion as they were smaller and less acurate than the light mortars. For the most part they were used as an AT weapon. Their deployment depended upon how they mounted to the rifle also. Different countries used different methods as I remember that one country, can't think iof which right now, basically had to dedicate the rifle to firing the grenade. Others simply loaded a blank and mounted the grenade. My take and MP is that AP rifle grenades are pretty much useless for the game at the scale we use. The few rifle grenades we have in the WW2 Data Book were used as AT weapons.

[Mark 1]

The French VB rifle grenade was a time-fuzed anti-personnel HE + fragmentation grenade.

It had the peculiar characteristic of bouncing around a bit before going off, which was not the case in most impact-fuzed rifle grenades. The French felt this would be particularly useful in trench warfare, where it could be fired a bit low with some chance of rolling in to the enemy trenches, as well as in fighting in cities where it could be fired through windows and lightly constructed walls to explode within, and fired against backdrop walls to bounce around corners.

However, it was wholly useless for anti-tank work.