13–040-913

NAME – Model 1913 Disk Grenade

NAME (NATIVE) – Diskushandgranate 13 alter Art [Discus hand grenade 13 Old model]

COMMON NAMES – “Turtle,” “Tortoise,” or “Oyster” grenade (British)

TYPE – Fragmentation hand grenade

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN – Germany

DATE OF MANUFACTURE – 1913

WIDTH (DIAMETER) – 8 cm (3.2 in)

WEIGHT – 0.36 kg (12.7 oz)

EFFECT – Blast and fragmentation

BURST RADIUS – 8 m (8.7 yards)

FUSE TYPE – Centrifugally-armed with multiple percussion caps

FUSE INITIATION – Impact

FUSE DELAY – None

FILLER – TNT

FILLER WEIGHT – 0.020 kg (0.71 oz) in two 10 g (0.35 oz) cloth bags

AVERAGE RANGE – 40 m (44 yards)

COLOR CODE – Field gray or black painted body, brass fuze caps

MARKINGS – May have paper label on body reading “Vor Gebrauch Sprengkapsel Einsetzen” [Before use, insert detonator}

MANUFACTURER – State arsenals

STATUS – Obsolete

SERVICE – Imperial German military

    The design of this grenade was considered innovative at the time, but proved to regularly fail to explode during its use in trench warfare. Some of the failures of the grenade were due to its being sensitive to moisture.  The impact of the grenade with mud also caused a high level of failures to fire since impact with the mud did not create sufficient shock to the grenade’s firing system.