German use of wooden 7.92mm rounds in combat

[Zygmunt]

The snot-head weighs 0.3 grammes?

As in about one third of one gramme? Is that right?

I think when we talk about these 'snot-heads' we are talking about not much more than wadding. This may not be the same thing as a round loaded with a full(ish) charge of propellant and a solid wooden bullet. Not that I would expect much accuracy or lethality from such a round, but I have to ask; Could these Finnish snot heads be used to launch a rifle grenade? If not, should we perhaps be comparing the German rounds to a typical grenade-launching cartridge?

[aardvark]

I have one of the German wooden tipper blanks[S*],the grenade launching round looks a little different.It has a crimp part way down the case neck,my S* round has no crimp part way down the neck.It is possible that there were infact two wooden tipped blanks one a lightly loaded practice round and a more powerful round for gernade launching.

[bigbuddha]

Right, is straight once and for all, a wooden round, even if it was made from the toughest hardwood could NOT BE EFFECTIVE. If the wooden round survived leaving the end of the barrel in one piece, it would not fly straight, you could not hit anything accurately that was more than 2 metres away and the chances of hurting anyone with a wooden round are NIL. You might hit them with a little bit of hot sawdust, but only of they were very close, any more then a couple of metres away they would have thought you fired a blank at them, they would see the flash, hear the bang and that would be it.

I've seen lots of types of 'frangible' ammo fired, made from wood, plastic (which melts) compressed sand (which sprays warm sand from the muzzle), none of them are dangerous at all, the only danger in any of them is the same as with a blank round - getting burnt by the muzzle blast.

[Fjy]

Finnish wooden rounds are totally harmless, all wartime normal and MG's (with white tip) and also modern rounds. Same goes with German wooden rounds. The bullet is as light as Finnish one, made by breakable wood. It either breaks or loose it's effect after few meters.
Does anyone know what Germans used as filling material inside the case? It looks like animal hair and smells like it when burned, too.

[AvD]

The Airborne Museum of Ste Mère Eglise in Normandy shows a wooden bomb that was dropped by an English pilot on a wooden German tank!! I have a picture of it somewhere, but have to dig it up. This bomb is about the size of a one and a half liter plastic Cola bottle. I think it is only to be considered as a masterpiece of military humour (just imagining the RAF pilot knowing there were wooden tanks on the Normandy airports and carving this wooden bomb while drinking a beer in his army pub).

[Simon H]

This isn't directly related to my original thread but I thought that fellow forum members might find it mildly amusing (sorry if you don't understand our English humour).
I also apologise in advance to Marcus if this seems extemely off topic!
I recently interviewed a veteran of the Cassino battles in Italy. During our time together he recalled his early experiences as a member of the Territorial Army "Terriers".

On an exercise in England during 1940 his Battalion were split in two as part of a "wargame". He and his section were riding in a 15cwt truck. His friend George was armed with a Bren gun. As there were problems using ordinary blank rounds the Bren was loaded with blanks with Balsawood tips. He recalled that these rounds were not "effective" but simply disintergated when fired.
The truck pulled up alongside a hedge, whereupon an "enemy" soldier popped up and was about to say "Your Dead" or words to that effect, when George turned and emptied an entire magazine in his direction! When the cloud of wood dust has blown away the surprised "enemy" soldier was still standing there, but was covered in sawdust.

This may seem to confirm what others have said regarding the Normandy veterans experience with German wooden rounds, but I still have an open mind.

[finnjaeger]

I have a personal view on this subject: some of u said that wooden bullets are totally harmless, but i have witnessed an accident during my service in finnish army. After one combat training in forest, we were cleaning our weapons (had those wooden bullets in our guns) one of my friend had forgot to take w-b off this gun and when he started to clean his gun it went off, a friend of mine was sittin about 3 meters away and he got that bullet in his head. Bullet went by scratching his head, he fell on his back, got bloody haircut and was disoriented/passed out, for a few seconds, i even thought he had died because he didn´t move for a while.
Luckily it was just a close call.

regards, TK

[Erik E]

Hallo!

The name of this cartridge is Platzpatrone 33. It was used by The German
army together with most of the other countries in Europe as blanks.

These wooden projectiles are not solid. the thikness of the "walls" in the projectile is 1-2mm`s and the rest is hollow. The pressure of the gunpowder will break this wood in pieces, but it is still ofcourse a deadly blast whitin a few meters, mostly becouse of the gunpowder.

If it helps, I have a catalog written in 1941, describing ammunition below 36mm captured by the Germans. After a quick look, I found that allmost every country mentioned used wooden ammunition for practice..
A few examples:

Belgium:
13,2mm Platzpatrone 829(b) Ex- Cal 13,2 H en Blanc (Holzgeschoß)

France:
7,7mm Platzpatrone 279(f) Ex- Cartouche â blanc de 7,7 (Holzgeschoß)

Holland:
6,5mm Platzpatrone 159(h) Ex- Losse patrone No2 (Holzgeschoß)

Norway:
6,5mm Platzpatrone 159/2(n)Ex 6,5mm Løs Mitraljøsepatron(Holzgeschoß)

11,25mm Platzpatrone 639(n) Ex- 45cal. Løsskudd (Holzgeschoß)


Erik E

[Matt L]

In addition to a wooden bullet being a senseless combat weapon and no way to save materials, I would point out that in 'Backbone of the Wehrmacht'- the book on the K98k- it's stated that Germany was producing something like 11 million rounds of 7,92mm ammunition PER DAY at one point, so obviously materials weren't that big an issue. The conversion to using steel 9mm bullets (the black ones) instead of jacketed lead was a change made to conserve materials, but I'm not aware of anything of that sort for the 7,92mm ammuniton.

There were so many crazy myths passed between soldiers during the war that it's entirely possible this is one of them. Not that the vet is simply continuing the myth, but that he heard it and then upon thinking some rounds sounded different and later finding some Holzgeschoss believing he'd found evidence. A 19 year-old kid can be forgiven for thinking that they'd been used, but it's not likely. I suppose if you're being overrun and you have nothing else to shoot- maybe in desperation you might these up, but I still have trouble believing it was anything other than a mistake.

[ChristopherPerrien]

I recall a story that the British built a wood fake factory complex to fool the Germans into wasting bombs on it instead of the real factory close by.

The Germans did bomb it, but they used wooden bombs.

[Mauser K98k]

Does anyone know what Germans used as filling material inside the case? It looks like animal hair and smells like it when burned, too.

Probably Gun Cotton. Cotton soaked with Nitric and Sulphuric acid.

Even hardwood bullets that did not disintegrate, loaded with a full powder charge, would quickly 'tumble' after leaving the muzzle, and would be so light that air resistance would stop it almost immediately. I doubt it would go 50 meters.

[Von_Mannteufel]

I believe most modern rifle grenades are lauched with the standard service round.

I don't know the kind of riffle grenades you have in the U.S. but here in Brazil there is a special bullet for firing those (I belive the 7.62 NATO would just blow the grenade up).