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Eihandgranate 39 (Egg Grenade)

Weight: 230 g
Length: 7.6 cm
Explosive Content: 112 g

This grenade was a comprimise between size and explosive power. Its main advantage is it was easily stored and transported, while its main disadvantage was its lack of killing power when compared to the "Stielhandgranate 24" (112 grams of explosives compared to 165 grams).

They were primed similarly to the "Stielhandgranate 24", by the pulling of a priming cord.

Later in the war, metal for producing the grenades became short, and cheap alternatives were produced. These alternatives were cheap in construction as well as in cost and proved be fragile weapons.

Most alternative grenades were made of concrete, scrap metal fragments, and small amounts of sub standard explosives. These grenades were fragile in nature and proved to be much less effective than normal grenades.

From Purnell's History of the Second World War:

"An alternative issue to the German Army was the ' Egg Grenade ', an oval light steel device about the size of an orange. Screwed into the top was a dark blue button; unscrewing this revealed a string, and the ignition was just the same as the stick grenade - pull the string and throw. But the Egg Grenade lent itself to some unpleasent modifications; the blue igniter could be removed and replaced with a red-capped version which had a delay of only one second, which was of little use as a hand grenade, but if left lying around a position after a retreat often gave unpleasant surprises to any new arrival who didn't know the colour code. Even more devasting was an unoffical modification dreamed up on the Russian Front. The standard blue igniter set was removed and, using two pairs of pliers, dismantled and the safety fuse removed. The detonator was now screwed back directly into the friction igniter and the grenade was left lying around for a Russian soldier to pick up when the Germans left the position. Of course, since the blue cap looked normal, Ivan was likely to pick it up to throw at the retreating German; he unscrewed the cap, pulled the string, and there was an instantaneous explosion which usually killed him."

Source: Germany's World War Two Weapons