Hi guys, thanks for tuning in another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, today I'm taking a look at a really cool pre-World War Two
Italian close support grenade launcher.
This is kind of the 1920s Italian version of the current
US M203 underbarrel grenade launcher,
or really any underbarrel grenade launcher.
What the Italians did is in 1928 they wanted to have
some close assault grenade launching capability
embedded in infantry platoons. And they wanted something
that was readily available at hand, that didn't require
setting up a device and and laying down a base plate and legs and that sort of thing.
They wanted something that could be used very quickly and flexibly on the move.
And so what they did was they took the 91/28 Carcano TS, Truppe Speciali, rifle,
and they mounted a grenade launcher to the side of it.
Now they did this in a pretty creative kind of clever way that hasn't really been duplicated by anyone else,
in that what they mounted to the side is actually pretty much a second rifle receiver
and chamber with a grenade cup attached to it and space for a bolt.
Now they didn't give it a second bolt, what you do to use this grenade launcher
is load a cartridge into its chamber, and then you pull the bolt out of
the rifle portion of the gun, and you insert it into the grenade launcher portion of the gun.
The trigger on the rifle has a mechanical connection to the grenade launcher as well,
so every time you pull the trigger, you're actually dropping the sear on both receivers.
So you only need one bolt, this saves a little bit of weight and it prevents you from
accidentally having ... grenade launching rounds chambered when you don't need them.
So it's a creative and interesting solution to this particular problem.
Now the sights are modified to include both the rifle sight and also
basically duplicate what you might consider a volley sight, but set for grenades.
So instead of being very long-range this is a very short- range sight for a very low velocity projectile like a grenade.
And the idea was to have actually quite a lot of these in service, the original issue plan was 5 per platoon.
So that's a substantial portion of the guys running around with grenade launchers.
Now the sights on these launchers go from 100 out to 200 metres.
The maximum range you could get with one of these grenades was about 320 metres,
(without using the sights, you'd have to hold the rifle at like a 25 or 30 degree angle to get that maximum range).
And the grenade itself, my understanding is this was kind of intentional, the grenade itself is pretty wimpy.
It's a 38.5mm tube and approximately a 38mm grenade. It's a spigot type grenade.
So I'll show you the internals, or how this grenade launcher works in a minute.
But the grenade design itself was almost a mixture between fragmentation and flashbang.
Apparently they kind of ... deliberately minimised the amount of fragmentation, or at least the fragmentation range,
so that these could safely be used in very close quarters without endangering the shooter.
The idea was you could use these for flash and disorientation immediately before you assaulted an enemy position.
And that was the intent. So an interesting tactical idea.
Clearly it didn't work out as well as they had hoped, because these were introduced in 1928,
and they were declared obsolete and taken out of service in 1934.
Or at least declared obsolete, and they started taking them out of service.
Some of these have been recovered from the Russian Front where they ... were clearly used in World War Two,
But they were not considered front-line equipment.
These were taken out of service because the grenades ... ultimately turned out to be too small and too ineffective.
This system was replaced by ... the Model 35 Brixia, what was called an assault mortar.
Basically a light mortar, so something that wasn't quite as flexible or as quick to put into service,
but had a much more effective explosive ... projectile.
There aren't very many of these at all in the United States.
Best number I've been able to find is that 14 or 15 of them were imported back in 1959 or 1960.
They were all 1929 and 1930 dated guns.
Now what you can find more easily are guns that were in this configuration, and that were then taken out of service by the Italians.
Because when they ... decommissioned them, they took off the grenade launchers but then they reused the rifles and the stocks.
And in fact in many cases they actually built them into some of the first production of 7.35mm TS Model 38 rifles.
So you will find those, and the way you can distinguish them is that where this grenade launcher was, ...
these are connected to the barrel not just to the stock. There's a big cutout in the stock to allow the connection there.
And when they took these off they would fill that in with a block of replacement wood.
And that's kind of distinctive and obvious when you see them.
And you can actually find, more commonly, these rifles having been rebuilt into standard TS carbines.
So that's a cool ... you know, these guns are like 5-6,000 dollar pieces and there aren't very many of them.
But it's a cool sort of related interesting gun to have one of the ones that was rebuilt as a regular carbine.
Alright, why don't we take a closer look at the mortar itself,
and the sights and the trigger mechanism, and get an idea of exactly how that worked.
Alright, as you can see the grenade launcher is mounted
right here on the side of the rifle parallel to the rifle barrel.
Now let's look at a couple things. Let's start with the rear sight.
So on the top of the rear sight we have all of our standard markings,
and this works just like a standard Carcano sight. You push in this button, and then you can
adjust the sight up to whatever range.
The battle sight on the Carcano is actually used with this wing completely folded forward,
and then this is your short-range battle sight.
Now for use with the grenade launching, they added this second notch out on the side.
And that notch has its own three range markings, we've got 100, this middle one is 150, this last one is 200 metres, so
That's our 150 meter range. And literally straight up as tall as I can get this rear sight is the 200 metre marking.
Now you use that offset to the side rear notch in conjunction with this post as a front sight.
So like I mentioned, this is conceptually very similar to volley sights that were found on a lot of
World War One and pre-World War One era rifles.
The idea is simply that by moving the front sight low on the stock and moving the rear sight up high,
you're getting a lot more angle of elevation on the rifle. Which is what you need
when you're throwing a big heavy grenade slowly ... trying to get it out to 200 metres.
Now the firing mechanism on the Carcano is pretty simple, as with many bolt action rifles of this period.
When you pull the trigger, it drops this sear down, which releases a striker in the bolt and fires the rifle.
So we have a mechanical linkage in the stock that goes to right here, and when I pull the trigger back
this linkage is pulled back, and a series of levers drops that sear. At the same time
(so let's take this one out)
at the same time I'm also dropping this sear in the rifle.
So that's one reason you don't necessarily want to have two bolts in this thing, aside from weight,
is that the trigger pulls both of them simultaneously.
Alright, now here's where this gets a little bit - unnerving perhaps is the best term.
One of the really cool elements to this Tromboncino
grenade launching system is that it does not require the use of special ammunition.
Most of the time a grenade launcher like this uses a blank crimped cartridge with no projectile.
What the Italians did instead was decide that that was really a substantial logistical issue.
Because you know what, if you're supposed to have a blank and you need to fire a grenade,
you ... never actually have the blank cartridge when you need it.
So what they did was design the system to use standard ball ammunition.
The way that works there's a spigot inside here,
and it's got four vent holes in it that ... direct the gas from the cartridge
out around the spigot and up, where they will then throw the grenade out the end of the tube.
This spigot is just sized right so that when you stick a ball cartridge in here
the tip of the bullet is being held by a little retaining cup. So the bullet literally has no place to go forward.
When you pull the trigger, because the bullet can't move, the neck of the case expands open and the gas vents out around the bullet.
Because the bullet doesn't have any time to accelerate, you don't have to worry about the impact of the bullet right in here.
... So instead the case basically ruptures at the front, the gas vents out, and that's what propels the grenade.
So after you fire, you then open the bolt up, eject the empty cartridge case,
and the ... captured bullet simply falls out the back of the launcher.
The manual does talk about the procedure for what if the bullet gets stuck.
In that case the front of this spigot rod is actually threaded on,
and the tool kit for this rifle came with a wrench that you could reach down in the muzzle of the grenade launcher,
unthread this plug, and remove the stuck bullet with the cleaning rod.
Not something that you want to have to do all the time,
but it sounds like it wasn't something that happened all that often, just an occasional issue.
So really this is a clever system. You use standard ammo, you don't have to try and dig up weird specialty cartridges.
You don't accidentally fire your blank cartridge in your rifle.
You don't accidentally fire a live round in a blank only type of grenade launcher, which is a really bad mistake to make.
It's a good, clever system.
Unfortunately they tied it to a grenade ... projectile that just wasn't combat effective.
Alright, so here's as best a view as I can get you down into the grenade cup launcher.
So you can see the square-ended stalk there is what the grenade actually sat on.
And then there's a larger plug below it.
That larger plug ... basically covers the contour of a 6.5 Carcano chamber and catches the bullet.
Now that square end ... is square so that you can fit a wrench on it and unscrew it, like I said in the case of a stuck projectile.
Other than that, that's really all you've got going on in here.
We can't see the gas vent holes down in the bottom simply because of this angle into the thing.
So, that's what you've got for the launcher itself.
Thanks for watching guys, I hope you enjoyed the video.
The firing mechanism on these really is kind of a sphincter clenching thing,
I presume, until you're actually used to doing it.
The idea of having an explosive grenade right here, and stuffing a live round right in behind it is ... not confidence inspiring.
I found a number of references to people who have these who've toyed with them,
and I think most of the guys who actually shoot these just use blanks, because ... it's just a little too
unnerving to stuff a live round in right behind even a dummy grenade.
At any rate, a very cool rifle to take a look at because very few of these exist.
... Some of them made it into World War Two, but they weren't front-line equipment by that point,
they were in the process of all being decommissioned. So, pretty cool.
If you enjoy this sort of content, please consider stopping by Patreon.com, check out my support page.
A donation of just a buck a month really can go a long way to help me continue to travel
and find cool, early, assault mortars like this, and bring them to you guys.
Thanks for watching.
[ sub by sk cn2 ]