i've always wondered if this was just Hollywood or if WW2 GIs were trained in pulling out grenade pins with their teeth? in any case, the armored half-track scene is still excellent!
"only one food for the rest of my life? That's easy, cherry-flavored Pez. No question about it."
Mostly Hollywood (at least when I was in we were specifically told NOT to do it) but if you're planning a grenade assault and have one in your right and two in your left (or have your weapon in your left), it might have to do.
shareGeorge MacDonald Fraser said anyone who tried that would be needing dentures.
His QUARTERED SAFE OUT HERE is a fine WW2 memoir about his time in Burma.
His HOLLYWOOD HISTORY OF THE WORLD is a funny account of how the movies get history right and wrong.
And his THE PYRATES (unrelated to any screenplay of the same name) is a hilarious pirate comedy set in the alternate universe of MGM extravaganzas.
When I was in the Reserves, that was something they said to NEVER do.
shareStrictly Hollywood...and I noticed that just before they ran this movie on TCM, they showed 1943's "Edge of Darkness" with Errol Flynn and Ann Sheridan, in which all the Norwegian resistance fighters were doing the same thing.
It was SOP in many, many WWII propaganda-style films made during the war and afterward, and a standard Warner Bros. tactic. If somebody tried that, the pin wouldn't go flying, but their teeth probably would.
Hell, just this summer my wife tried to "pull the pin" out of a plastic container of glue, treating it like a Hollywood grenade. She's smart enough to have known better. Don't know why the hell she did that stupid stunt. Broke one tooth and cracked another...and now our dentist is profiting from her mistake.
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As a former IDF infantryman I can tell you that NOBODY, even the Russian spetznatz, are taught to pull the pin out with their teeth.
The ring is connected to a cotter pin, which of course is widely split open for obvious reasons. If one was foolhardy, you could close the two ends making it much easier to yank, but that would be dangerously stupid, like REALLY stupid.
The only other person I could see safely pulling out the pin using his teeth would be the character of Jaws from the two James Bond movies, played by the late Richard Kiel.
Root, sof.
Pulling the pin with your teeth is kind of Dopey. Also once you pull the pin the handle shifts and doesn't line up. Hollywood always has them putting the pin back in although it can be done it isn't done as easy as shown in Hollywood.
shareI always laugh when I see it
shareIt's probably not a bad idea. I've heard, not through any real experience, that there have been occasions where the grenade thrower has been in such a stressful situation that they've thrown the pin and not the grenade.
share