At the grenade range, in Ft. Bragg, back in 1965, a lieutenant ran a little experiment. He was an agile man, and had quite a bit of experience. He stood in front of a sandbag berm, with a hand grenade (pin out) while a subordinate (volunteer) placed a helmet, and then a sandbag over the grenade. The subordinate left first, and then the lieutenant let go of the grenade, and jumped over the berm, into the shelter.
He showed my basic training company the piece of the helmet they found. It was twisted, and ripped, and about an inch in it’s longest dimension. According to him, they could not find any of the sandbag.
However, a human body can, and in many cases has absorbed most of the shrapnel from a grenade and saved the lives of those nearby. I don’t know of even military legends of anyone who survived grenade surfing.
Grenades in the Korean war, and after had chemical fuses, and HE explosive loads. Everyone used either US, or Czech grenades, or Russian grenades, which were very similar in basic materials. (Actually, now that I think of it, I believe the Brits and Aussies used some weird shaped grenade. Not sure what it was made of.)
I’m not sure what you mean by “grenade surfung”, but there is at least one well documented case of a US soldier falling on a grenade in WWII and surviving (as it turned out, he was underage for service but had “snuck” in. It meant that he was the youngest perston to win the Congressional Medal of Honor).
On that FutureWeapons show on the Discovery channel, they covered a grenade with a manequin wearing Dragon Skin body armor. The blast ripped the outer cover to shit but didn’t penetrate the armor, however I imagine the concussion would have killed the human wearing it.
During Operation Market Garden. IIRC in *A Bridge Too Far * (the book) Ryan writes that Mann was first injured in one arm and went back to the fight with it bandaged down to his body. After he fought one handed for a while he was injured in the other arm. When both arms were immobilized he jumped on a grenade to save his buddies.
I’m 99% sure that there was one U.S. soldier who used his helmet and body to shield his fellow soldiers from a grenade. I remember specifically that he was a latino soldier who was awarded the medal of honor. He stood out because he was one of the few that recieved the honor and lived beyond the date at which it was awarded.
I’ll look up what I remember and will update the thread… BRB.