Rookie solider throwing hand grenade
It does not go where intended.
Apparently all the practice grenades were broken…
Wow. Kudos to that instructor for getting the student behind the protective barrier. He’s extremely good at that part of his job.
Just think of how often this happens that he would get that good.
I’ll say. Pushing/throwing her into the hole before jumping in himself. Very impressive.
Something’s not right. Both of those guys were already half grabbing her before she even started to throw that…like they knew she was gonna mess it up. Either they were expecting her to mess it up, it’s a hoax or maybe they could tell as soon as she started with the wind up that the throw wasn’t going to make it far.
Also, people are saying that they should have started her with a fake grenade (hindsight 20/20 and all that) but that looked like a fake grenade, that’s not a very big explosion. That guy in the left is about 5 steps away and watches it blow up (instead of shielding his face).
We’re missing some of the details here.
The second guy is behind a berm, you can see him slide down the slope. Also, the ground slopes down the other side to the wall.
Grenades don’t make a big explosion, you’ve been watching too many movies.
There’s no replacement for live ammo training.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t train with dummies first. Or just throw a few rocks.
It looks real to me. The camera saw- from behind- that the girl’s arm makes a throwing motion. But the instructors apparently saw something else: they could tell as soon as she started that something was wrong. Either she dropped either the grenade at her feet, (and then, for some reason, continued with the throwing motion), or else she “threw” the grenade only a few inches onto the sandbag and it bounced back towards her legs…
The trainee certainly screwed up.
But the more serious screw-up is that the instructor didn’t follow proper procedure. He had enough sense to know that he doesn’t have time to jump into the shelter with the other two—
but after running for cover, he should have stayed flat on the ground. Instead, he looks up and exposes his face .Even if the grenade is a trainer, not a real one, just the sand flying in his face could have damaged his eyes.
A scary moment, anyway.
The comments are great: ‘The way he flings her over that barrier is equal parts “I’m saving your life” and “You’re a fucking idiot”.’ He does seem to toss her a bit too enthusiastically.
As runner pat stated, grenades don’t actually make big explosions. I read an interesting article recently that stated that the Hollywood perception of grenades has probably led to people over the decades throwing themselves on the grenade to protect their comrades, uncontestably noble but probably unneccessary as it would be as effective in most cases just to warn the others to lie down.
In fact he specifically mentioned a US senator/congressman who lost an arm and two legs when he went to pick up a live grenade that another soldier had dropped (believing it inert), he was leaning over and his hand was about a foot away when it went off, the authors point was that greviously injured as he was he wasn’t killed even that close to a detonation.
Here are similar videos:
I think the moral of the story is that people are only human and screw up on occassion.
Wasn’t that what they were doing here? 
What army was that?
Back in grade school, throwing like a girl meant you got called names and maybe beat up a bit. I never thought it could actually get you killed.
Having someone throw a grenade without proper training is the worst grenade-related idea since the boomerangrenade.
They quickly spotted that she was throwing with insufficient force and that it would land too close to them to be safe/comfortable. She was throwing like the stereotypical “throw like a girl”. They knew that was going to at least be painful to hear.
It’s not hindsight 20/20 if throwing with a fake grenade first is the standard and obvious way to train people to use grenades. I can say that in the Canadian military, you learn how to use a weapon using dry runs well before you actually get to use it live. Even more so with grenades; they tested each recruit individually for his ability to throw a similar object before we went to the grenade range.
Fragmentation hand grenades don’t make big explosions. I looked at one blow up through the glass when I threw it and it looked like a big spark. They make big booming sounds, however, which indicates serious overpressure. But no Michael Bay fireworks. If they use the same kind of components that are used in NATO grenades, then they’re using high explosives which don’t have much of a fireball; a fireball means it takes a long time for fuel and oxidizer to complete their chemical reaction, which I believe is the opposite of a high explosive.
The guy watching it blow up has a sandbag wall in-between him and the grenade.
When I did my basic training we wore our steel pots all day long, and were issued a flack vest for wear at the grenade range.
I’m surprised the safety standards have changed so much in 30 years. Doesn’t kevlar cover protect against fragments raining down on soldiers’ heads?
I wouldn’t say that it’s that I’ve been watching too many movies, it’s that I’ve never seen an actual grenade explode. I wouldn’t guess that you could take 4 or 5 good sized leaps and look at it while it goes off. That guy clearly isn’t even worried about getting kicked up gravel or dirt in his eyes and he can’t be more then 15 or 20 feet away.
I’m wondering if the grenade cleared the wall, but just barely (hence the running) and what you’re seeing is some of the explosion getting pushed under the sandbags.
Perhaps the original plan was to throw it 20 or 30 feet and duck, but she only threw it a 1 or 2 feet so they ran.
Maybe I have watched too many movies, but I just can’t imagine looking at a grenade explosion from 20 feet away…I think it cleared the wall.
It seems to me that’s what she’s doing. Maybe the back story is that they had her practice throwing with duds for a long time, and it was just a bad slipup that this throw went awry, but just from this little video it’s hard to see that they trained her properly.
Is there any chance that this was some sort of unofficial frolic and detour – soldier who works the range brings his girlfriend in and thinks it would be fun to let her throw one? That might fit with him throwing her in first, the lack of Kevlar vests, etc.
It’s attributed to the Chinese military.
Here is a higher res version, and a slow-mo replay, too. You can see clearly on the slo-mo that the instructor on the right reaches toward the woman as she is in the process of making a really terrible girl-throw of the grenade. You can also just barely make out the grenade going a total of about three feet.
If you want to see something truly pointless, check this out:
Crap, that isn’t working. Fast forward to 1:24.
Just a show for cameras. They even do the Hollywood jump-in-the-air-just-as-it’s-about-to-explode. At 1:40, you can see the people around them don’t give a fuck.
Does anyone know of any explosive charge which slightly smokes for several seconds before exploding? What would be the point of that?
If you look at 1:40 to 1:45, you can see that he throws it in one small hole and the explosion comes from the larger hole (without any explosion coming from the smaller hole he threw it into).