The U.S. Navy Had a Weird, Hand-Cranked Grenade Launcher

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But the old-school design set the stage for weapons still in use today.

Since the very first firearms appeared on the battlefield, weaponeers have looked for ways to send more bullets at the enemy. So when the Pentagon cooked up the 40-millimeter grenade in the late 1950s, American engineers wasted little time in developing plans for even faster firing versions.

In 1962, the U.S. Navy also got into the quick-firing grenade launcher business. The result was an almost anachronistic, hand-cranked grenade launcher that was both easy to operate and relatively light.

The new Mk-18 represented an entirely new class of weapons. While the sailing branch quickly phased out these early grenade-tossing guns, the launcher set the stage for weapons the American military still uses today.

“This weapon, Mk-18 Mod 0, represents the introduction … of a new concept in weaponry,” George Chinn wrote in the fifth and final volume of his definitive work The Machine Gun. “It is the first step past the single-shot M-79 grenade launcher.”

The Army’s M-79 was a common and effective — if crude — grenade launcher. The weapon looked like a sort of oversized sawed-off shotgun. Troops nicknamed the launchers “bloopers” or “thump guns.” A soldier could lob a 40-millimeter high-explosive shell well beyond where they could throw a hand grenade.

But these same rounds in a single-shot launcher made the idea of a small, rapid-firing grenade machine gun possible, according to Chinn. Even better, the Honeywell Corporation had started development of the Mk-18 on its own initiative.

“Honeywell had anticipated the need for a simple, inexpensive and extremely mobile rapid fire weapon … with an effective capability for delivering large quantities of explosive grenades,” Chinn explained.

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