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82 mm HE Mortar Round(82-PM 41 Medium Mortar) Range: 3100 meters Bomb Weight: 3.4 kg Fuze: Impact (Bakelite) 50mm HE Mortar Round (50-PM 40 Light Mortar) Range: 800 meters Bomb Weight: 0.85 kg Fuze: Impact (Bakelite or Steel) Two 50mm Types: Left - Two piece body (separate tail stem) with a three piece (6 fin) tail. Right - Two piece body (separate fuze adapter) with a two piece (4 fin) tail. (Any ideas why the two designs were made?) Mortars fall into three basic groups, “Light”, “Medium” and “Heavy”: • Light mortars, about 50mm or less in diameter, typically operated by one person. These are simple, short range weapons with rudimentary sights and required very little training to operate. Sometimes classified as “grenade dischargers“, this class holds the widest variety of designs, the WWII Japanese “Knee Mortar” and the Italian Brixia, being two examples. • Medium mortars, from 50mm to 80mm, are operated by a teams of two or three. These usually have much better sights and can be very accurate. One of the most successful in this category is the Brandt, a French design developed in the 1930's and used in some form by most of the nations involved in WWII and after. • Heavy mortars are over 80mm caliber and require much the same support as light artillery. Because of this they are associated with artillery organizations rather than the infantry. 
Light mortars have pretty much become obsolete on today's battlefield, being replaced by modern rifle grenade weaponry (not to mention the U.S. 40mm grenade launcher.) The most successful designs during W.W.II proved to be the ones that were the simplest to operate. Here we see with the Russian 50mm in action. Photo from: Gary J.Kennedy's Storm Pages Lots of great reference material there! - Follow this Link 
A Comparison - W.W.II Medium Mortar rounds: Left-to-Right: • U.S. 81mm M43A1 HE • Japanese 81mm Type 100 HE • Russian 82mm HE • German 80mm Wurfgranate 34 HE • British 3" HE Interesting to note the differences in the tail fin styles. 
W.W.II Light Mortar rounds: Left-to-Right: • U.S. 60mm M49A2 HE • French 50mm (Early Brandt ) HE • Russian 50mm HE • German 50mm Wurfgranate 38 HE • British 2" HE (For a common reference, that is a U.S. Nickel for scale.) |
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