Kiwi Medals

The Type 99 Hand Grenade (九九式手榴弾 Kyūkyū-shiki Teryūdan), also known as Kiska grenade by the American Army was an improved version of the Type 97 fragmentation hand grenade used by the Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy SNLF during World War II.

The Type 99 was issued as a standard rifle grenade to Japanese infantrymen in the Second Sino-Japanese War and throughout the various campaigns of World War II. The first examples to fall into the hands of Allied military intelligence were captured at the Battle of Kiska in the Aleutian Islands, which gave rise to the nickname of “Kiska grenade” by American troops.

This entry was posted on April 18, 2014 at 6:00 PM and is filed under Grenades with tags Empire of Japan, Grenades, WW2. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.