Original French WWI Blue Egg Hand Grenade Inert 1915 – 1917 Oeuf Bleu

Description

Condition is okay. Some of the original paint remains but it is mostly covered in slight surface rust. Has a couple of small dents in the egg portion as shown. The fuze is complete, the only thing not original is the key chain ring; however, the metal wire holding the safety handle is original just slightly bent up. 100% inert.

This is the French Blue Egg (Oeuf Bleu), a High-Explosive-Fragmentation (HE-Frag), small, oval, hand-grenade used during WW1 and manufactured between 1915 and 1917, as France rushed to supply troops with effective trench‑warfare weapons during WW1.

Painted blue and shaped like an egg, hence its nickname, it was compact, easy to carry and represented one of many experimental designs created before France standardised the famous F1 pineapple grenade.

Although modest in power compared with later models, the Blue Egg filled an important role during a period of intense innovation, when variability in fuzes, fragmentation methods and manufacturing quality reflected the urgent wartime demand rather than refined engineering.

Unloaded or dummy grenades, artillery shell casings, and similar devices, which are cut or drilled in an BATF-approved manner so that they cannot be used as ammunition components for destructive devices, are not considered NFA weapons. This example is in total compliance and is NOT AVAILABLE FOR EXPORT.