Original French WWII Inert 60mm Mortar With Internal Fragmentation Grooves Converted To Training Round – For Brandt Mle 1935 Mortar System Original Items

Original Item: Only One Available. This is a fantastic example of a French WWII 60mm mortar with integral fragmentation pattern. This round was rendered inert, the point detonating fuse replaced with a solid one that was made with a counterbalance. There are holes drilled into the body and can no longer be filled with any combustible components making it live again, making it BATF compliant.

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.

The Brandt Mle 1935 60-mm mortar was a company-level indirect-fire weapon of the French army during the Second World War. Designed by Edgar Brandt, it was copied by other countries, such as the United States and China, as well as purchased and built by Romania. Modified in 1944, the mortar continued to be used by France after the war until at least the 1960s.

The body of the round no longer has any visible markings, however the tail assembly has a number 54 stamped into it. If this is a year stamping, we believe this was marked after the demilitarization process when making it a training round.

The overall condition is quite nice and may have been repainted at some point. There is no significant damage present and from the look of the dummy fuse this round may have never been used.

A lovely example ready for further research and display.

The Brandt Mle 1935 was a simple and effective weapon, consisting of a smoothbore metal tube fixed to a base plate (to absorb recoil), with a lightweight bipod mount. The team of the Mle 1935 was made of five men: a leader, a firer, an artificer and two suppliers. When a mortar bomb was dropped into the tube, an impact-sensitive primer in the base of the bomb would make contact with a firing pin at the base of the tube, and detonate, igniting a gunpowder charge, which would propel the bomb out of the tube, and towards the target.

HE mortar bombs fired by the weapon weighed 1.33 kilograms. A French infantry company in 1940 was allocated one Mle 1935 mortar.

This weapon provided a pattern for other light mortars used during World War II. Among the best known is the U.S. 60-mm M2 mortar. Captured examples were used by the Germans as the 6 cm Granatwerfer 225(f).

Romania also purchased and license-built the Mle 1935 mortar prior to and during the Second World War. The mortars were produced at the Voina Works in Brașov, with a production rate of 26 pieces per month as of October 1942.