INFO ONLY. NOT FOR SALE. P88-8
This inert item is in "GOOD CONDITION" and is the "REAL THING". IT is some what rare. The M42 was loaded in 155mm Projectiles. The projectiles ere normally fuzed with a variable time fuze (VT) which was preset by the gun crew to function in the air over the target normally armored vehicles or vehicle convoys). When the VT fuze functioned, the projectile's base plate would then blown away causing the M42s to be ejected. As the M42s were falling, the attached streamer would begin to spin unscrewing the threated retaining pin and then allowed the restrained sliding detonator to be released and alighning with the firing pin. The M42s would then form a pattern as they fell from the sky and as they would impact, the impact inertia would cause the firing pin to go home and detonate the M42. The M42 would then develop a snall shape charge effect on anything that it came in contact with.
The M42 Munitions can be delivered by a M483 155mm artillery shell, which carries 64 M42 and 24 M46 submunitions.
Unexploded M42 cluster submunition found on a barbed wire fence in southern Lebanon in August 2006.
The United States stockpiles over one billion submunitions in weapons currently in service. Nearly three-quarters of this stockpile of submunitions are contained in MLRS rockets and 155mm artillery projectiles.
*155mm DPICM M483A1 & M864 artillery projectiles: 14 percent dud rate for the M42 and M46 DPICM submunitions.4 The M483A1 artillery projectile contains sixty-four M42 and twenty-four M46 DPICM submunitions. The M864 projectile contains forty-eight M42 and twenty-four M46 DPICM submunitions.
