Frederick Marten Hale
British war engineer / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Frederick Marten Hale (1864 – 2 February 1931) was a British explosives engineer and inventor. After education at the Devon County School and in Brussels, Belgium, Hale worked in hydraulic and fire engineering. He became involved in the design and manufacture of explosives from 1895 and rose to positions at the Cotton Powder Company and the Roburite & Ammonal company. Hale saw the successful use of hand grenades in the 1904–05 Russo-Japanese War and designed his own grenade in 1906. This was rejected by the War Office but during the 1914–1918 First World War it was used by the British Army as the No. 2 grenade.
Hale became the predominant British designer of grenades in the pre-war era. He developed the Hales rifle grenade which was exported to several states but did not see extensive use until the First World War. With the coming of trench warfare the army requested large quantities. Hale struggled to meet these demands owing to its complicated design and fuse, which was manufactured by Dynamit Nobel. Hale refined his design three times during the war to make it simpler, safer and more reliable. Some 10 million were used during the war. Hale also developed an aircraft bomb, which was used successfully by British aircraft against German Zeppelin airships on the ground and in the air, and a depth charge. After the war he successfully sued the British government for infringing his rifle grenade patents.