New Made Item: All US Ordnance items have color-coding to indicate the nature of the contents. Everyone is familiar with the red tip for M1 .30 caliber tracer bullets. Yellow is the code color for high explosive ordnance, and at the beginning of World War Two, the familiar Mk II “pineapple” hand grenade was painted entirely yellow. You can see this in period photographs. Not long into the war, the paint scheme was changed to an olive drab body with a small yellow ring at the top.

The armorers of the great HBO miniseries THE PACIFIC (supplied by IMA) paid such close attention to detail that you can see the Marines on Guadalcanal using the early yellow-coded grenades. IMA is pleased to offer the Mk II dummy grenade in the early yellow high-explosive color code.