The RG-42 was a fragmentation grenade designed in the Soviet Union during WWII, when production was not sufficient to supply the original pre-war hand grenades. It was essentially a redesign of the short-lived RG-41 grenade to use the UZRGM universal grenade fuze, also used on the F-1 hand grenade and later the RGD-5. The production is a very simple design compared to the complicated RGD-33 stick grenade. After the war, the grenade continued to be produced in Poland and China. It was eventually replaced in Soviet use by the RGD-5, starting in 1954.
