When the grenade was thrown, a linen tape with a curved lead weight on the end automatically unwrapped in flight, freeing a ball-bearing inside the fuze.

The term "all-ways" refers to the fact that all of the possible ways in which the grenade could hit a target were guaranteed to trigger detonation.

Normally, impact-detonated munitions must hit the target with a particular point of impact (i.e. perpendicular to the fuze mechanism) in order to detonate.

The fuze was worked by the user first unscrewing a plastic cap to expose a long, narrow cloth streamer with a curved lead weight attached to the end.

Upon release from the hand or projector the weighted streamer, would catch the air and quickly unwind from the top of the grenade, eventually withdrawing a loose safety pin from the fuze.

With the pin removed the striker and detonator would be free to come into contact, which would happen due to the force of impact when the grenade struck a hard surface.

The all-ways fuze had a minor design defect in that the hard steel ball bearing would be propelled away from the explosion as a piece of shrapnel.