WW2 Gunnery range - Birthday visit ! July 27th 2012

[RRPG]

Yes......it was my birthday on the 27th. Obviously the postman is waiting to deliver all my cards from you guys at once so I will probably get them Monday.

B-)

To celebrate I visited the recently discovered gunnery range where I have been finding all the mortar fins. Main aim of this visit was to try and pinpoint where the heck they were firing the mortars from. Given the huge volume of nose fuzes and tails I am finding, there MUST be OODLES of the safety caps somewhere on the site. But where ?????

My usual montage of pictures......


Firstly before any cleaning......



I was driven completely NUTS on this visit by these damned brass rings. I would ignore the detection they give but unfortunately it is exactly the same as detection as a PIAT fuze holder so I 'have' to dig them. These things have got to be off some sort of ordnance but I can't for the life of me work out what ! Any help would be greatly appreciated



Then we have some cartridges. 303s and 9mm, along with a flare cart and a very strange shell that looks like a shotgun shell but has no rim at all. I don't think it is from a mortar so what's it off ?



Chunks of nose fuze plus one complete fuze, with the booster still in place, (although obviously not full.....it has gone off, just retained the bottom part of the fuze for once). Also got the first evidence of something bigger being fired at the range......the big hunk of iron with the thread inside.



Close up of the complete 2 inch nose fuze so you guys can see what one looks like.



....and the other end showing the safety tab in the 'fired' position. If the oval shaped thing was still covering the centre, it would be UNFIRED and highly dangerous ! Watch for this.



Lots more fins again, some in remarkably good condition.



Many were marked up.....If you find a fin like this, one of them will carry the makers mark and manufacture date. Check each one carefully as the marks are not always immediately visible.







A PIAT fuze holder. Same half as the one I found last trip so still need the other section !



Quite a few chunks of No36M grenade this visit. The chunks along the top are the remains of the striker/fuze column base, and those hunks with the grooves in are bits of the column that held the striker. The grooves are made by the grenade exploding and imprinting the spring onto the inside wall of the column.



Close up of the base plugs, all with nice clear WW2 dates



And lastly, something that I would normally get a little excited by, but when I found it you'd have thought I'd just found a complete unrusted PIAT !!!! I thought I had, at last, found where they were firing the mortars from but, despite an extensive search of the area where I found this, there were no more. BUGGER !! Oh well....one is great It is the safety cap from a 2 inch mortar nose fuze, hence why it says 'Remove Before Firing' on it



Hope you like the finds. Please PM me for my address so you can send me my birthday presents.



RRPG

[nonmotion]

Those flare case ends are like ring pulls where i live. like giant shotties. Happy b day too.

[JD666]

Nice finds as ever mate,i want to get some fins one day lol, Happy Birthday for 27th <:-P

[RRPG]

Thanks guys

And JD.....come and help me at the Victory show on Saturday 8th Sept and there's a couple of fins in it for you !

[Dave8472]

Happy Birthday Steve <:-P

You kept that quiet

Some cracking finds there

Dave

[Christoph1945]

Mmmm, with the 2" nose fuse; could you have a situation where the safety tag is in the firing position but the fuse has not detonated? I suppose if that was the case the rest of the shell would be there!

[RRPG]

Yes it would Christoph......unless one of the guys had removed the fuze and chucked it to one side for some reason. Mind you, if they had, the booster would also be intact so you wouldn't see the bit you can see in my photograph.

[Dave8472]

and those hunks with the grooves in are bits of the column that held the striker. The grooves are made by the grenade exploding and imprinting the spring onto the inside wall of the column.

Cheers Steve, been on a club dig today and found two of those strange bits, will fish them back out the rubbish bin to be photographed I wondered what they were

PS found that first 20mm cartridge case today and rescued another from the site scrap bucket

Dave

[RRPG]

found that first 20mm cartridge case today and rescued another from the site scrap bucket

Dave

LOL ! Told you you would

[Dave8472]

I got some stange looks when the others were getting all excited over a Roman coin, and I was asked if I had found anything good, I said yes and I pulled the 20mm case out and went look at that It all went quiet

I was happy, that's all that counts

Dave

[ghandi1945]

Interesting that one of your 2inch tails doesnt look like it was fired because the threads still seem to be in place as if it wasnt blown off (second from the left at the top in your picture). Anybody know if this is the case as i have had the same thing ??? cheers

Matt

[RRPG]

Good spot and absolutely right. The fin would appear to have been removed from the bomb for some reason. If you look closely you can also see that the retaining cap for the propellent cartridge is also missing, indicating that it was in the process of being 'made up' when discarded. Perhaps they lost the cover cap and so made the fin unusable?

[RRPG]

In the interests of sharing information, I thought I'd let you guys know that I have finally identified those bloody brass rings I kept finding.

The British PIAT (Projector Infantry Anti Tank), was a beast of a weapon that shot a shaped charge warhead a maximum of 100 yards. It had a kick like 4 mules and was a devil to operate, but in the right hands was capable of taking out even the biggest of the German armour.

In the tail of the projectile was a small propellent cartridge to give the bomb an extra kick when it was fired. It was basically a short 12 gauge shotgun shell with just a charge in it, no pellets, and no rim on the base. When the PIAT was fired, the bomb was chucked out of the weapon by means of a whacking great spring and the little shotgun cartridge. When fired, the body of the cartridge would invariably split under the shock of the spigot striking it, resulting in two bits being chucked out. One would be the base of the rimless shotgun cartridge, the other.........a brass 'ring' making up the rest of the cartridge.

MYSTERY SOLVED !!!!

The rings are bits of a PIAT propellent cartridge and means they were firing PIATS around the place like lunatics

Hope that helps everyone

Cheers

RRPG