Metal Detecting

Hi, keep coming across these bullets on a field I'm working on at the moment, also keep picking up lots of part rotten old 303 she'll cases as well.

The bullets are all red with 1 band around them like the ones in the pictures below. They also have a white substance in the bottom of them.

Are these safe or not. To be on the safe side I have put them in the ground at the base of an electric pole in the field as didn't want to bring them home. If safe I will recover them and dispose of them, if not I will get the police to fetch them.

Can anyone help in case they go off and blow down the electric pole. Don't want to cause the local village to be without power

Looks to me like they are just the lead bullet there's no casing so it makes them safe chuck them in your lead pile if you don't want to keep them

I find dozens of the bullets and the spent cases. This is the result of being off the runways of a 2nd. WW. airfield. If you were going into an air battle it would be prudent to test your weapons after take off. Also the guns were cleared prior to landing. The bump could set off a burst of fire. Makes the ground crews twitchy!

Yep, standard ball, nothing to worry about Jason, the red is the copper jacket and that is lead at the base mate

Thanks for your help chaps

Hi,

Those are 7.62mm rounds. You can see the rifleing marks on the bullet heads that are unique to the weapon it was fired from. Completely safe Copper and lead.

Shane

They aren't 7.62 bulelts Shane as they are not 'boat-tailed' and are far too old to be 7.62. Far more likely they are 303s, especially given the lack of boat tail with the Spitzer type bullet. Where the 303 Mk VII was boat tailed, this tail was much longer than the short boat tail seen in 7.62 bullets. They are also too long for the 7.62, which is a much shorter bullet.

Found another one on same field today. Apparently the army and home guard used the field for training in the last war.
This one is the same as the others but has a white top on it so does that make it something different?

Picture below

Yes. White denotes a short range tracer bullet. Perfectly legal to posses

RRPG wrote:Yes. White denotes a short range tracer bullet. Perfectly legal to posses

Phew, so I can take it out the bowl of water then