WW2 Gunnery range - February 2010

[Steve T]

HI all

I have been back to the gunnery range I know about and had a really good day. The place is jammed with stuff and I end up only searching an area about 10metres square each time I go because there's so much stuff there !

This visit was a bit of a 303 cartridge day although i did find some other nice bits as well.

Everything with a date on is always between 1941 and 1944.

Sorry for picture quality......my son is still using my DSLR.

Firstly before cleaning.



There isn't a picture of everything after cleaning like I normally do, simply because there was too much stuff to do a decent picture ! So here are the finds in groups after cleaning.

firstly a couple of 303 cartrdiges. Well.....a lot actually. 240 to be precise Took bloody HOURS to clean ! Most are spent from Bren guns, although a few are Lee-Enfield. I tended to find them in 'batches', 30-40 in one hole kind of thing.



An example of the headstamps



And a strange one.....a 303 welded to a Lee-Enfield clip.



Lots of spent bullets too. Mainly 303 but some 9mm and one 45cal.



A strange can. I have kept this 'just in case' as it was found next to a 2 inch mortar cap so is probably the right era. Anyone recognise it as anything ?



A 2inch mortar cap and the remains of the fin off one, with what looks like the remains of a smoke charge or possibly phosphorus.



Lastly some bits of grenade.



Some nice base nuts. A close up of 3 of them below. Also interesting is that one of them appears to be brass rather than the 'normal' metal. I never realised brass was used for these caps.



And that's it

Hope you like the stuff.

Cheers

Steve T

[ian]

in the pics of the 5 303 cases
thay have a rectangular strike on the base
that can only have bin fired from a bren gun
as far as i know at that time no other british 303 gun had a rectangular firing pin cheers ian
the top two ?could be 1919a4 or number 4

[Steve T]

Yeah.....that's what i thought Ian ( above the picture I do say that most are from Bren guns ). Interesting that one of them has even got a extraction mark on the base. Well......more like a gouge actually

Steve T

[ian]

the extraction mark may denote a parsial miss feed
as normaly the extractor does not mark the case
cheers ian

[Johnny-D]

Crackin finds mate... sure is a little gold mine you've got yourself there!

[Whitehunter]

well done Steve, nice to find some complete 303's most of the one i find a broken or so brittle when you touch them they fall apart. Are you digging in sand?
That brass grenade plug is quite rare i think?

[Steve T]

Woody - thanks mate

Whitehunter - Yes it is sand so the cartridges have faired much better being in ground that is 'drier' thank soil. As to the brass grenade nut, this is the first one I have ever seen. Anyone know just how 'rare' they are ?

Cheers

Steve T

[LUCKYSTRIKE]

Steve
What a volume! there's some lovely finds, but I hope you didn't have to walk too far from your car because lugging that weight back must have been something. I know what you mean when you say cleaning them took bl##dy hours. I'm still slogging through all those tags I found! can only manage 40 a night.
Your site looks very promising being a former range but always remain cautious because there's still likely to be a fair amount of unexploded ordnance.
Keep up the good work.
LUCKYSTRIKE

[sitges1990]

Great stuff Steve thanks for sharing. They sure had some strong firing pins popping on that range. Nice clean, deep strikes. Where they shooting into a berm?

Jay

[Steve T]

Luckystrike - Yeah it's a little gold mine....but you're right. A very good chance of lots of live ordnance there so I dig slow and careful

Jay - Nah, the firing positions are all up and down the dunes with no specific point as a 'regular' firing position. The way I narrow the search down is to find dunes that had a good view of the beach, or ones taller than the rest in the local area, or ones with a view down one of the 'paths'. However, most of the grenade nuts/bits I usually find in a deep dip in the dunes.

The range is a good square mile so I reckon, with the little patches I search when I go there, it'll take me about 700 visits to cover the whole place

Cheers guys

Steve T

Glossary of terms

Berm - A berm is a level space, shelf, or raised barrier separating two areas.