WW2 gunnery range - Mortar bonanza !

[Steve T]

Hi all

Well, a few weeks ago a good friend of mine put me onto a possible site where he had seen quite a few mortar rounds. Armed with this info, I went on a trawl of the net for 3 or 4 hours but could find no reference to the location he'd given me being a range at anytime, let alone in WW2. Undeterred, I have spent the last 4 weeks tracking down the landowner and finally found him, spoke to him, AND got permission to search the site.

My search area was a little limited as I couldn't search in the growing crops, so had to limit myself to the edge of fields and two small wooded areas. I wasn't doing too bad, finding a fair few spent bullets and 3 or 4 2 inch mortar fins and hunks of nose fuze, when I got to a little stream.

You have to watch the video to find out what happened in the stream !!!


WW2 relic hunt - Mortar fins and fuzes !! - YouTube


After only 3 hours detecting I had this little lot.



I am fairly sure this place was a WW2 range !!! lol

The 2 inch nose fuzes and bullets.....



...and the fins. 37 of them.



I have already cleaned some of the nose fuzes. There are markings on some of them but they are very feint and I can't capture them in a photo I'm afraid.



And here are some of the best fins cleaned up.



Nearly all the fins have visible date stamps on the base.



And some have the makers mark and dates visible on the fins. About half have visible dates, the rest are too corroded.













Those that are visible are all WW2 dated.

A truly great site. They must have used other stuff there as well as 2 inch mortars. This first visit was more of a recce so I can get a feel for the site. All I've got to do now is find out where they were firing them from !!!

Hope you like the finds and the video

Laters

Steve T

[LUCKYSTRIKE]

Steve
Bl**dy Hell mate, that was quick you've got those cleaned up fast and a great job you've done too, also superb photos showing the markings.
Im very impressed with this haul 'so much from so little time', love the fuze heads, nice too see so many pretty much complete, I've only ever found them as small shrapnel relics. As always superb work and great vid too.
Now wondering how much you'll recover next time.
Cheers
LUCKYSTRIKE

[Steve T]

Thanks LS It's a great site and well off the beaten track so very peaceful

I need to track down where they were firing from. Must be shed loads of safety caps and cartridges somewhere on the site.

[Edmil]

Good find and great pics! Congratz

Ed

[Steve T]

Thanks it looks like its going be a rather good site

[cornishboy]

Great site,great thread.I realy enjoyed the film too,especially the slipping

[Steve T]

Git !

[cornishboy]

only you could find a site where the relics come out completely clean.seriously good though!!

[Steve T]

I was amused......self cleaning relics. Awesome !!!

[davejb]

Well it looks like you fell in it again and came up smelling of roses, impressive haul Stig, especially the the bit where you got stung, thats the sort of stupid bloody trick i'd pull, i'm glad that for once it was someone else, was this local or far away, need to pm you about something so watch your inbox