17cm Artillery round?

[yeti]

Found these on the surface in Berlin forest. Is it a 17cm artillery round and it’s container? I was pretty sure the ring item is gunpowder so I dug a deep hole and buried it. The shell casing was empty so I assume that it safe? What is the short cylindrical item? I would like to go back and take them but I thought I’d seek your advice first, oh wise ones

[CSW]

It is a regular 88 mm casing with its transport tube - I can assure you the diameter of a 17 cm casing would be a lot larger than 8,8 cm! I believe the disk you threw away as gunpowder is actually a cushion piece that would've been used between the head of the casing and the inside of the carrier, however I'm not 100% sure about that.

An empty casing doesn't contain anything dangerous - the primer might be intact though. Could you please take a picture inside the casing (with flash on) and another one of the base of the casing?

[yeti]

Thanks again for your help Nordlicht. I will get a photo on here as soon as I get back to the wood. I do remember that the base had a small hole that you could see light through so I guessed there wasn’t a primer there - is that correct? Very cool that it’s an 8,8! Do you know what is the function of the small cylinder in the picture is?

[CSW]

Sounds like there is no primer attached, yes. The cylinder is a fuze protector.

[yeti]

Thanks Nordlicht. I shall go and retrieve it tomorrow and put a couple of pictures up.

[vegetius]

The ring is a packing piece specifically for protection of the primer as you thought. Can you photograph the Cartridge Case Base please, (preferably with a scale). As a bit of teaching, for cart cases the identifying points are , 1. Case mouth diameter, 2. Case length, 3. Base markings, 4. Cart Case material, 5. Cart Case design (shape), 6. Primer details.

As for everything, the location it was found is always important and pictures with a scale, if it is British or American a scale in both metric and imperial inches is useful. Finally the colour if remaining can help but it can change with time and weathering so needs to be used with care, (point to note the Americans during WW2 classed smoke shell as chemical so they were Grey in colour which can lead to some minor panic amongst the uninitiated).

Hope this is helpful.

R

[yeti]

Thank you so much for all the info. I learnt so much on this forum in the last couple of months, it really is an incredible tool. Big respect to the knowledge on here. It’s also meant I got to through away some “ maybe” bits of rusty metal too!
So here are some photos after a clean

Also thought you might enjoy seeing this. Thought it was simply a DDR spoon and considered leaving it but after some cleaning...

[CSW]

A beautiful set and indeed 100% safe. The primer would've been screwed into the big hole on the base. You might be able to find appropriate markings on the base if it's not too corroded.

[guns ltd]

Nice find..



John

[zwerge]

Here`s a picture of one of the fuse protecters inuse....Pete..