British army dump - Finds over last few months - PIC HEAVY

Hi All

Apologies for not posting since the middle of the year. With so many other forums, (or is it fori ...... ? :) ), on the go, I sometimes neglect one or two! I shall put this right now though.

Below are a couple of pictures of some of the items I've recovered from my British army dump site permission since the middle of this year. This place is still producing some incredible relics, and many very rare items. It is also still producing a few unidentifiable bits, but even those have now been tracked down.

On to the pictures....

Bakelite Lee-enfield spike bayonet scabbards

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Lee-Enfield butt plates, Long Lee butt plates and Lee-Enfield butt discs.

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Lee-Enfield and Bren oil bottles, brass, bakelite and early plastic. Note the WW1 pattern LE oiler.... Also found a few of the spouts off Vickers MG oil bottles.

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Bren 100 round magazine mount, Browning MG vehicle mount, Lewis spade grips

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Still a huge number of cloth belt starter tabs coming from the site. Vickers 303, (Mks 1, 2 and 3), Browning M1917 and even Vickers 50cal.

A few more of the vickers 303 tabs have been unit marked.

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Pull through cleaning rods, unidentified rear sites, (possibly early Mauser), muzzle cover from a Long Lee, PIAT rear sight, trigger gauges for LE and Vickers. The remains of two water jacket corks from Browning M1917, Vickers MG bottom pawl spring, split pin and t-bar from ammo crate.

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Now for the more unusual finds......

Grenade discharger cup adapter for fitting a Lee-enfield cup on a P14 rifle.

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Browning M1919 MG pistol grip

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Spouts from the leather funnels for filling a Browning M1917 MG water jacket, (along with another Vickers trigger gauge and oil can spout)

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A couple more of the solid die-cast Lee-Enfield training rifle trigger/mag housing parts.

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And last but by no means least, there little buggers. Initially thought to be cocking handles from an MG, it was soon realised they weren't and were more likely winding handles off some piece of equipment. After a little bit more lateral thinking, they were IDd as being winding handles from magazine or belt loading tools. It then boiled down to which MG, and a friend eventually got a match.

Winding handles from the Hotchkiss tray loading tool. (picture of an original also included).

What an unusual and rare little piece of history!

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You are now more or less up to speed, unless you really want to see the stuff recovered from other sites like RAF bases etc.....

:) :) :)

The plural is fora

Thanks. Glad you liked the finds.

Lots of interesting stuff...

Thanks BAR :)

VERY interesting stuff I say........ Brilliant

:) :) :) Glad you liked the finds :) And there are indeed some very interesting bits in there :)

I love seeing these types of threads, keep up the good work. It really helps with identifying the little things that generally get left out in peoples knowledge. For example there is tons of information on rifles, and some on bayonets, and a bit on magazines, but the little things tend to get neglected even though they were generally just as important in usage (as without most of this gear the rifles and such would have useless). Especially important is the MG odds and ends as unfortunately since in most countries you can't own them, most people are unable to acquire the knowledge as to what is needed to run them (or are less interested in what was needed as if you can't handle it, you lose a bit of the interest).

Once again thanks for these awesome finds!

Thanks Eaglelord. Part of the joy of recovering these relics is identifying them. Some can be really obscure, like the Hotchkiss loading tool winding handle, and some not only obscure, but totally cool, like the P14 adapters. :)

What do you eventually do with your finds, RRPG; do you sometimes sell items or do you keep everything? I have a M1919 pistol grip of a slightly different design which I recently purchased at a militaria fair and it is in reasonable condition. The label attached to it reads that it was found in the Ardennes in the 1980s but I am a bit sceptical of this because it looks in too good a condition to have come out of the ground. It is currently soaking in diesel but I will post pictures of it in due course. There seemed to still be remains of cosmolene on it which may have helped to preserve it.

I never sell anything I recover Flying10UK. Everything is cleaned, preserved and then displayed at various shows and schools up and down the country.

Ground dug relics can vary in condition purely due to the type of soil they were found in. The one in this thread was about 6 feet down in well draining sandy soil.

Although not a military item, a really weird item that my father dug up years ago while digging a hole for a gate post was what turned out to be a tropical scorpion skeleton. How this ever came to be buried in the ground in the U.K. I have no idea.

I was stationed in East Anglia in 1971 and we recovered several WWII relics. One was an unexploded 500 lb German bomb that was found within a hundred yards of where we loaded nukes. Two others were also found just off base within the 9 months I was there.

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Originally Posted by TDH

One was an unexploded 500 lb German bomb that was found within a hundred yards of where we loaded nukes.

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I wouldn't even want to guess how many of those are still buried there.

Ref post 13, it's not surprising that several unexploded bombs were discovered relatively closely together because some air raids carried out by the Luftwaffe lasted hours with large amounts of ordinance dropped. I believe that one of the longest air raids which my father and other family members were subjected to lasted for around 10 hours although there were lulls in the intensity during this period. The ordinance dropped is believed to have included thousands of incendiary bombs, significant numbers of H.E. and also Phosphorous (for illumination of target).

If you want to know about unexploded wartime bombs of every shape and size, go to Dusseldorf! They are currently tunneling the city to replace the tram system to be an underground system. There's loads of them........... If they aren't in the line of the machines, then they stay there unmolested to presumably rot away - eventually!

Awesome finds! I am so jealous of you guys. I dream of being able to walk outside and hunt for war relics. Super neat.

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Originally Posted by Enslaved87

I dream of being able to walk outside and hunt for war relics.

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It gets hold of you and then you find you can't walk looking up any more...

I expect that there are plenty of places in the U.S. where old military kit lies buried and undiscovered at sites where there use to be a military base or camp. It is just a case of knowing where to look and most important of all getting permission to dig from the authorities/land owner. There are many places in the U.K. where there use to be military bases at one time or other but the land owner probably wouldn't be at all happy to find people digging deep holes in his land.

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Originally Posted by Flying10uk

many places in the U.K. where there use to be military bases

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An example would be the airbases...go to any airfield in the UK on Google Earth and back out a bit, you'll find another or a remnant within a few dozen miles. It gives you an idea of the amount of bases there during WW2.

During WW2 U.K. airfields sometimes had what are known as "Satellite" airfields a few miles away from the main base and there were sometimes several "Satellites" per main base. The "Satellites" didn't usually duplicate all the facilities of the main base such as administration/maintenance but they did provide extra space to store and operate aircraft from.

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Originally Posted by Flying10uk

I expect that there are plenty of places in the U.S. where old military kit lies buried and undiscovered at sites where there use to be a military base or camp. It is just a case of knowing where to look and most important of all getting permission to dig from the authorities/land owner. There are many places in the U.K. where there use to be military bases at one time or other but the land owner probably wouldn't be at all happy to find people digging deep holes in his land.

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That's true almost everywhere there were bases or camps during WWII. Take Lidcombe (NSW) for instance. Carnarvon Golf Course is built on what was a WWII army camp. Bankstown Aerodrome was a RAAF station during WWII. Camden aerodrome was an auxiliary landing field, and there was an Army Camp right next to Liverpool railway station.

There were heaps of auxiliary landing fields near main aerodromes since aircraft needed someplace to divert to in case of weather or - as in the U.K. battle damage.

Imagine the lost, now buried kit littering Egypt after having been occupied and fought over during two world wars and the Suez campaign.