No4 Battle damaged relic....

[Gibbs505]

I remember reading in the "old" Enfield site that there was a 16" shell from the Rodney mounted outside the Legion in a british town. Apparently some one, one day, not so long ago got the idea to have it inspected to see if it was still stuffed with HE. It was!!

[Thunderbox]

I remember reading in the "old" Enfield site that there was a 16" shell from the Rodney mounted outside the Legion in a british town. Apparently some one, one day, not so long ago got the idea to have it inspected to see if it was still stuffed with HE. It was!!

"Thats nothing!", as the storytellers say: in the 1950s, when they tried to move the Lancaster, bouncing bomb and Grand Slam bomb from the public footpath outside RAF Scampton where they were "gate guardians", they found that the mobile crane couldn't lift the empty Grand Slam dummy bomb. They eventually discovered that the "dummy" was an operational 22,000 lb bomb......

[Gibbs505]

"Thats nothing!", as the storytellers say: in the 1950s, when they tried to move the Lancaster, bouncing bomb and Grand Slam bomb from the public footpath outside RAF Scampton where they were "gate guardians", they found that the mobile crane couldn't lift the empty Grand Slam dummy bomb. They eventually discovered that the "dummy" was an operational 22,000 lb bomb......

Now that would have been fun! I would have liked to see the looks on their faces!!

[RobSmith]

Common wisdon is that many if not most of the relic ordnance/grandpa's war souvenirs currently in people's homes are actually live. I know I wouldn't be using an old shell as a door stop unless I could verify that the thing is empty. I tend to stay well away from this stuff unless the previous owner has disassembled it so that I can both take a careful look at the fuze looking for a cap, booster, or gaine, as well as take a peak in the main body cavity of the projectile with a flashlight to make sure the entire cavity is bare metal rather than filler...

I know of one incident when "grandpa's ww1 grenades from ww1" ended up being suspected to be the source of a rather impressive explosion when the house burned down...