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Originally Posted by senojekips I was given a "disarmed" 40mm Bofor projectile some years ago by a widow clearing up a deceased estate. I was told that it was harmless and empty, in fact she then proceeded to unscrew the nose fuse and show me,... indeed the projectile was empty, but I had a nagging doubt about the fuse (time) itself and promptly took it to a collector acquaintance of mine who was also a Major at the nearby Army storage depot. He was not willing to fiddle with it and instead, after a month or so found me a replacement fuse assembly with no detonator and an empty gaine.
Several weeks later he told me that the original fuse was live and had been destroyed. The gaine had contained several grams of PETN mix which alone would have ruptured the case and could have killed anyone within about 5 yards.
This decoration had been sitting in the owners lounge room for 40 years and had been often played with, and examined by their children and visitors.
20 or more years ago a live hand grenade was found sitting on a rail in a local outbuilding after the house had been vacated by tenants. I remember the event but not the outcome, no doubt it was destroyed.
After all of the warnings and occasional maimings and deaths, these items still turn up from time to time. |
40 mm. Bofors does ring a bell here..
Once my unit was tasked with "cleaning out" a storage of thise 40mm.'s.
We carried thee containers out to a gun, and fired them out over the sea, roughly aimed at a rock that was sticking op from the water.
In the scope I noticed something I took for blasts when the grenades hit the rock, wich puzzled me beccause the grenades was painted blue, and therefore should be inert training shells, they were even labeled "Cold Grenades" in the storage list.
So I went and picked up one of the packing sheets from a container and started reading, sure enough.
According to the packing sheat our bulk of ammo had been remanufactured at Lake City Ordnance Plant (as I recall) in 1944 and far from being cold grenades, they were issued with a phosforous tracer and a self destruction load of TNT....
So after some 45 years in storage, the tracer did in most cases function, but didn't set off the self-destruction load, but the impact on the rock sure did.