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shells

I can remember, as a kid, finding a load of 303 ammunition at the Soap Hole in Smethwick. Father confiscated it (spoil sport) and disarmed it by emptying out the gunpowder charges. He then' made the mistake of reassembling the shells before throwing them onto the fire. :idiot2:

I dunno if it was due to air expansion or the detonator caps going off but we all had to duck for cover when they began to shoot around everywhere; up the chimney across the living room, nowhere was safe. As you can imagine, Mother was absolutely delighted with this display of pyrotechnics! :knuppel2:

To this day I can still recall Father nervously explaining that he only had the safety of us kids in mind. :-\
 
I thought I might share this little tit bit from my memoirs with you. ^-^

When I was about nine years old, a mate of ours got hold of a shotgun cartridge, don’t ask where from. I asked my brother, who was on leave from the army, how bullets worked. He explained about the firing pin hitting the percussion cap etc, etc.
Armed with a complete knowledge of firearms and ballistics, we decided to carry out an experiment. At the top of our garden, which backed onto wasteland, there was a chain link fence with concrete posts for support. There were holes drilled in them for the wire to pass through.
I “borrowed” a small chisel and a hammer and opened up one of the holes until it was a perfect fit for the cartridge.
We pushed in the cartridge and I got ready with a hammer and nail to “fire” it. Now stupid I aint, I knew it was dangerous and dressed accordingly. My protective clothing consisted of a pair of woolly gloves and my trusty balaclava. I pulled up my balaclava so that my eyes were just visible and I was ready.
I placed the nail against the centre of the cartridge and hit it with the hammer.
“BAAANNGG”.
Lots of different things happened at once, there was a cloud of smoke, the hammer shot about twenty feet up the garden, the nail was never seen again and the concrete post snapped in half supported only by the wire fence which leaned at dangerous angle.
My Mother came running out of the house, waving and shouting but I couldn’t hear a word. My hands were stinging like crazy, my eyes were running and I had a terrific headache.
When my Father got home that night my hands were still stinging but not as much as my backside when he had finished with me, well it was his best hammer.
 
Somewhat like postie,
when I was a kid during WW2
we could from some source or other
get hold of 303 rounds,and what we did was
extract the bullet with the aid of pliers,
empty the cordite,which we light with a match,
then being still at school,we would jam the cartridge
in between the desk lid, hold a nail to the percussion cap
a give it a clout with a book,fantastic bang :angel:
 
I will try contact the person who owns the picture as they are in a book as a cataloque fo machinery made by Taylor Challen of Birmingham
it was only when I tried to put them on site I found out they could have been scanned better some of the pictures are are a real look at the industry we have lost 
 
Thanks Postie for the vivid picture of your antics. :2funny:

All things we used to get up to and rarely came to much harm. ;)

And our parents in most cases did not know what we were doing when we went of on our bikes.

We used to like sitting on the bridge with our legs hanging over the tracks at Perry Hall playing fields. We would watch the trains go under the bridge and wave at the driver, who would sound the horn for us. O0.
 
Sorry to dig up an old thread, but this does remind me very much of some of my own antics.
20 something years ago when i was at St Peter and Paul's primary school, i found 2 bullets in the gravel shingle surrounding a path. I was always interested in the war, although a pity i didn't know about the Spring Lane AA gun site as i used to live on Fern Road almost opposite, and did play on the site.
I suppose due to this, i could recognise a bullet at somewhere between 7-9 years old (me, not the bullet ;) )
At the time, our general council of classmates decided it was from a Spitfire testing it's guns. Obviously now, i know that isn't the general procedure, but with no other reasons for bullets to be on a primary school, a plane is quite likely.
I did try to keep hold of them, but the last time i tried to locate them, they were long gone from the draws of junk a child collects. What i do remember is they were the classic pointed rifle style, some rifling marks on them, but not deformed from hitting anything.
They were most likely .303, or within that range, but in all honesty, without getting a micrometer on them it can't be sure.
Whilst it'd be nice to think they were fired from a defending Spitfire in '41, there is every chance they could have been German.
 
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