Detecting amidst possible 50yr. old ordnance.

[abrakdabra]

I've ordered a detector and will be a first time detector. I'm in an area where there was a major war (Korea) fifty years ago. I'm wondering about the danger of unexploded bombs, mines and so on of that vintage. I see no mention in the forum of folks encountering ordnance so assume anything fifty years old is not a problem.

 

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[warthog steve]

I see on the news occasionally they dig up ordnance in Germany digging to put in foundations and such.Most of that stuff is still LIVE!!!!I have heard the same about Civil War ordnance. Can you imagine,still live afteralmost 140 years?!!!!

 

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[Shedman]

Still live and extremely unstable after all that time!

In the Mouth of the River Thames lies the rusting hulk of a munitions ship called the Sir Richard Montgomery. It ran aground in a storm in the late years of WW2, and when the tide went out it broke its back. It is still there to this day. Evry five years the Royal Navy have to send divers down to inspect it. The munitions on board were demmed to be no danger, but now they are deemed too unstable to move. If it ever went up it would cause a wave which would flood a large part of the flood plains between the mouth of the Thames and East London. The area is clearly marked by buoys, but you can go to the outskirts of the area and fish with a magnet for machine guns and rifles whic have moved from th wreck. But you don't want to get caught, they'll lock you up for it.

 

[whiskers]

ARCOMANDPURPLE - "Synchronize your .50-cal." is not a term I'm familiar with. Do you mean you checked the headspace & timing? That was a process that eluded me for weeks, but then the Russians invaded Hungary in October 1956 and I picked it up just like that. All it took was a few days of thinking I was going to Hungary and might need that little skill.

Funniest thing I ever saw that, to this day, 45 years later, makes me chuckle, was this: Everyone in the battery had to qualify on the quad-.50s, which meant the battery clerk/typist had to fire off a few rounds. You may know the guns can be a bit intimidating to a first-timer. Well, there was a brand new asphalt road about 50 yards in front of the guns, and this poor guy was so terrified that he was scarcely aware of what he was doing, and no one had bothered to tell him the guns were barrel heavy and it was necessary to keep a constant upwards pressure on the gun handles to keep the barrels from dropping. So that's just what they did. This guy is putting out thirty to forty rounds a second and we could stand there and watch the tracers slowly drop down towards the new road and then tear it all to pieces. I'd like to meet the guy today to see if he remembers that. But unless someone told him about it, he probably didn't even know it happened.

But I digress. It wasn't long after that - in 1959 - that I bought my first medal detector. I drove the 60 miles up to Oakland to a surplus store that had some World War II mine detectors for sale. I don't remember what I paid, probably about $35, and I brought home a spanking new SCR-625-E. (I can't imagine how I remember that number, but I do.) That was the new 1945 model without the visual indicator. Sound only. I tried it for a couple hours and took it back the next day and exchanged it for a used SCR-625-C, the model with the meter, and paid the extra $5. (Hey, that's money. I was making about $250 a month at the time.)

Later on I learned that right there in Palo Alto, about three miles from where I lived, was Fisher Research.

-Jim Lyons

 

[ARCOMANDPURPLE]

HI WHISKERS
THE QUAD 50 WAS FOUR 50 CAL M2 MACHINE GUNS MOUNTED ON A ROTATING TURRET SETUP ON THE CHASSIS OF A TRUCK. BESIDE HEADSPACE AND TIMING ALL FOUR MACHINE GUNS HAD TO FIRE SIMULTANEOUSLY IN A GIVEN PATTERN (BEST WAY TO DESCRIBE IT IN
A FEW WORD) THEREFORE THE TERM SYNCHRONIZATION.
ALSO THE M2'S HAD SOLENOIDS INSTEAD OF TRIGGERS. ARCOMANDPURPLE

 

[whiskers]

ARCOMANDPURPLE- That's what they used in Vietnam. In World War II, Korea & the '50s we had the quad-.50s on halftracks. Nope, don't recall the word "synchronization" used. I think we called it "line up the guns" or something like that. As you know, there was a little 45 degree angled mirror laid in the breech which looked out the barrel. Then you line all four guns on a distant tree, rock or whatever, and lock them in place.

So it was quad-.50s you synchronized then?

-Jim Lyons

 

[coinshooter]

BOOOOOOOOOOOOM! Don't do it, unless you want to use your detector for your other leg.

 

[tomccue]

Boooom!

My god ...Do be foolish. If you are detecting in areas that have unexploded Ordinace then maybe you should invest in a detector that will show you whats in the ground before you try to probe or dig. Check out http://www.accuratelocators.com they have these type of detectors

CHECK OUT THIS IMAGE OF UNEXPLODED WW1 SHELL

[/img]

 

[Gold_pinger]

I found an 81 mm mortat shell back in 1988 (Friday May 13th)
Ordnance team exploded it on the spot I found it. said it was too dangerous to move. made a crator about 30 feet deep and 20 feet across.
I noticed the hole was lined with broken glass, bottle caps, ect before they filled it in.
As for Boy Scout camps. When I was a boy Scout at camp we had a rifle range. Whenever a round misfired (didn't go off when you pulled the trigger) We were instructed to push the round point first into the ground in front of the firing line. I would be carefull detecting around there. Wish I remembered where that camp was.

 

[lab rat]

A few years back I ran across a newspaper article of some THers in the Philipinnes. One of them found a deep signal and called to his friends to help dig it up, thinking it was a treasure chest. Turned out to be a mine (or something), and it detonated during recovery, killing five of them. That would be WWII ordinance, still active after 50+ years. I didn't save the article, so I couldn't tell you how to find it, but it stands to me as proof that the danger is very real.

Add to that some news I heard on NPR (National Public Radio) just last week that the US and Vietnam are joining forces, at the expense of the US, to remove all unexploded ordinance from the Vietnam War; innocent people are still being killed at the rate of some 600 or so every year over there, a high percentage of them children. That's like 2 people every day!

 

[timemachine]

There's a popular YouTube channel of German WWII relic hunters always digging up old battlefields...it's not for me, that's for sure!

 

[Skippy SH13]

Wow, timemachine...

Digging up a thread 11 years old is quite the feat!

I just blinked and blinked, and then figured your DeLorean's flux capacitor was on the fritz.

There's a popular YouTube channel of German WWII relic hunters always digging up old battlefields...it's not for me, that's for sure!

 

[RobRieman]

Wow, timemachine...

Digging up a thread 11 years old is quite the feat!

I just blinked and blinked, and then figured your DeLorean's flux capacitor was on the fritz.

With a name like "time machine" you had to see it coming.