I work as the ops manager for Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA), a humanitarian mine action INGO in Palau, working on conducting a targeted technical survey on a Confirmed Hazardous Area (CHA: 01-HAZARD-16) in Aimeliik state in the island of Babelthuap conducting QC on an already cleared lane, when my mine detector (Vallon VMC-4) started squealing. The spot was NOT flagged, so I scanned the target with the deminer’s issued Schonstedt 72GA-72Cd to see what readings he would get…. A magnetometer mid-range signal usually indicates mineral rocks, but also anything else, ranging from deeply buried projectiles, shallow armor-piercing rounds to subsurface frag at less than 50 grams. (non-conformities are rated at Japanese, Type 97 hand-grenades at 20cm, a 25mm AA HE/Frag at 15, or a 20mm AA HE/Frag at 12cm).
That was a “digable” target, so I geotagged it & started excavating. Being humid & hot as Hell in a jungle, (reduced my focus) although I dug on the target’s off-side,(too close, as I wanted to get back into the shade) but because of “ghosting” I ended-up digging straight down on it! At this point I uncovered a terribly corroded “SAA projectile” at approx. 5-7cm. It was a mass of corrosion with the boat-tail end of it being in relatively pristine condition. The moment I unearthed it, it started smoking. I routinely stepped back 25 meters and let it burn…. Within about 20 seconds it went out giving me the idiotic inpression that it was α tracer .50 Cal round, fired by American fighter-bomber aircraft, attacking a known AA position (in Japanese defense maps, and also mapped in the U.S. THOR bombing surveys)
What didn’t sink is that .50 cal rounds, have copper jackets, thus they are generally found intact, unless they impact on a solid surface; however, you do NOT see a “bloated” mass of corrosion (obviously screaming at you: “inferior ferrous Japanese alloy” with a perfectly preserved “boat-tail end.
Once the sputtering fire went out, I picked it up and dropped in my (moist) sand-bucket and drove to the ERW collection point. On the way there & in the comfort of the AC cab, the oddity of this “round” started nibbling at me, but the physical & metal fatigue (plus backing-up the narrow dirt road) pushed the nibbling concern away.
Once at the ERW collection point, the “weird” boat-tail mystery started bothering me again, so I put it on a vice and started removing the surface corrosion and baked clay with a pocket-sized, titanium breacher bar…
The “bullet” suddenly disintegrated and it caught fire again! Thank God, the cyclonite HE component, literally snapped off, and fell in separate pieces with the “boat-tail segment” onto the ground.
It was a bloody 20mm AA HE/Frag/WP projectile, where the “boat-tail” was non other than a point detonating fuze…. I don’t want to think what would have happened if the separator disk (separating the WP charge from the projectile’s HE filler was as corroded; it may have been built with copper, or else the cyclonite would have started burning, and eventually reach the PD fuse’s gaine and low-order…
One might think… Pffft.. 20mm low-ordering with most of the WP having burned-off! Big deal! Well, it’s enough to blind you of even kill you if the frag hits you in the throat! — Having assumed it was a .50 BMG with an “unnatural” long-burning tracer element, I was not wearing kevlar PPE or Rofi mask — Fishermen in the Solomon islands have perished by trying to extract 20mm PD fuzes for their bomb-fishing activities…
Well…. I had my share of close calls, but never a projo going “Fourth of July” on me!
No gills you see! Yep I respect those divers!
