WW2 gunnery range - Mortar bonanza !
Well, a few weeks ago a good friend of mine put me onto a possible site where he had seen quite a few mortar rounds. Armed with this info, I went on a trawl of the net for 3 or 4 hours but could find no reference to the location he’d given me being a range at anytime, let alone in WW2. Undeterred, I have spent the last 4 weeks tracking down the landowner and finally found him, spoke to him, AND got permission to search the site.
My search area was a little limited as I couldn’t search in the growing crops, so had to limit myself to the edge of fields and two small wooded areas. I wasn’t doing too bad, finding a fair few spent bullets and 3 or 4 2 inch mortar fins and hunks of nose fuze, when I got to a little stream.
You have to watch the video to find out what happened in the stream !!!
WW2 relic hunt - Mortar fins and fuzes !! - YouTube
After only 3 hours detecting I had this little lot.
I am fairly sure this place was a WW2 range !!! lol
The 2 inch nose fuzes and bullets…..
…and the fins. 37 of them. 
:)
I have already cleaned some of the nose fuzes. There are markings on some of them but they are very feint and I can’t capture them in a photo I’m afraid.
And here are some of the best fins cleaned up.
Nearly all the fins have visible date stamps on the base.
And some have the makers mark and dates visible on the fins. About half have visible dates, the rest are too corroded.
Those that are visible are all WW2 dated.
A truly great site. They must have used other stuff there as well as 2 inch mortars. This first visit was more of a recce so I can get a feel for the site. All I’ve got to do now is find out where they were firing them from !!!
Hope you like the finds and the video
Laters
Steve T
