British WW2 munitions found in Egyptian Sahara

[dieseloneten]

Hello all

Hope you will excuse a newcomer posting immediately! I am a Brit living in Cairo and I was in the desert this weekend, and came across the remains of an aircraft, either crashed or ditched, some 100 miles west of Cairo. The wreck is fairly well known and most of it has been stolen over the years by souvenir hunters. However snooping about in the local area I came across some ordnance that had been dropped by the aircraft, presumably in an attempt to make a forced landing safer.

There are two of the large devices and five or six of the smaller ones.

The large one is a Smoke Float no 1 Mk IV I think.


But what are the small ones? They are very small, maybe 6 inches long. They look like incendiaries, but surely they wouldnt carry enough "bang" to make their carriage worthwhile?!

Im trying to work out as much as possible about the delivery aircraft - Im assuming British Fleet Air Arm - however this is all thats left of the wreck;



Its the pile of bits in the foreground.... not my Land Rover!

The bits have small stamped markings indicating US origin ("Cincinnati" etc) but that may only indicate manufacture of certain components rather than the whole aircraft.

Obviously IDing the plane is nigh on imposible. I was just wondering if anyone knew what the smaller ordnance was!

All thoughts very welcome!

Best

Sam, Cairo

 

[spotter]

Looks to be a No6 smoke generator dropped from aircraft so pilots could see the direction of the wind on the ground before making an emergency landing

 

[dieseloneten]

Thank you! How dangerous are these devices, do you think, after 70 years?

 

[spotter]

If theyve not functioned ,and these appear to be from the wreck even though they are not high explosive bombs i would assume they are still viable and treat them as such ,70 years a 100 years it makes no difference this stuff can and does still kill or cause severe injury.

 

[beihan62]

Hi Dieseloneten,Welcome to the forum,thanks for posting the pics,very interesting,I know nothing about the munitions but I may be able to help identify the type of aircraft involved,are there any part numbers or inspectors stamps on any of the wreckage,the numbers will be very small and the inspectors stamp may be some numbers/letters in a circle about 6mmdia,hope this helps,
Regards,
Don,

 

[kahu1]

Right on the smoke float, appears to be one of these, likely is still live as the seals(the discs) look to be complete,and i guess they don't get much rain/water to activate the compounds.

Was the fuze armed or still clip retained?


cheers
Bob

 

[Joerg]

Hallo, diese Bombe ist Smoke Flloat No I Mk II

 

[Joerg]

Hier nun die Zeichnungen

Gruss Joerg