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large piece shrapnel help needed....German Naval???

butterfly

butterfly

HONOURED MEMBER RIP
I wanted to share this piece with you all and ask for some help in identifiacation if possible.

The seller said that this piece was recovered from the ground during excavation work on a house in Great Yarmouth, though obviously I have no real hard based proof of this. What is apparant is that it is a huge piece of shrapnel and the reason for my post is to see if anyone can help me to identify the size of projectile this came from and indeed if it can be determined that it is indeed of German origin.

So I do know that Great Yarmouth came under naval bombardment during 1914, 1916 and 1918, though in my limited trawl through online resources it would seem that poor visibility hampered the shelling and so damage was limited as many shells fell on the beach.
So taking what I have been told about the location of recovery, and the ships used during the bombardment, starting at the top could this be from either a 280mm (11") or a 305mm (12") gun?

........and also as a starting point does anyone have any diagrams of the ammunition used for these main armament guns? (I presume that the shrapnel comes from an HE shell?

Any help at all on this one would be most welcome!!!

Ok, here are some photos....

first of all some overall pics...

HPIM9856.jpgHPIM9857.jpg

comparison to a WW2 88mm projectile (which I ought to point out is INERT and F.F.E.). I have also tried to show the profile of the shrapnel ...

HPIM9849.jpgHPIM9850.jpgHPIM9851.jpgHPIM9852.jpg

The end tapers down in thickness and there appears to be remnants of a thread on the inner wall where presumably the fuze would have screwed in??

HPIM9853.jpgHPIM9854.jpg



....and finally some close up shots showing the thickness of the piece and also the edges where it tore apart....

HPIM9855.jpgHPIM9858.jpgHPIM9859.jpgHPIM9860.jpg

regards Kev
 
Approaching this one from another angle, does anyone have any details on the relative thickness used in projectiles of differing sizes, presuming that this piece is from an HE shell??

Or indeed does anyone have any opinions at all on it? after all its only hearsay that this was found in the location mentioned, and as much as I believe the person whom I got it from I have been collecting long enough to know that sometimes stories do get added to enhance the price of an item (though not in this case as it didnt cost the earth!!)

Rather than proving that it is from a German Naval Shell, is there anything about it that would suggest it wasnt????

Kev
 
Just bumping this thread to see if anyone has any thoughts on this fragment ? (note; 'fragment' not 'shrapnel' - I have been educated!!!)

indeed, is it possible to distinguish anything from such a piece, other than the fact that it is a large fragment ?

kind regards Kev
 
Taking into account the length of the shrapnel it looks way too thin walled for a projectile of the caliber that can be suspected as a minimum. To me it looks more like from a bomb or at least other ordnance than artillery.
 
What types of AA guns would have been stationed in the area? I would suspect the 3.7" and the fragments would seem to br too large for that. Other guns?
 
The 1914 bombardment failed to hit the town, the shells all falling short apart from one that passed over the town and failed to explode.
The 1916 bombardment lasted only a few minutes because of poor visibility and little damage was done, earlier in the morning the Germans shelled Lowestoft for 20 minutes, destroying 40 houses and damaging a further 200. Damage was limited as the Germans fired AP shells and many failed to explode.
Great Yarmouth was heavily bombed during WWII and defended with 3.7" AA guns
 
Tx for sight of this - I'm no expert in interpreting shell fragments, but what I can tell you is that for the Scarborough bombardment, it now seems pretty clear that the ships involved restricted themselves to using their smaller guns (15cm and possibly 8.8cm) rather than using their main armaments, because they'd have needed to keep their big guns in reserve against the possibility of encountering RN ships on the way home. So, if the German ships adopted the same policy when they bombarded Yarmouth, and your piece is from one of these ships, I guess it's probably going to be 15cm. But this really is a guess!
 
Thanks guys for all the replies.

Perhaps though I ought to return to basics on this one. When I buy an item I buy the item itself and not the story surrounding it, however I always ask about an items history as it may shed some light onto its past and is in itself interesting......though concrete evidence is not always so easy to find. When I bought this I was told that it was recovered from a depth of four feet whilst digging foundations for an extension/garage to a property to the north end of Great Yarmouth close to the sea. The suggestion was made that it may have been a fragment of shell from the German bombardment of Great Yarmouth in WW1 (the size of fragment being the main reason for this suggestion I suspect) - however there is no definative proof of this. There are indeed many ways in which the fragment could come to rest where it was, modern building work for instance (not sure that the houses were there during WW1), flooding and subsequent clear up work being just another (I dont know how the coast here was affected by the 1953 flood for instance?) - so I keep an open mind!

What I was really trying to find out was if anyone could identify, first of all a likely candidate for what it is from ............ bomb or projectile, for instance? (the shape suggests to me a nose fuzed projectile, but if it is indeed too thin for a projectile of this size (as suggested by eod) then it could indeed indicate something else?)
there are indeed no driving bands, so if it is a projectile it would be significantly larger than the length of fragment (I think it is too large for a 3.7 inch projectile - these also appear to break up into much smaller pieces)

Also I was wondering if anyone had any diagrams of large calibre nose fuzed projectiles which give the wall thickness - this would determine if it were indeed possible for it to be from a projectile. If after all there is definative proof it cannot be a projectile then so ends the suggestion that it is anything to do with naval bombardment. (it could equally be from a jettisoned bomb?)

This is exactly as I purchased it and someone has coated it in varnish, obviously to protect it, looking closely at it there are some light patches which to me suggest that at some point this has been in the sea/beach. The lighter patches look almost like 'barnacle' and this appears on the edges too. Another thing about this is that the edges are not sharp - that is to say, you can run your finger along the edge, this you most definately dont want to do on some fragments - suggesting again that it could have been in an environment that has 'softened' the edges.

I am not sure if it is possible to work out from what exactly the fragment originated, maybe there will always be a question mark over it. Perhaps its just me, but at the end of the day I particularily like the pieces that make you think!!

regards
Kev

photos showing close up of 'lighter' patches ...... barnacle type creature perhaps? suggestions?

P2070512.jpgP2070513.jpgP2070514.jpg
 
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