British Ordnance Collectors Network
Join over 14,000 collectors of inert military ordnance. Get expert identification help for shells, fuzes, grenades, and more — plus access our classifieds marketplace and decades of archived knowledge. Free to register, takes seconds.
Random Museum Ordnance Photos
- Thread starter US-Subs
- Start date
Hi,
70/15 ww1 shell restored in 1937 with ww2 color code, 75/27 gas shell "a codolo", anti personnel wood mine RM
best regards
Last edited:
Certainly - I believe I have photos of all of them (types), taken at Civitavecchia, Codroipo, etc. 210mm, 149mm, 305mm - some very interesting rounds. We also found many (none chemical) in Ethiopia, including some earlier designs.
Hello,
Where is this amazing collection ?
Is it possible to see more ?
Thank you very much Us-Subs for sharing.
Regards
The recovered CW items have been destroyed, though of course more will turn up over the years. The "museum" pieces were held at one time by the Italian EOD school. I was able to see them during a visit around 2000. Some years later (2006?) I was organizing a mission to Ethiopia in order to look at several recovery sites which were suspected of containing CW. In country vs country issues like this it is not always sufficient to say that it is not CW, you may need to positively identify exactly what it is, in order to pacify the accusing country.
I requested permission to go back to the EOD school, for the purpose of photographing the conventional projectiles. I was not satisfied with the historic diagrams/information I had available on the Italian munitions and wanted to create a document for my own use in identification.
The problem with military and museum collections, EOD included, is that frequently priorities change. Space is limited, items become boring to the new generation and are no longer considered "relevant". This was no exception. The collection was no longer available, but after a couple of days searching some of the rounds were found shoved in a storage area. The fate of the other rounds was unknown. In the end I had a couple of hours to photograph as many pieces as I could, not my best work I'm afraid. After my visit there was a rumor that they were considering/had decided to destroy the remainder. I was not able to confirm this, I made some minor attempts to establish a rescue mission, but had no success. I have no idea if any of the original collection remains or not, I hope so.
I requested permission to go back to the EOD school, for the purpose of photographing the conventional projectiles. I was not satisfied with the historic diagrams/information I had available on the Italian munitions and wanted to create a document for my own use in identification.
The problem with military and museum collections, EOD included, is that frequently priorities change. Space is limited, items become boring to the new generation and are no longer considered "relevant". This was no exception. The collection was no longer available, but after a couple of days searching some of the rounds were found shoved in a storage area. The fate of the other rounds was unknown. In the end I had a couple of hours to photograph as many pieces as I could, not my best work I'm afraid. After my visit there was a rumor that they were considering/had decided to destroy the remainder. I was not able to confirm this, I made some minor attempts to establish a rescue mission, but had no success. I have no idea if any of the original collection remains or not, I hope so.
Hello Alpini,
On the first page of this thread same pictures with mention 88mm : http://www.bocn.co.uk/vbforum/threads/86996-Random-Museum-Ordnance-Photos
