Help Identifying Possibly Live Shell

Granted, the likelihood of you finding somebody with the proper expertise are slim... And EOD units aren't likely to have such expertise available, but...

You CAN determine whether or not it's live without violating it. We do it all the time at the office... It's called an "X-ray" (or if you really wanna go all out, put it on a HECT table!).

But your average medical X-ray ain't gonna cut it. You need an industrial model; the kind normally used for X-raying welds and the like. Further, you'll need a trained radiographer who knows what he's looking at when he looks at those X-rays.

Are you likely to have access to such? No.

But I find it highly annoying when people assert that there's "no way to know if it's live." There absolutely are ways! Those ways just aren't generally available to the average Joe or even the average EOD tech.





All that said, the scariest thing I see is the yellow paint residue. A yellow band around the nose indicates a warhead contains HE. Your's appears to have once upon a time been yellow all over. I've no knowledge of such a paint scheme, but I can imagine that once upon a time yellow all over had the same meaning as a yellow band does today.
 
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Having the man who sold me the round tell me it was deactivated would give me no end of confidence....given the laws about these kind of things, he has every reason to lie and dissemble. I would not trust my own mother if she told me it was inert....the potential for destruction of property and one or more lives is too great to treat in a method approaching cavalier.
 
Boy, the longer this goes on, the spookier it gets.

Doesn't help much that I read a while back about a guy who had a civil war shell blow up on him.

You can't disarm black powder, you have to extract it. I'm pretty certain that most of the twentieth century explosives won't deteriorate into inert substances over time.

All over europe, they are still finding thousands of battle field duds and misplaced rounds every year. a shell can go off and bury an entire caisson of artillery rounds in a trench, to be found half a century later as the ground erodes.

The old fort crowder is down the road from here. it has been used at times for training. about 1-20 years ago, a dozer working on construction hit shells. can't remember the outcome; they did not explode, I believe that they were smoke rounds.

None of that incident made sense, as there wasn't room for a heavy artillery range there. it was barely outside of the city and surrounded by farms.
 
It's possible that you should take this back to the dealer, demand your money back on the grounds that it is thought to be a live round, and if he refuses to comply, call in ATF. You really should call in atf anyway, if that thing is live, you don't have the tax stamp for owning the explosive device and that is a big time violation, whether or not you believed it to be armed. The owner/purchaser is expected to do his due diligence and determine this before purchasing.
 
one more thing. I am pretty convinced that the thing is in fact a 90 mm aa shell.

It is also a fact that the 90 mm AA was used as ground artillery as well, and as anti tank.

The lack of a timer fuse does NOT show that this is not armed. I have done enough research to find that there were flat faced impact fuses used. I could not find a fuse that exactly matched this one. The screw in the body of the shell is to retain the fuse/plug, I cannot account for the inserts in the fuse/plug itself. I can only say that there is no reason in the world for such inserts to be in a disposable transportation plug. This to me is at least good reason to be very suspicious that this shell is, in fact, an impact fused artillery round, not one that would have been timer or proximity fused for AAA use. Whether that fuse is armed or not, or whether the shell has the HE load still intact is a moot point in my mind.

Ordinarily, a de-milled item would be clearly marked, I suspect. that thing should have been drilled to show that it was empty. it was not marked in any way.

In my opinion, other opinions may vary, there is absolutely no reason at all to believe that this thing is safe. No reason at all. At this point, the only logical thing to do is operate on the assumption that it is not only a real round, but that it was never disarmed, that the charges are all or partly intact, and that is an intact and maybe armed fuse, not just a shipping plug.

After a whole lot of hours of research and thought, my pretty well considered and informed advice is to get rid of it NOW.
 
"Ordinarily, a de-milled item would be clearly marked, I suspect. that thing should have been drilled to show that it was empty."

Maybe. Maybe not.

At various times, different agencies have employed different methods. For example: For a number of years my employer simply used serialized stickers. We didn't always drill holes (dunno why). If you had an item with a sticker, you could look up the serial number on the sticker and the log book would tell you what it was, etc. But stickers can wear off in time leaving no trace that the item was inert. Thus, we no longer use stickers. The point being that the lack of a hole may or may not mean anything.

That yellow paint is still scary, mind you!
 
I believe that ib 70 refers to the explosive charge. IB=inert binder with HE, but it is possible that this is not exactly what the IB on that shell means. what it would mean according to my information is that the charge is composed of 70% he with the remainder being inert clay or plasticizer that would keep the charge intact.

Going back to the markings. You can pretty much count on the fact that the 1942 is production date, and that would be when we were in full wartime production. #50 will be a designator number of model number; what kind of round it was. some part of that number string will identify the arsenal where produced and date codes.

Janes military or other extensive munitions databases could answer all of that.

Like I said earlier, the thing should be 24 pounds fully armed with fuse. That is only a 4 pound discrepancy. I am not entirely certain that the empty carcass alone would weigh 20 pounds. the 24 pound rating was with a timer fuse; who knows how much weight is missing without the tapered, long bronze timer fuse assembly?

another consideration that may or may not mean anything is that things condition. it really looks as if it sat in a barn for decades, rusted in the ground for a while, and was cleaned up. WWII ammunition that has been properly stored would not have that sort of rust.

there is no rifling engraved in the drive bands, so it was not a salvaged battlefield dud. That doesn't preclude the thing being a battlefield pickup, or stolen from storage or a dump site. It may have been snuck home from overseas as a souvenir. There is no reason at all to assume that this shell came out of that casing, is there?

I don't have any answers. I just have the few facts I've been able to find, and none of them are remotely conclusive. But none of the information or any of my personal observations indicate that the thing is safe, and keeping in mind that these things killed tanks and blew planes out of the air, safe is a pretty relative term.

It could be that even if it is fully loaded it would never fire. They lay in the dirt in france and are plowed up by farmers and road workers all the time, and they normally don't go off until they are set of by sappers and destruction charges
 
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It could be that even if it is fully loaded it would never fire. They lay in the dirt in france and are plowed up by farmers and road workers all the time, and they don't go off until they are set of by sappers and destruction charges
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But they still go off. A few years back we had a guy in Kansas City that had an old artillery shell that exploded in his house.

Back in 1989, in Korea, some boys were playing catch with an artillery warhead and one boy missed it and it exploded. It had been dug up in a rice field.

Just because a munition has been fired and does not explode does not mean it will not later explode. Just because some guy knew how to remove it from a shell does not mean it is safe.

Alan, I hate to sound crude, but you seem to have made up your mind that you want to keep this thing. The consequences of your actions, if this thing ever goes off, will affect more than just you.

It is possible that an EOD team could inspect it and say "Yeah, it is safe." EOD does not blow up things because they like explosions and like to blow things up, they destroy the munitions because the munitions are not safe to have around.

If you or one of your family members get hurt with this thing, it comes back on you. You have been given very sound advice and seem to want to ignore it. Asking the guy who sold it is like asking a used car salesman "Is there anything wrong with it?"

Sorry if I sound harsh, but there are some things you can take chances with and others you just don't. My friend, you have something you should not take chances with.
 
I don’t mean to be harsh... but honestly why do people collect things like these BEFORE they know if it’s a live round? Just having it could be a violation of any number of laws.. (I’m not a lawyer, but let’s face it anything with possible explosives is likely highly regulated)

If this is a live round anything potentially could set it off, temperature, time, movement and more..

In the Army blue is generally an inert training round, anything else is generally not inert nor a training round, think lethal.....

I highly recommend that no one ever collect these or any other types of military ordinance without being an expert in what you are looking at and an expert in knowing what the law says about it.. It is also advisable to stay out of places where you find these types of ordinance as the ground is likely littered with live and dangerous ordinance.

Again, I dont mean to sound harsh but doing this type of thing can make you dead and potentially others..
 
It could be that even if it is fully loaded it would never fire. They lay in the dirt in france and are plowed up by farmers and road workers all the time, and they don't go off until they are set of by sappers and destruction charges
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And yet many go off when hit by farmers and construction workers, get exploded by scrappers, and by bomb disposal techs attempting to disarm them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/24/world/europe/24germany.html

http://www.stripes.com/news/suspected-wwii-bomb-explodes-injuring-1-1.87164

http://www.thelocal.de/national/20090910-21847.html


People are still being killed by WWII bombs
WWII bomb kills three when explosives experts tried to disarm it.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-N...omb-detonates-kills-three/UPI-72391275487239/

WWII bomb kills three when attempted to be dismantled by metal scrappers
http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/2012-03-20/472416

WWII bomb kills seven
http://lincolntribune.com/?p=19123

WWII bomb kills 1, injures 2 when they tinkered with it
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/26647/1-dead-2-hurt-as-wwii-bomb-explodes-in-davao

WWII bomb explodes during deactivation
http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/04/29/7057547.html

WWII bomb explodes during deactivation, killing 4 EOD personnell and injuring 11
http://www.philstar.com/article.aspx?articleid=781393&publicationsubcategoryid=200

Set off by construction worker
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-02-19-czech-explosion_N.htm
 
Briandg brings up the ONLY comforting point about this item....

The lack of rifling in the drive bands means that it was never fired. That in turn means that even if it *IS* live, it will likely never go off baring extreme mistreatment (no throwing it on the campfire!). To have never been fired means to have never gone through the arming sequence. So we aren't dealing with an item where the stabber simply got stuck or something. We're dealing with an item that would still have the pyro chain out of line. That is MUCH MUCH MUCH safer than anything that has gone down a barrel.
 
The lack of rifling in the drive bands means that it was never fired. That in turn means that even if it *IS* live, it will likely never go off baring extreme mistreatment (no throwing it on the campfire!). To have never been fired means to have never gone through the arming sequence. So we aren't dealing with an item where the stabber simply got stuck or something. We're dealing with an item that would still have the pyro chain out of line. That is MUCH MUCH MUCH safer than anything that has gone down a barrel
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And you are willing to bet the lives of your wife and children on that????????


Lets assume it doesn't go off. Lets look at another aspect. What if someone comes in your house, for any reason, sees the item and reports it. Cop shows up, and per policey calls the Bomb Squad. Everyone gets evacuated and if possible, it might be moved. Or if the Bomb Tech thinks it may be unsafe to move it, desides to get rid of it right there.

Any Bomb Squad I know of, that decission is based on the opinion of the sernior bomb tech on site and he will not risk injury to bomb techs or others to save property damage.

Looking at it, if I was to shoot it, (with a dearmor) I wouldn't use water, I'd use a metal slug. After breaking that item open, the slug will continue on and might or might not do more property damage.

Best case, its broken open, minor (or major) property damage, no explosive.

Next Case: Broken open, explosives found inside. minor (or major) property damage, THEN ATF gets involved...........Big Trouble

Worse case, While shooting it, it goes off, you loose a house and are responsible for any other damage.

Now ask yourself, is it worth it????????????

I'm not trying to be a smart ass. I'm basing this on many years of being a bomb tech, and as an EOD instructor. Part of our jobs were policing fingers and other assorted body parts from people who played with items that someone demmed safe.
 
Would I bet the lives of my wife and child on the safety of an unfired round?

Absolutely.

But then... By profession my wife is an explosives formulator. She's one of the people in lab coats who comes up with new/exciting explosives (and as such plays with some really scary stuff on a daily basis). Myself? I make my living by testing experimental weapons for the military. When the local EOD detachment has questions, I'm one of the guys who gets called to (hopefully) answer it. Note that my wife gets some of those questions too. The point being that in many ways, my wife and I have a lot more training/knowledge than any EOD tech (And I concede, in other ways, less).

So why would I be willing to bet my life? Because I do it every day. It comes with the job. If an item malfunctions, I'm the poor SOB who gets to go out and inspect it.

So when in your hypothetical situation the local EOD unit gets called to my house, the first thing they're gonna say is, "Hi, Dave/Kris!"

With all that said... Am I saying that the OP should hang on to the shell? Of course not. There are too many unknowns here. My point is that it doesn't need to be treated like eggs either; it's not an "O M F G" situation. It's more like a "Meh, I need to get rid of that" situation.
 
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My last hijack for the thread:

Good picture Kraig; never seen that system before. Looks fairly heavy-duty. Door breacher, too, I see.

Good looking dog; shame I cant have one where I live. No matter how badly or how often I screwed up, my dog was always happy to see me when I came home
 
The lack of rifling in the drive bands means that it was never fired. That in turn means that even if it *IS* live, it will likely never go off baring extreme mistreatment (no throwing it on the campfire!). To have never been fired means to have never gone through the arming sequence. So we aren't dealing with an item where the stabber simply got stuck or something. We're dealing with an item that would still have the pyro chain out of line. That is MUCH MUCH MUCH safer than anything that has gone down a barrel
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So your assumption is that the round is safe because it hasn't been fired. You know this despite not knowing the history of this particular munition. You know this despite knowing that parts are missing from the nose which indicates that somebody has messed with it.

In reading through a lot of articles between last night and this morning, there are some typical common sequences that show up. First is that explosives do such as used in WWII and prior often become less stable with time. That does not mean that they are more explosive or less. Some will explode easier, though may not be of the full original power. Some become more sensitive to kinetic shock (dropping) and some less so. You can't begin to predict which it will be without knowing exactly what is inside and what conditions the shell has been exposed to over time.

Chemical fuses destabilize as well if not mechanical. Mechanical fuses can fail to function correctly. Munitions thought previously safe because of not exploding despite rough handling, exposure to fire, etc. can explode unexpectantly.

Robert Colla kept a 40mm round on his desk as a paperweight. He used it for years. He had found it while hunting. It blew off his hand when he used it to squash a bug. http://www.leatherneck.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-28241.html

This is a great UXO report (unexploded ordnances) where UXOs did eventually explode. It isn't a fun read, but is informative.
http://64.78.11.86/uxofiles/enclosures/TheOEAccidentReport.pdf

Unexpected detonation of ordnances thought to be safe never produce beneficial results. At best, nobody and no property are injured, but this result is the exception rather than the rule.
 
I bow to the experience of the EOD techs and explosives prefessionals here, but there are a few things I have personal experience with, and they are...

The ONLY inert ordnance is one that has had the explosive components removed. Fired or unfired, if the explosive is still present, the only thing you can count on is that it has not gone off YET.

I'm pretty certain that most of the twentieth century explosives won't deteriorate into inert substances over time.
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Sure they will. Everything does, eventually. But it may take a couple centuries, or more (possibly much more) for modern explosives. And they have a nasty habit of turning into something unsable (and stay that way a LONG time) on their way to becoming inert.

There are lots of instances of old ordnance just "going off". During WWII there were cases of bombs and shells (unfused, and "unarmed") spontaneously detonating. Rare, but it did happen.

Back during the late 60s or early 70s there was a large field at Ft Hood (aka target range) where they shot LAW rockets. Over the years there were a number of "duds". It was decided to clean them up. So the field was set on fire, and a number of them exploded. The rest didn't, and so must be complete duds, right? A detail was sent out to collect them, and they were, stacking the dud rockets like cordwood. Until one got tossed on the pile and went off. Several were hurt, and I think, some killed. DUDs are NEVER truly dead until they are blown up!

Another one: 1977 Germany, Grafenwoehr, troop finds "dud" round, and brings it back to the barracks. Saturday night, some drinking involved. Dud falls off table,onto floor. Resultant "thud" alerts CQ. EOD called. Barracks evacuated. Sunday morning, Entire company called to formation (rather spoiling the weekend when we were normally off duty), marched to the post theater, and given rather intensive instruction about unexploded ordnance all morning. In the afternoon,we were taken to the range, where EOD detonated the"dud". WWII German 10.5cm WP (white phosporus) round. Nasty stuff.
For that one, I was there, the dud was in the room above and one over,from mine. I take these things seriously, still today.

The main rule is always "just because it hasn't gone off, doesn't mean it can't!".

About the yellow paint on the 90mm shell, it might not mean anything at all. Lots of times these "souvineers" got painted by their owners, and then later get sold to antique dealers, who are ALWAYS told "yeah, its deactivated". Don't take the dealers word for it, he doesn't know.
NOBODY knows, except God, and if he tells you, you won't like it.

Call EOD, let them do what they do. If it is live the antique dealer owes you your money back, at the least, I would think. And don't worry overmuch abouto the ATF. They see this kind of thing all the time, "duds" that turn out to be live. While it is against the law to posses an unregistered explosive device, they seldom prosecute those who do not intend to posess an explosive device. Call EOD, and call the BATFE, and ask them what to do, then do what they tell you. DO it NOW, and don't do anything else!

Good Luck.
 
When I pointed out that it may never fire, and that there are thousands of armaments laying around unexploded,

That was not meant to imply that it couldn't, or wouldn't. that was not my intent.

What that entire post said, was that anything with explosives in it is a hazard and that it could explode, especially a fired round that is buried in a battlefield. But, just like radioactive materials with a 50 year half life, there is no guarantee that an individual atom will break down at any time within even a thousand year span. It could happen in the next nanosecond, or for all practical purposes, never.


When an armed device sits around in a garage, is banged around in shipping, lays in a field, some people consider this to be evidence that it is inert. It hasn't exploded after all that, so it must be inert/safe.

The way to observe that is to note that it hasn't exploded yet.


It may never explode, but that is not the proper way to consider the problem.
 
as an aside, my father in law had what has been called an "artillery round;" it is stored in the crawlspace of his home. I don't think it is a genuine artillery round, they always described it as being less than 3 feet long, but a complete shell. Probably from a recoilless gun.


Nobody in the family knows anything about it, and over and over, I've suggested that something needs to be done, but I have been refused access to it. Can't even look at it.

It would not be hard, probably, to know if the thing is genuinely safe, or if there is a risk. Training dummies are usually obvious.

But, the way I have always approached this thought is that dad brought home a souvenir, and that there are possibly several pounds of smokeless propellant and/or HE in a live device. The older I get, the less eager I am to open that hatch and look into his little cabinet of curiosities.

I think it's time to bring it up again.
 
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