Hi guys,
First off: thanks all for your comments. Then some specific remarks:
[Lex]
Olaf, for the sake of being specific and cautious I'd refer to those items
that are not loaded in cartridges as projectiles rather than bullets.
Alright, from now on I'll try using Chris' terminology a bit more strictly
and I shall call the "projectile" the "round", and the "cartridge" the
"casing"... (I hope I got it all right...)
The whitish oxidation you've noted on some projectiles can even be found on
aging lead bullets. I'm inclined to think it's as much a factor of
environmental conditions as of the metallurgy. Our artisian well water
produces the same effect on pewter and certain aluminum kitchen utensils
that are allowed to soak too long.
Yes, the oxidation is not much of a surprise to me. The rounds have been
lying in the fields (exposed to rain etc.) for several years. They seem to
have been made for the majority of a metal which contains iron (as they show
rust), probably this part is regular (or hardened steel), and something of a
light shade of metal, which most closely resembles aluminium. Now, supposing
this is aluminium, I seem to remember that (sea) ships use blocks of
aluminium as so-called "sacrificial metal", the idea is that aluminium is a
stronger reductor than the metal of the ship it self, causing the aluminium
to get oxidised rather than the ship (a simple yet effective trick) [I hope
I remembered all this correctly from my high school chemistry classes]. So,
it's not strange indeed to see that the tips of these bullets also got
oxidised.
[...snip...]
Even many non-explosive rounds contain tracers spaced apart at least every
few rounds.
I have wondered about those, but I think these must be made of some sort of
material which burns when fired (hence leaving the "light trace"). I doubt
they would look the same as regular rounds, but perhaps they do...
Do you have a safe storage facility for your collection that's detached
from your dwelling?
Nope, they're all stored in my attic (in boxes and bags)...
It's certainly a nice collection.
Ahhh, you've only seen the tip of the iceberg! I have many more of the
rounds/cases/shackles that are pictured on the page. Furthermore, there are
some rarer pieces too: one of them is a 25mm casing that was given to me by
someone who retrieved it in the former Yugoslavia, I would guess this comes
from a Mig/Sukhoi. Then, there are the few odd casings I have from WWI (from
1917 and 1918, these seem to be field artillery type, something like 70mm),
and from WWII, such as a 120mm Howitzer casing, as well as another one which
is bigger still but of a smaller caliber (105mm I believe?).
Finally there's the small stuff, which is not rare but which I also like,
e.g. the 7.62 mm casings that I have (some 120) which I've put in their
black shackles, along with a bag full of Magnum .357 casings (retrieved on
one of our US holidays :) ), etc, etc.
Knowing that there are many serious ammo collectors around the world I'd be
surprised if there isn't a reference somewhere on the 'net to either a site
or book containing more specific info.
Yes, this information should be out there somewhere...
Regarding the overall quality of the photos - try rigging a
reflector/diffuser like my delicious Marie Callender pie pan and white
styrofoam plate doodad. Diffusion helps tremendously in making photos of
metallic objects readable.
Yes, if I'm ever going to take more pictures of this I will do so. It's
little effort to have a T32 fire into a white umbrella (which I have in me
own lil studio anyway) for more even lighting...
[Chris]
Not true I'm afraid. These 20mm are rounds from an aircraft's gun,
probably an F16 since the F15s were AD only in that part of Europe,
Most likely indeed. There is (was?) one F15 squadron based in Soesterberg,
this was a US squadron though, which was one of the
"east-block-enemy-interception-squadrons". As there seems to be no further
use for that squadron, I believe it moved back to the USA already. Then
again, the F15s were not impopular in Germany, as during air shows I've seen
several F15s that were stationed in Bittburg (perhaps a US squadron too?
they definitely had German markings on them though). The F16 on the other
hand is _the_ airplane that is being used by the Dutch air force, ever since
it almost completely replaced the F5s in 1986. I write "almost", as there
still used to be one F5 squadron left at Gilze-Rijen. This squadron is no
longer there now though, it has made place for the only AH-64 Apache
squadron that we have in the Netherlands. I don't know exactly which
squadrons are present at the moment on the Twente air force base (in
Enschede, where I live), but the 313 and 315 squadrons (both are F16
squadrons) used to be here. One of them, I believe 315 (which originally I
think was from Soesterberg, but which was/is stationed at Twente for a long
time), went to Villafranca for the Bosnia missions. No idea where these are
nowadays.
and the standard war fit for air-to-surface is a mix of HE and AP.
Which makes sense...
He AP is normally kinetically piercing, the HE is a little bomb.
However, it was unlikely that much, if any, of the rounds fired on
this very small range (in US terms) was HE.
This is the kind of question I hope to get cleared up using the codes
written on (or stamped into) the rounds/casings...
I don't recall there ever being an HE target since we normally had to
travel to another range to have fun with our HE strafe (and fun it was!).
As a "typical HE target" I would expect to see some concrete/steel targets
(or something else which is hard to pierce). On the Nordhorn range there
were mainly cloth targets (which I presume were shot at with full metal
jackets), and one old tank. The tank was painted in white and orange, and
was presumable used for the drop bombs. The tank most definitely did not
show any signs of having undergone an "A-10 DU treatment" (DU = Depleted
Uranium), nor having been fired at with other types of ballistic armour
piercing or HE ammunition...
[Warren and George]
I'd just like to add one word of caution to your finds. Even though the
blue bombs are practice bombs, they may not technically be "inert". All
the practice bombs I have seen demonstrated have a shotgun shell charge
inside. This shell is meant to explode on impact, which doesn't destroy
the bomb, but is designed to make a white puff of smoke to aid the scorer
who is in the tower that you saw, determine exactly where a particular
plane's bomb struck.
All the pilots are graded on their practice drops.
Just so... I think that Olaf knows that the practice bombs have some
sort of charge. The slick practice bombs (bigger and heavier) that
we used until about 6 years ago, the 28lb ones, had quite a charge in
them.
Indeed I do. This is exactly why I never even touched these bombs, let along
bring them home...
For the RAF, a Direct Hit (or DH) has to be a little closer than that
- - except on the northern Dutch ranges at Noordvader and Vliehors
where you might be given a "DH a little long" ;-). Those Dutch
scorers were my favourite... especially as they did not get too
excited if you dragged your live gun through their tower by lining up
on the wrong target!
:)))
Hehehe, funny indeed. I think, BTW, that those are the ranges used by the
Dutch pilots and their F16s, rather than that they use(d) the Nordhorn
range. 20mm casings were actually a rather rare find on the Nordhorn range
(I only found some 30 or so of them, as opposed to the abundantly available
27mm and 30mm casings), so I doubt many F16s came there to use the range.
Another word of caution in case you're around when the aircraft are
shooting- the "guns" 20 and 30mm etc, are shooting live rounds, and
security would have to be tight to make certain you're not in line with the
approach.
This is a thing which baffled me a bit: on weekend days there seemed to be
zero security on the range, no idea about the security during weekdays
though...
The gun target here looks like a giant white sheet with a red bullseye
painted on it.
These would be similar then to the ones I have seen. Doesn't sound like a
good hiding place when "busted" during an exercise ;)))
The bullseye BTW is near invisible at open-fire range, around 1100 yards on
your typical pass with a 20mm. You can just see the shape of the target
which normally counts the rounds passing a sensor.
It has always struck me as being particularly difficult to hit these targets
from a jet fighter, I guess I was not wrong in assuming so!
The US Gatling-type aircraft guns make the coolest sounds as they wind up
to speed (very quickly of course), firing their rounds. The sequence of
sounds is: high-speed electric whine, very fast banging of the rounds
firing followed by the firecrackers of sonic booms. If they were shooting
explosive rounds the bangs at the target would follow the sonic booms.
I can only imagine...:)
Anyone who will ever have heard just how much sound a normal, say 9mm,
hand gun already makes when it is fired, will probably look in awe at
how laughably small such a bullet is when compared to the 20mm, 27mm, and
especially the 30mm rounds pictured on my page. I wonder if the sound gets
proportinally louder as the size of the rounds (well, the casings, really)
increases. Makes me wonder what the sound would have been that was produced
when the 120mm Howitzer casing I have at home was fired. Then, to take
things to the extreme: I don't think I would have particularly liked being
close to the guns that were used on ships like the USS Missouri to send the
800+ KG projectiles on a one way ticket towards the enemy. ;)
You keep the sight just above the target until just before open fire
range when you lower it on smoothly, pause for half a second and fire
for half a second then recover at 4g to avoid the ground. You get
down to about 125ft above the ground, 250 above the target as you
climb out again. This is all quite exciting to think about it
again... but I'll never strafe again in my life unfortunately.
Sounds dificult indeed. What actually happened that you won't be doing it
again, is it failing eye-sight? I'm sorry to hear that...
Cheerio!
Olafo
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
< This message was delivered via the Olympus Mailing List >
< For questions, mailto:owner-olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >
< Web Page: http://Zuiko.sls.bc.ca/swright/olympuslist.html >
|