Over the years I have made the acquaintance of a large number of landowners. Some are just that, while others have become friends, and one or two have become good friends.

I had a message the other day from one of the good friends, who has a farm that straddles an old WW2 RAF base. He told me about some construction work that is about to start soon on an area of the old base. As it has a known military history, it has had to be surveyed in detail to identify all metal objects beneath the surface, so as to remove any potential hazards. With the survey complete, the recovery work had started a few weeks back and he wondered if I’d like to go through the pile of scrap metal piled by one of the farm tracks, the ‘contents’ of which had been identified as safe. He sent me a picture of the pile, and I got a little carried away with excitement!

Holy crap! Look at all those bomb fuzes and arming vanes! Even in this state I could see No 848s, No 860s and even a No 849, along with loads of caps, vane stems, flare cartridge cases and so much more!

I obviously accepted his kind offer and paid a visit to the pile today. The photograph didn’t lie, and the pile was exactly as pictured. I sorted through the fuzes and fuze parts and took whatever was worth salvaging. With this quantity of WW2 relics, I could afford to be choosy.

I ended up with quite a haul, which was especially impressive given I had had to do not one minute of detecting or digging.

I was incredibly grateful to the landowner for letting me save a large proportion of this scrap pile, the remnants of which will soon be winging their way to the local scrap merchant or local landfill!

I had some things to do when I got home, and rushed through my various chores so I could at least clean some of these relics. I get a huge amount of satisfaction from recovering relics, as well as identifying them, but by far my greatest satisfaction is when I clean them. It is my favorite job……ever.

Enough talking. On to the items I recovered.

 

 

Now have a look at some of the above after a bit of cleaning!

 

 

One heck of a haul and some incredible WW2 relics recovered!