As used by the Luftwaffe on East Coast towns and RAF airfields – I have been restoring this little chappie. A wartime German anti- personnel munition.
It is totally inert. The fuze is the mk41. The body and fuze are the mark 2 – with bayonet fitting.
It has been made from the remains of an SD2 bomb framed sign, a practice SD2 bought at the Victory Show and a purchased arming spindle. The pins and springs are also new.
The practice ones were yellow, the real ones were apparently black or field grey.
Copied by the US after the war.
Not totally sure yet about the colour – but shown as work to date:
By: Arabella-Cox - 7th October 2012 at 17:58
Butterfly bombs
Nasty little bu**ers they were, by all accounts.
They killed lots of innocent civilians – mostly children and other curious folk by being found hanging in bushes and trees.
I don’t blame those Forumites so far for being more than a little cautious about them.
Anon.
By: mmitch - 7th October 2012 at 11:08
Were these the things that virtually paralysed Hull for a week.
I read a book about bomb disposal and they were turning up in the roof spaces of houses. Every hole had to be carefully checked in case.
mmitch.
By: Augsburgeagle - 6th October 2012 at 23:50
What’s the legality of having munitions? Do they have to have a deactivation certificate?
By: G-ASEA - 6th October 2012 at 21:13
We had one at our old museum at Bletchley Park I was very carefull with it untill I knew it was inert.
Dave
By: TonyT - 6th October 2012 at 20:22
The ruskies had butterfly mines in the 70’s that took 10 mins to arm when dropped, on an exercise in RAFG a Sgt on the squadron was given an inject ( scenario on paper to see how we deal with it ) it said butterfly mines dropped in front of HAS on ground 2 mins how are you going to deal with it.. He whipped round the side of the HAS hopped on the platform sweeper thing we had like the ones British Rail used and hoovered the lot up in about 3 mins flat then parked it on the grass, the exercise that was supposed to tie us up for hours was over in minutes 😀
By: Arabella-Cox - 6th October 2012 at 20:02
Very nice!
I used to have a very nice one – inert, and safe. However, it ended up being blown up by EOD. Long story!!
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October 6, 2012 at 6:17 pm