What happened to all the captured German guns?

[Ian Hulley]

My old neighbour was POW of the British, and his work for 3 months have been throwing hundreds of boxes of handguns into the North Sea in summer 1945. Not only German guns, but also P14 (or P17) rifles and, old Mk. I rifles, Lewis and Vickers machine guns. And tons of ammunition.

I would like to know in what condition these rifles are today. Do anyone knows where the the dump positions where in 1945?

Bye from Germany
Frank

Frank, there was one such dump site in the Irish Sea, not far north of the Menai Straights. There is a large current through the area making it hard to dive even on calm days but a former boss of mine (a Scuba diver instructor) brought up a box of 6 S&W 'Victory' revolvers and tried to conserve them in the workshop at work. All the revolvers were bent by their own weight bearing down on the weakest point where the frame opened up for the cylinder. A couple of them had working triggers but the springs were long gone. Within a week the badly bent ones he left out of oil had started to peel apart in layers and the grips were like mush.

I think he tried to frame one in a thin perspex tank of clear mineral oil but we went our seperate ways before I saw the results.

Ian

[timg]

Their is a traditional "for want of a better term" dumping ground to the North west of the UK. A deep section in the sea bed a bit like a trench.

This I believe was used post both world wars for munition dumping et al. In fact its the same place that parts of the U Boat fleet that was surrendered but not worth studying were sunk along with quite a few Sunderland flying boats that were war weary as I recall.

It is most likely well marked on maritime charts to warn off fishermen to avoid getting any nasty surprises in their trawls.

Regards,

https://webarchive.nationalarchives....tionsAtSea.htm As an aside this is worth a look when it comes to disposal of WW2 German Chemical weapons post ww2 Quantities are reasonably impressive if you can call it that (and no its not secret as its been released to the national archives, in fact it contains a lot of info about the subject as a whole.)

[Stive]

In Russia, for more than 10 years, К98 carbines have been sold in hunting weapons stores. It was possible to buy such carbine to everyone who received a license from the police.

[Geof]

My brother dived on a couple of Victory merchantmen out on the Poor Knights Islands in New Zealand. Basically after the war the ships and their cargoes were deemed surplus so they sailed them out there beyond the Continental Shelf and opened their valves and let them founder thinking they would head for the abyss. An unknown current instead drifted them back into diveable water. They were loaded with vehicles, munitions, aircraft cannon and similar. He brought up one .50 cal and a couple of flare guns but they pretty much fell apart as soon as they dried out.

[ValhallaMilitaria]

VERY interesting video and thread, great photos too-thanks to all who posted stories and images.
Its threads like these that make the WAF such a great site.
Eric

[Ingsoc75]

Quite a few mp44's are still in the arsenals in Namibia. J

I would like to find more about this. Nothing came back from a quick Google search.

[stevezz1]

And some just weren't worth picking up....

[Arthur Kullmer]

After the war in the 50s-60s we dumped loads in the north sea & in lakes, I heard of a local one near Oulton Park England, my grandad told me of this.