76mm HESH projectile

[Gspragge]

I came across this today, nothing flashy but they don't show up as often as they used to.
I'm not particularly familiar with these. I have a question, is there a difference in a practice body
versus a regular one ? I had a practice base fuze for one of these, a heavy long thing. If it was screwed into
this body it would be quite inset and not be at all flush with the base. So are the fuze wells different for practice and regular HE ?
It is marked;
76MM HESH
IMT96J12-08
Hesh is repeated around the body as are the letters HPL
No indication of year of manufacter ?

 

[Gspragge]

Does anyone have diagrams of these things ? I would expect there is
good sectional information. It's a bit modern for me so some what
obscure in my world ! But I would hope to complete it properly in
any event.

 

[Gspragge]

Spotter Thanks for the image. In this image of several things, a 3" AA projectile on the left and a
Canadian dummy fuze for the Hesh round, though I don't have an image of the top and markings.
Or that is what it is suposed to be as I was told. Clearly it would fit down in the fuze well and not be flush.
So is it really for one of these 76mm types ? It was very heavy as if to make up for the internal charge.

 

[TimG]

@Gspragge,

Gordon,
The 76mm Practice HESH I've seen - the cavity is only deep enough to take the standard base fuze or REP. Plug. It maybe things your side of the Atlantic were different. Additionally, the fuzes were alloy and that object appears to be ferrous, it looks very much like an exploder holder for a British bomb.

TimG

 

[Gspragge]

I have to agree with the above, It doesn't look like any fuze or dummy fuze I've ever seen in one either.

 

[Eggburt1969]

If you scale the image, using the 3" AA projectile's body, it gives you a sense of the unknown object's size.

I took the bore riding areas (bourrelet) as about 2.99" and used that figure to scale the image (see below).



So about 9" long and 1.75" in diameter. The dimensions are similar to the cavity within later (L-series) 25-pounder busting smoke shells (see below).



So it could be a production charge former, or something similar, for a 25-pounder busting smoke projectile, or something similar.

 

[felixuxo]

I came across this today, nothing flashy but they don't show up as often as they used to.
I'm not particularly familiar with these. I have a question, is there a difference in a practice body
versus a regular one ? I had a practice base fuze for one of these, a heavy long thing. If it was screwed into
this body it would be quite inset and not be at all flush with the base. So are the fuze wells different for practice and regular HE ?
It is marked;
76MM HESH
IMT96J12-08
Hesh is repeated around the body as are the letters HPL
No indication of year of manufacter ?

I may well have a base fuse for this item if needed let me know.