FOUND ON BEACH

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21809, 4 September 1945, Page 2

FOUND ON BEACH

INFERNAL MACHINE THROWN INTO RIVER TIDE TURNED TOO EARLY Police inquiries into the circumstances in which a case of explosives found its way on to the Waikanae Beach, to be picked up by a Gisborne resident and taken to her home, appear to have been completed without occasion for action being instituted against the person who owned and discarded the case and its contents. It has been ascertained that the person indicated is.a retui'ned serviceman with a fine record of service, and the police view of his action is that it was done without any criminal intent. It was on Sunday, July 1, that a beach resident strolling on the Waikanae foreshore discovered on the edge of the surf a wooden box, proportioned approximately to the size of a small suitcase and fitted with an ivorine handle for convenience of carrying. She took the case home, and when she opened the lid she also opened up a chain of inquiries which involved another member of her family, the police, district officers of the Works Department, the Army Department’s local staff, a bombdisposal unit in Palmerston North, and even the navy. Even to an untutored eye the arlangement of the box’s contents seemed sinister, and *\vhen the finder called a son to advise her as to its disposal, he wasted no time in putting the case in the hands of the police. The case contained several plugs of explosive, some of enemy-country origin and some of British manufacture, snugly packed around a chamber formed by a tin which had contained a commercial product, and which appeared to be the arming device of the whole contraption. Wires led from this chamber to an ignition set in which detonators were involved, and the removal of these wires was the first safety precaution taken. Special Type of Igniter

Experts in explosives were summoned by the police, and it was concluded that the arming device was of the bellows type used in sabotage against aircraft. In this type, the air imprisoned in the central receptacle expands as an aircraft gains altitude, and the pressure of outer air becomes less. At a calculated altitude, the bellows attachment effects contact in an electrical circuit, and a spark is set up in the igniter set. The • removal of the wires from the device and the careful separation of the detonators from the explosives was considered a sufficient safety measure for immediate purposes. The Army Department was then called upon to take over the supposed infernal machine, and a party was sent from Palmerston North to deal with it on lines laid down in long-standing’ orders concerning bomb-disposal. The police instituted inquiries as to.-wherte-vhe case was last seen, and these , inquiries traced its ownership to 'a. Hawke’s Bay resident. From the statements of this person, a returned serviceman, it appeared that he had made up the machine for his own purposes—which the police are satisfied had no criminal aspects. Then, realising that it might cause more damage than he had bargained for, he dismantled it and brought it to Gisborne, where he re-assembled it and threw it into the river, in the expectation that it would be carried out to sea, where its explosion would not cause concern to anyone. , , . The fact that the tide turned and, brought the contraption ashore before it had exploded, ana that it might have, endangered the lives of many people*; is one aspect of the story on which no official comment is available. On the,; reports of those who saw the case soon; after its discovery on the beach, the explosives which it contained would have wrecked a building nao-. they been ignited. 'f! Naval interest in the occurrence apparently arose from, the fact that the case was found in the sea. Navy censorship was in part responsible for. delay in the publication of the facte.-..;