MYSTERIOUS EXPLOSIVE FOUND ON BEACH

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 89, Issue 212, 7 September 1945, Page 7

MYSTERIOUS EXPLOSIVE FOUND ON BEACH

(P.A.) Gisborne, Sept. 4. Police are making inquiries into the find.ng of a case of explosives on the Waikanae Beach. It was picked up by a resident and taken home. Apparently it was completed without, any occasion for action being against the person who owned and discarded the case and its contents. It has been ascertained that the person indicated is a returned l serviceman with a fine record of service and the police view of h.s action is that it was done without any criminal intent. The case contained several plugs of explosive of some enemy country on.gin and some of British manufacture packed round a chamber formed by a tin which had contained a commercial product and which appeared to be an arming device. 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. Explosives experts concluded it was an army device of the bellows type used in sabotage against aircraft. The Army Department summoned bomb disposal experts from Palmerston North to dismantle it and the police traced the ownership to a Hawke’s Bay recident who had made it. for his own purposes and. realising it. might cause nv>re damage than expected, redismantled it, brought it to G sborne. reassembled it. and threw it in the river, but the tide turned and washed it ashore. Navai censors’’’, p was partly respo ible for delay in release of the facts.