Bomb disposal squad called to Dounreay area
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A couple who live at Upper Dounreay were shocked to discover what appeared to be explosive shells yesterday after clearing a house in Thurso.
Due to the sensitive nature of her husband's job the couple wish to remain anonymous but the woman verified some of the details of yesterday afternoon's events.
She said: "We have recently cleared a house in Thurso which belonged to elderly family friends and we brought a lot of stuff home here to Upper Dounreay to sort out for recycling/storage/disposal etc. While we were sorting through some boxes my husband came across some small parts for an aircraft engine and tucked inside were the two shells – one of which was very small and the other a good bit bigger."
The larger shell was about seven inches long and marked as "armour piercing" but there were no markings on the smaller one which measured around three inches. Not knowing if the shells were live, the couple contacted the police and emailed an image across to a team based in Dundee who shared it with army bomb disposal experts to get advice.
"The next call we got was to advise us that the army felt they needed to look at the ordnance themselves and that a bomb disposal team would be leaving Edinburgh as soon as possible to come and look. We were also advised that in the meantime the police would be keeping everyone away from the area and we should stay away from the area ourselves as much as possible."
The bomb disposal team arrived at 5.15pm in a large white truck marked "Royal Logistic Corps: Bomb Disposal" and after looking at the shells decided to X-ray the ordnance to see if they were live.
"They couldn't immediately identify what the larger shell was and while X-rays confirmed that it wasn't live, they also showed that it wasn't empty as they expected but instead had been packed with something. The team advised afterwards that they had tried to open the shell but had been unable to remove the cap or cut into it to confirm that whatever was inside it was harmless so decided to carry out a controlled explosion on it just to make sure."
The fragments collected showed that the shell appeared to have been filled with some form of "putty or plasticine" then very firmly resealed.The Royal Logistics Corps operatives were unable to identify the shell or why it had been filled with the harmless material. The woman said it was possibly "test ordnance weighted to match a live shell".
A Police Scotland spokesperson said: “We received a report of unexploded ordnance found within a property at Upper Dounreay at 9.20am on Wednesday, 24 May. Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) attended and carried out a controlled explosion.”
When the image of the shells was shared on social media, comments suggested they were World War Two vintage – the larger projectile designed for an anti-aircraft gun while the smaller could have been from a heavy machine gun. Possibly used for training purposes.
