Warbird Information Exchange

Hello Everyone,

Some interesting but unfortunate news from Japan recently.

According to my friend in Tokyo, Thursday's Asahi Shimbun reports that Narita Airport customs officials recently found three Japanese men smuggling Zero fighter cannon shells, machine-gun bullets and the like. Tokyo police sent the case to the public prosecutors office for violation of the Explosives Control Law.

These guys include a public servant and two company employees. Earlier this year, they dived into the Micronesian sea to get some relics from the Zero fighters at the 30-meter bottom of the sea. They took 30 rounds of 20-mm cannon shells, 90 rounds of 7.7-mm bullets, gun sights and some cockpit parts from undersea and sent to Japan by air parcel.

The three guys are licensed divers and Zero fighter enthusiasts. They visited Micronesia a few times to collect weapons used by the Imperial Navy.

was the ordinance being smuggled in to japan or out of japan?? if out, i wonder what their destination was was going to be??

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

Like that stuff would have been stable! Idiots...

A couple of years ago I was digging through a box of stuff in my father's old shop (he's since passed) when I pulled out a live 20mm cannon shell! He'd brought it home years and years before. After VERY carefully setting it down on a nice, thick piece of carpet I got a hold of a friend of mine who had some old wells to cement in so the next day we dropped it (backwards!) down an old piece of casing, RAN AWAY, came back after nothing happened, and pumped a couple thousand pounds of concrete down the hole on top of it.

I believe they were trying to get everything INTO Japan. In Japan, NOBODY can have a gun, ammo, ec. legally pretty much!

Even my IJN WW II vet buddy there, HIDES his Nambu pistol, otherwise it would be gone!

Ron W.