Me, 1948 in German aircraft graveyard at USAF base Tulln for Vienna, Austria, seeking to remove a machine gun --


One area on the base, a few acres in size, was the junk yard. It was off limits for the GI personnel, and probably for me too, but there were few personnel on the base and very unlikely anyone would know I was there. It had started as a place for German planes that had been stored and later treated with a bulldozer pushing them into a huge pile. They had been stripped of most instruments such as clocks. Some of them still had their guns and live ammunition in them. Most of them were so mangled that it was impossible to tell what type they were. I did recognize a ME-110 and I decided to remove machine guns from the nose. The guns were mounted with a simple set of pins so they could be removed and installed in a minimum of time. Each gun had a small pneumatic piston actuator attached that could cycle the action in the event of a jam or a dud round. The cylinder was attached to a small pint-size compressed air cylinder nearby that was apparently controlled by a solenoid valve. To simplify the removal of the gun I decided to just cut the hose. When I did that it caused a loud bang. I thought for a moment the gun had fired. What I had done was release the air compressed to about 2000 pounds. I proceeded with care after that. I took the guns to our shop and took them apart and finally junked them. I did find a lot of good tools that the Air Force had discarded in the junk area ----->

13mm, if I recall correctly.

It might have been an Me-410 instead of an Me-210. The 210s were real dogs and had to be replaced. I believe they lengthened the 410's fuselage due to longitudinal instability in the 210.

The gun I removed was 8x57 I was looking to use in a rifle I was getting made by Springers. Bore wasn't good enuf & I ordered a blank from Stoegers for .30-06 ----->

I was looking at the remotely controlled barbette guns.

Were you trying to get one of the fixed forward firing guns? If so, then I recall some of them being 7.92x57mm.

I think there were also 20mm guns in the internal bay underneath the cockpit.

Cool photo and interesting story.
Thanks for sharing.

Great photo and story,,
You have had quite an interesting life haven't you!

I have often wondered what happened to all of the Axis weapons and equipment on the ground after V-E day and V-J day. Some of it was shipped to the US for study and research, but the great majority of it was probably scrapped and melted down. There must have been many thousands of tons of it. I would have liked to have been turned loose in some Wehrmacht scrapyard for a few days. I have understood that immense quantities of Japanese small arms and ammunition were taken offshore and dumped during the occupation.

The Russians kept a lot and provided it to revolutionary groups and Commie countries like East Germany with Lugers with replacement Vopo grips. They also made some ribbed plastic grips for Lugers.

After WWII, the Israelis managed to get their hands on large quantities of German small arms, mainly by surreptitious means. I remember stories about captured Japanese small arms being given to the Koreans after the war. Roy Dunlap's book "Ordnance Went Up Front" (a great read, by the way) mentions that the Type 99 rifles provided to the Koreans were rechambered to .30-'06 so U. S. military ammunition could be used in them. Apparently that conversion worked OK, even though the .30-'06 bullet was slightly smaller in diameter than the 7.7mm Jap.

In the middle 1950s "T-P Gun Shop" located in West Branch, Michigan advertised in the sporting magazines conversation of Jap 7.7mm rifles to 30/06 for $6.00 (?). I sent one and when it was returned, to my untrained eye, the only thing done was the face bolt had been ground and polished.
A single GI 30/06 cartridges would fit it the magazine as the 30/06 cartridge was too long for the magazine. With one round in the chamber, and one in the magazine, I had a two shot rifle.