Here's a bombshell of a discovery.
Brooklyn commercial divers believe they've uncovered what the Navy missed more than 50 years ago during a frantic search that made national headlines: roughly 1,500 live shells that went overboard into the Narrows and Gravesend Bay.
The Post joined the four-person crew last week searching for artifacts in the murky waters off the former Fort Lafayette -- an island near Bay Ridge destroyed in 1960 to pave the way for the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.
Initially, the team planned to photograph a few small shells they found last year. But this time around, diver Gene Ritter was blown away by what he saw on the sea floor.
Scattered under only 20 feet of water were eight World War II-era copper artillery shells -- including one five feet long -- designed to shoot down airplanes, and about 1,500 large-caliber machine-gun shells designed to explode on contact.
"What a find!" shouted Ritter as he climbed aboard the vessel. "They're all over the place. Hundreds of them."
Ritter and munitions experts believe the ammo came from the stockpile of 14,470 live rounds that splashed into the bay during a military accident on March 4, 1954.
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