Box of .303 Wartime Issue Ammo

Drachenblut

Drachenblut

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Hello All,

I have a box of 1942 dated Mk.VII Dominion, Canada ammunition in .303. Is this boxer primed, and are the bullet tips aluminum/plastic?

Thanks,
D
 
If the headstamp is D/!\A it is Dominion ARSENAL: Gov't owned plant, used British specs and the big Berdan (corrosive and mercuric) primer.

If the headstamp is DCCo, then it is Dominion Cartridge Company and it will use the standard Boxer primer of the period, which was smaller than the big Berdan guy, also noncorrosive and nonmercuric.

The identifying key, just in case you get confused, is the size of the primer. All ammo using the big (.251") Berdan primer was corrosive and mercuric and didn't always store that well. All ammo using the smaller (.210") Boxer primer was noncorrosive, nonmercuric and tended to store very well.

Hope this helps.
 
Drachenblut said:
Yes, it does, once I get home I will take a look and use my caliper to mike it out to how wide it is. The headstamp I will check.
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You really wont need a micrometer to tell the difference, its a very obvious size diffference. Just compare to a standard large rifle primer (like on modern .303) and see if its the same size.

I have five rounds stamped DI Z and they are boxxer primed.
 
Hello, I just read the headstamp and it reads left to right:

DI VII Z 1942

The primer is small, the same size as a standard rifle primer on a commercial .303. I would think it to be boxer primed then?
 
Drachenblut said:
Should I keep it, or shoot it? What is it's worth? I paid 45 bucks for the box of 48 rounds.
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I would keep it since it is a whole box, not to mention war time ammo was not the best stuff. Also its only 48 rounds, if you had 480 rounds then you will have an excuse to shoot it. But if you really want to shoot it, I would keep 10 rounds for an example.
 
I'd keep it, too. That ammo doesn't seem to be as good as the DA ammo, the two separate samples I had were plagued with misfires. The bullets had steel jackets, too, coated with gilding metal. The zed on the headstamp means it was loaded with nitrocellulose, so at least it has one thing going for it. Still, it's worth more in the un-opened box, and will only get more valuable. I had two boxes of Australian cordite Mk.VII, and I kept one sealed, and shoot a couple of rounds a year from the broken box at the .303 shoots, just so people can smell what cordite smells like!
 
You have a complete box, so hang onto it. They just don't seem to be making any more 1942 ammo these days, so the price is bound to go upward sooner or later. I remember this stuff at $4 a box and people complaining about the high price.

The DI headstamp is the factory: Defence Industries. This was a government-owned Crown corporation which was set up by the people from the Dominion Cartridge Company and the staff was trained by DC Co people. ALL Defence Industries ammo uses the .210" Boxer primer, it ALL was non-corrosive and non-mercuric. It was superb ammunition when it was made but, as your friend previosuly noted, even the best can suffer from poor storage.

They headstamped only SOME of their 1942 production like this, Drachenblut. Part way through the year they changed to the 'late '42' headstamp, which they kept through the remainder of the War: just the letters 'DI' for the plant, 'Z' for the powder (they used a Canadian-made powder modelled after Nobel Neonite; it was quite similar to IMR 4895) and the 4 figures for the date.
Your EARLY 1942 ammo also has the Mark of the cartridge on it; that is what the 'VII' is for. They are Mark VII (Ball) cartridges, using the 174-grain composite bullet: drawn plated mild-steel or gilding-metal jackets, aluminum filler plug to rebalance the projectile in the nose and a filling of about 98 lead and 2 antimony.

Later, they changed to the later system, which meant that you couldn't tell what type of ammo it was by looking at the base of the cartridge for the correct identifying letter: W for AP, G and a figure for Tracer, B for Incendiary (comes from Buckingham, which were introduced in War One for shooting down Zeppelins: work fine on Messerschmitts, too), L for Blank and so forth. Instead, they used colour-coded bullet tips and kept the casings all the same, as in American practice.
But yours are headstamped 'VII', so they are Ball rounds.
Dominion Arsenals (the Government plant) followed British practice throughout the War, producing ammo with 'proper' headstamps...... but Defence Industries made a heck of a lot more ammo.

The DI brass, I find, is as good as anything made today, even if it is getting brittle with age by now. So, being that we all basically are Scots (either by ancestry or by inclination) we anneal our brass and keep on using it. BTW, all DI brass I have encountered has had rims either right AT the specified maximum of .063" thickness..... or so close to it that my Moore and Wright micrometer has trouble telling the difference. It was REALLY decent stuff.

Canadian Inspectors passed on 4 billion rounds of .303" ammunition during the Second World War and it is still turning up and guys are still banging it off. In the last year, I have picked up 1,000 rounds of the stuff at one rifle range, and that's really nice: when you have 25 rifles that think the stuff is candy, it pays to have a bit around!

Havin' fun: what it's all about.
 
Thank you. I will keep it for it's collector value. Who knows, in 20 years it might be worth something to someone somewhere. Curious, are not incindiary bullets illegal to possess?

Also, exactly what kinds of bullets were banned from use in the Hauge Convention and Geneva Convention?
 
Hague Convention (1899-1900) was put together by the Europeans mainly to crap on the evil Brits, who had as their official cartridge the .303.... in the Mark IV and Mark V versions: Dum Dum (hollowpoint) bullets.

Nobody else was using them at that time, so the entire 'civilised world' (which mostly was rooting for the Boers and had no compunction whatever about the use of hollowpoints on people with dark skins) got together in Holland and had a big convention which was supposed to settle the 'rules' of war between 'civilised nations'. One of the things it did was ban the use of explosive projectiles weighing less than 1 pound. Everybody signed it, which supposedly put the Maxim 1-pounder 'Pom-pom" gun out of business. No matter: there were a whole bunch used in 'civilised' combat only a few years later.

Another thing the Convention did was settle rules for declaring war and ending wars.

And it banned the use of hollowpoint or expanding bullets in RIFLES. The Government of Canada recently (while we still had the Liberals) attempted to ban all softpoint and hollowpoint HANDGUN ammunition (except for Government use, of course) in Canada by clinging to this provision of the Convention...... which, if you actually READ the thing, specifies RIFLE ammuntion only. This section of the Convention is also responsible for the WW-1 cxhangeover in Luger ammo from the original 1904 loading with the TC bullet, to the later RNFMJ bullet which still is used today. It is also responsible for the WW-2 changeover in British REVOLVER ammunition from the original .380-200 with the lead bullet to the later .380 Mk. IIz, using a 178-grain RNFMJ projectile. The Brits were able to keep the .455 Webley round from being 'convetionised' by appealing to its 630 ft/sec MV: too slow to expand, anyway.... unless it actually hits something hard. In War Two, the brought out the .455 Mark VI revolver cartridge, using a RNFMJ slug.

Convention also had a few things to say about other fun toys that might be used. There is a copy in the Brandon U library. I'll be in there in a few days, see if I can borrow it long enough to photocopy.

Geneva Covention was mostly about treatment of prisoners, things like that...... and about gas.

Funny thing is that once the flag went down, just about everybody managed to forget one or more of the articles which they had signed which suddenly no longer applied to them. An example: the USSR used high-explosive rifle bullets in War Two (I had a boss who was shot with one) and got away with it because RUSSIA signed the Convention, not the USSR. Everybody and their dog used soft-point ammo at one point or another (generally under the table and unofficial, of course), including Japan, which signed the 1900 Convention.

But the whole thing originally was aimed at the Brits, who saw it for what it really was: an international slap in the face. So they did the logical thing.... and ignored it publicly.... almost. Suddenly, the British stated that they would abide by the Hague Convention, but not because it banned the ONLY ammunition they were making.... but because they had developed a better cartridge anyway, old chap. And so the Mark VI .303" Ball round went into production: a carbon copy of the 'obsolete' Mark II which had been removed by the List of Changes. Then they went to work to develop a NEW bullet, at a higher velocity, which would do most of what the Dum Dum bullets did. This was the impact-unstable (but beautiful and accurate on a rifle range) Mark VII Ball bullet.... which remained the standard bullet for the .303 until it was withdrawn from MOST military service. This bullet, and its ammunition, still is being made in both India and in Pakistan.... and it is said to work fairly well in shooting holes in the turbines of Soviet helicopters.

Anyway, hope this is some help.
 
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