30/06 mil ammo for MG

[bobthenailer]

hi i have 250 round ammo box with 250 rounds of 30/06 linked MG ammo + an approx 75 to 100 rounds linked in another ammo box all bright & clean + 1 gallon plastic zip lock bag with used links! any offers to buy or guess as to the value? bob

[trooperdan]

Mostly depends on it's pedigree.. what is the headstamp? Are there any tip colors on the bullet? And where is it located?

[bobthenailer]

hi. the bullet tips are orange and also black this is US military ammo in US ammo cans all in excellent condtion , ill ck the headstamp ! my friend has the ammo it was his dads ammo and he passed away 11 years ago and its just lying around the house and he asked me to try to sell it for him we are only asking a fair price as i dont know the value . we dont want to give it away to cheeply but dont expect top dollar either .it will be a good deal for the buyer. we live in pittsburgh penna

[StarMetal]

Black tip is armor piercing and orange is tracer. Stuff may be illegal in some states. Not sure about the American stuff, but most foreigin MG ammo was hotter then the rifle ammo.

Joe

[Larry Gibson]

hi i have 250 round ammo box with 250 rounds of 30/06 linked MG ammo + an approx 75 to 100 rounds linked in another ammo box all bright & clean + 1 gallon plastic zip lock bag with used links! any offers to buy or guess as to the value? bob

As requested; what is the headstamps on the orange tipped stuff and the black tipped stuff? All US ammo is the same. There is no "special" MG ammo. Some was loaded for arial gunnery but it's not loaded any hotter than the rifle ammo.

Larry Gibson

[Bob S]

As Larry said, there is/was no Mil-Spec for "machine gun" ammo. However, if a certain lot of ammo would not make the mean radius requirements, it was sometimes linked and marked for machine-gun use only to "save" it. The Big Exception (and there always is one), is that ammunition "for overhead fire only" did and does have its own Mil-Spec, is packaged and labelled as such, and the mean radius requirements are much more stringent than for ordinary ball. (you've all seen the flicks of the "infiltration course" where the GI's are crawling on their bellies and backs under barbed wire, while several M1917 WC guns are firing over their heads ... that's "overhead fire", and the reason you don't want much dispersion should be obvious).

Resp'y,
Bob S.

[bruce drake]

Hey Bob S,

Glad to see you made it in from the National Match Forums! This is where I spend a lot of my time talking about my other hobby of casting bullets. I still intend to shoot a 100 yard match with cast bullets this summer.

Bruce

[bobthenailer]

thanks for your help & comments !! the ammo is sold. bob

[Char-Gar]

I have shot many thousands of rounds of this stuff in 03A3 Springfield. In the days of yore, I had friends in the Texas National Guard who droped cans of this stuff off at my front door, two at a time. It would be 250 rn linked belts with ever 7th round a tracer. I would knock off the links and remove the tracers. I fired the AP and it gave good accuracy. The tracers can be hard on a barrel, but sure is fun to shoot a few a night. I pullsed the tracer bullets, dumped the powder and reoaded the cases.

I fire so many, so fast out of my rifle, the wood started to smoke and the tung oil and cosmoline sweated out of the stock. They got so hot, you coun't touch the metal without gloves. Barrels were cheap at a few bucks each and every 1oK rounds or so, I would change out the barrels. They were pretty well washed out by that time. I probably put 25K rns per year through that rifle for about two years. I got pretty good with it, thanks to Uncle Sam and His free ammo. Your tax dollars at work in 1961 and 62.

The ballistics for these rounds is the same as standard ball and is entirely safe to fire in a rifle. The APs contain a tungsten core, which often seperated from the jacket on impact.

[trooperdan]

Chargar, and those AP cores make great center punches! Tougher than woodpecker lips! Might not be tungsten though but mighty tough and hard steel. The Army must have found out AP was the good stuff in late WWII and the Korean war; I think that was about all they loaded! I know when I came in the army, AP was all we ever fired in those lovely M1's!

[Char-Gar]

I read those cores were tungsten. I do know that when I would pick them up on the berm after they had been there for a while, there were rusting. I don't know if tungsten rusts or not. Perhaps there were a tungsten steel alloy?

[Char-Gar]

Trooper Dan.... All of those many thousands of rounds I fired were all headstamped LC 52 or 53. I had about a half dozen five gallon buckets of once fired brass. There was no market for that stuff, so I gave it away by the thousands. I still had a 5 gallon bucket as late as 1980. I don't remember what happend to that last one. It may have been trashed in a move, but I really don't know.

[NVcurmudgeon]

A Marine friend of mine, 1952-1956 vintage, said that Marines were the first to discover the superior accuracy of AP over Ball. Before attending matches where other services were participating, they would steel wool the black paint from the tips of their AP bullets, making them look just like Ball.

[C1PNR]

I remember shooting one heck of a lot of black tipped '06 through the M 1 back in the early and mid 60s. It's what we practiced with before the Pacific Division match in March or April of '63. I shot some very good scores with that stuff.

I'd like to have a couple cases under my bunk now, like I had in Hawaii (OK, I only had one case of '06 and one .45:) ).

We did shoot "match" 45 ball in the same practice rounds. What a "job" I had then! Shoot the M 1 all morning and the 1911 all afternoon, and got PAID to do it!

I do have some great memories of Hawaii back then, when it was just a brand new State.

Now my Wife and I are going for a visit this fall. My Wife and her Sister have been there several times over the last 6 to 8 years and finally talked me into going this fall.
I'm ready, I guess, for the differences.:???:

[bruce drake]

Be prepared for alot of changes. Oahu is very crowded and not a lot of fun. Ford Island has a bridge leading to it now. No more Liberty Launches going back and forth from the island (spent many a night at the Navy Enlisted barracks because the Navy brig took its time processing the Marines I brought in for incarceration. Always seemed that their paperwork was doen five minutes after the last ferry boat for the evening.

Visit Maui or Kawai and you'll see the old Hawaii you are used to.

Bruce
MCAS Kaneohe
1990-1994

[trooperdan]

In the early 70's I was on the Ft. Bliss TX rifle team. We had some new shooters we wanted to break into match pressure before we hit the main matches we wanted to win. The coach found a match in Skiatook OK that looked like the perfect match for the new guys to shoot without major pressure. Damnned if THE Marine Corps team didn't stop off there on their way somewhere out west! I remember one bald-as-an-egg marine, I think he was a warrent officer that just cleaned our clocks... old shooter, new shooters, President's Hundred tab, he didn't pay it any mind at all, just out-shot every one! We were using M-14's and M-16's in those days.

We used our POV's and I well remember the time there were three of us in a station wagon heading east on I-10 when we were stopped by a Texas Ranger. We had at least 6 M-14's and 6 M-16's in hard cases that formed a new floor in the back of that wagon. We had cases of ammo as well and I had a 1911A1 .45 beside me on the seat. I looked up at that Ranger, holding a very pretty short-barrel double-barrel shotgun and didn't know what to do about that .45! He was right in the middle of the double-lane, we drew up beside him and no-one said a word. His eyes looked like searchlights as he glared at each of us in turn then said, "Keep Moving". and you can bet we did exactly as he said! Found out later they were looking for some suspects that had murdered a couple out on an isolated ranch... lucky we must not have bore any resemblance to the suspects!

Wish I had a rich uncle to furnish my guns and ammo these days!

[C1PNR]

Quite frankly I've been invited to go on the Hawaii trip with the girls several times. I always declined because I know it'll be nothing like what I remember.

We're only staying on Oahu for 3 days, then moving on to the "Big Island" of Hawaii. I want to see the Arizona Memorial again. It was brand new when I was there earlier and I want to see how it's changed.

Also want to check out some old favorite spots in the Waikiki and Kuhio Beach area, and then probably drive up to the Wahiawa, Schofield Barracks, and Wheeler AF Base area, too. Then leave for Kona.