[buffdog]

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This is an interesting box of ammunition that I picked up at a Gun Show on Saturday. It appears to be Military Ammunition that had the bullets pulled and replaced with sporting bullets in Finland, for sale by Interarmco. Of the 15 cartridges, one is Radway Green (RG-53), two are Kynoch (K-51-7), one is BPD 39 and eleven are BPD 40. It appears that this ammunition was loaded in the late 1950s or during the 1960s.

BPD is Bombrini, Parodi et Delfino, of Rome, Italy. Apparently they made .303 Ammunition for the Egyptians. What is a bit puzzling is the number code on the headstamp with BPD 39 and BPD 40.

Would this be a Lot Code rather than a Year Code? As the British were in Egypt it seems unlikely that the Italians would be making ammunition that might be used against them. Anyone have any ideas or information?
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[TonyE]

Sam Cummings at Interarms bought millions of rounds of .303 inch ammo from the Finns and others and reloaded them with sporting bullets in the 1950s and early 1960s. Almost anything can be found in the Interarms repacks.

With regard to the Italian ammunition, the numbers are the dates, 1939 and 1940. They have nothing to do with the Egyptians but were made for the Italian airforce to use in their 7.7mm Breda-Safat machine guns in WW2. The Italians had been given large numbers of Vickers and Lewis .303 inch aircraft machine guns in WWI and had retained the calibre.

In the mid 1950s BPD loaded ball and tracer ammunition for the Egyptians (long after the British had left) and this was chemically aged and given the clandestine headstamp of "AOC 1340", the date being a spurious Muslim date from the 1920s and "AOC" being one letter back from "BPD". Large amounts of this ammo was captured during the British/French/Israeli intervention at Suez in 1956.

BPD and SMI continued to load 7.7mm/.303 into the 1950s for the Italian military.

Regards
TonyE

 

[Watcher]

Tony,

Why did the Finns have so much .303?

Watcher

 

[Reese Williams]

Interarms seems to have done that with a lot of suplus calibers. I have several boxes of Italian 7.35 that's had the same treatment.

 

[buffdog]

Yep-I forgot about the Italian Air Force and all those Vickers and Lewis guns given to "Our Glorious Italian Allies" about 20+ years before this ammunition was made. It was kind of nice finding a full box and the price was about half of what a new box of .303 would cost here today. And no, it is not going to get fired off.

Much of these boxes of ammo were apparently sold in Western Canada by the "Chain" type Hardware Stores according to some other e-mails and information i have since received. One person even remembered paying $1.37 a box for them, and commented on the mixed headstamps.

SMELLIE states that he first found out about the Finnish made .303 ammo by the "VPT" headstamp on some cartridges.
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[jonny c.]

The Finns used .303 ammo in a number of different aircraft MGs.

 

[Watcher]

The Finns used .303 ammo in a number of different aircraft MGs.

Thank you.

 

[TonyE]

Tony,

Why did the Finns have so much .303?

Watcher

Post WWI virtually all the airforces in Europe used Vickers and Lewis guns in .303 inch calibre, Finland, Scandinavia, the new Baltic states, France, Italy, Roumania etc. It was a time when many of them purchased surplus aircraft also. Finland was a particularly big user, buying British Gloste Gladiator aircraft among others.

This was because Germany was forbidden to manufacture the Parabellum MG and there was no appetite for Brownings in .30 calibre in Europe. (That changed in the 1930s when FN started making Brownings in European calibres.)

However, during the 1920s most of those nations manufactured .303 inch ammo. I have examples of .303 ammo made in France, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia and Portugal as well as Kynoch made ammo for export to other countries.

Regards
TonyE