I found one of many ordinary cartridges the other day, but one with a bit of a difference. So I thought I would have a rummage in the cartridge box, and share the knowledge.
Post-war cartridges are found in abundance under our coils, but some still have an intriguing twist to their history.
The 7.62x51mm NATO was first produced in Britain in December 1953, for the new L1A1 SLR rifle. The calibre is still in use with the L7A2 GPMG (General Purpose Machine Gun).
These are three 7.62x51mm NATO blanks, these blanks were made by ROF Radway Green, Crewe, Cheshire in 1984. Each has marked ‘RG 84 L13A1’ (L13A1 being a code for a blank round). In the mid 1980s, the Radway Green factory was struggling financially, so as well as feeding it's own production line, some of the cartridges were supplied to the Radway Green production line from other overseas factories. Those cartridges were shipped to the UK empty and then assembled as whole live rounds at the RG factory.
The cartridges from the ‘outsourced’ foreign supply factories have different fonts on the headstamp in order to differentiate between them. Left to right;
’Small’ font - Made at the Radway Green factory itself.
’Separated’ font - Supplied to Radway Green from Norma Projektilfabrik, Åmotfors, Sweden. I have only found this on 1984 and 1985 dated cartridges.
’Large’ font - Supplied to Radway Green from Hirtenberger Patronen, Hirtenberg, Austria. This was the biggest supplier of 7.62mm cartridges throughout much of the 1980s and early 90s.
These days, instead of outsourcing empty cartridges and assemble them at RG, whole rounds are supplied under contract to the UK armed forces, instead.
There's history in the ordinary!
Best regards,
Simon
