I remember the red-cardboard-disk blank ammo from my high school ROTC days in the mid-1950s. We used those rounds often in manually-operated M1s and in 1903A3 drill rifles.

I remember that we received safety instructions not to ever fire a rifle with blanks at others, such as in mock battles. The old Army master sergeant who was our high school's commandant of cadets did a routine demonstration. He loaded a blank into the chamber of an M1, closed the bolt and put the butt on the ground with the rifle oriented straight up and down. He then pressed an empty M1 clip down over the muzzle and gas cylinder so the base of the clip's indented "bullseye" was directly over the muzzle.

He then fired this arrangement and the clip was propelled about 30 feet into the air. It was impressive! Those blanks did pack a punch, for sure.

By the way, the red-capped blanks were routinely loaded from "reject" cases, but I have successfully reloaded those fired cases with proper bullets, and they worked just fine.

John

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- Cogito, ergo armatus sum -