Found some interesting old ammo today

[K.38]

First box is .22 Hornet soft points made by Remington. The cartridges are in a paper-foil sealed box. Military contract ammo package. On the back of the box is printed:

Under no circumstances is this ammunition to be used for offensive or defensive measures against enemy personnel. This ammunition is provided for use with your emergency survival rifle for the killing of game for food under emergency survival conditions only.

Second box is packaged the same as above but marked:
20 Cartridges Cal .45 Shot, M15 For use in hunting small game, effective range 25 feet. This ammo is also made by Remington and marked R A 4 on the case. I got 4 loose rounds to try out but I'm going to leave the box unopened.

The third box is just a standard 20 round box .45 ball made by Frankford Arsenal. I thouht the ammo would be older stuff because of the package but it is marked F A 42.

 

[K.38]

Some pictures if they turn out.

 

[jimmyj]

Hi:
If I recall correctly the .22 Hornet was for a"Survival Rifle" that was an O/U weapon with the top barrel .22 Hornet and the bottom barrel .410 gauge. These were carried on Military Airplanes.

The .45acp Shot Cartridges were also for "Survival" purposes in case of a plane crash.

The 20rd. box of .45acp is a mystery to me, as what we were issued in the military were 50rd brown boxes. The 20rd box might be from the WWI era.
Jimmy

 

[Alk8944]

Beginning during WWII there have been several 22 Hornet "Survival" rifles used by the Air Force. There was the M-4, wire stocked bolt action made by, as I recall, Fairchild. Then there was the Armalite AR-5, a 4 shot bolt action rifle that disassembled and all parts fit into the hollow butt stock for storage (sound familiar?). Then there was the MA-1, another bolt action, which, I believe, replaced the M-6. The M-6 was the .22 Hornet-.410 shotgun made by, again, Fairchild.

The M-6 is the gun resurrected by Springfield Armory several years as a .22-.410, .22 Hornet-.410, and a .22 over .45 Colt. The last was listed, but I have no idea if any were actually manufactured.

A common feature of all the survival rifles was a short, 14" or so, barrel which would place any of them in the "Any other weapon" category and subject to registration and a transfer tax. The Springfield variant of the M-6 had 20"+ barrels to comply with the NFA.

I have had two Springfield M-6s, a .22/.410 and a Hornet/.410. The .22 wouldn't shoot less than about 5" @ 10 yards. The Hornet will do around 3/4" @ 25 yds.

So far as the 20 rd. Frankford Arsenal box, that is definitely WWI period in spite of what the headstamp on the ammunition is. Since it is not sealed anything could have been put in it over the years. Ammunition lot numbers were into the 5 digits by WWII, lot 986 is much older than the ammunition in that box. Have you had them all out? I would be surprised if they were all FA 42, but it is obviously possible.

 

[K.38]

jimmyj I thought the FA ammo was from WWI too because of the packaging. The rounds are marked 42 so they are from WWII even though it has early looking packaging.

Do you know if all military planes carried the survival rifles or only aircraft flying across someplace like Alaska, India etc?

The FA package was sealed and I gently opened one end to look at the date.

 

[Walter Rego]

I have a couple of boxes of the .22 Hornet military ammo with the same markings. A friend's dad was an A.F. Fighter Pilot in the 1950's and had access to a lot of it so he went out and bought a pre-64 Model 70 .22 Hornet. When he died in the late 1980's and my friend inherited the rifle, there was still a couple of .50 cal ammo cans full of the military ammo. I shot some out of my Kimber and it worked fine. The story was that since the ammo was softpoint it would have been in violation of the Hague Convention if used on the enemy so they marked the boxes that way. I think if I were a downed pilot and were about to be captured by the N. Koreans or VC's I would have plinked one of them with my survival gun anyway.

 

[jimmyj]

Hi, K-38:
I beleive the Planes that carried Crews had the Survival Rifles. Planes with only a Pilot was issued the "Shot Cartridges". I feel sure that Crew Chiefs outfited Their Planes and Pilots with what ever They could They could "Barter" for.
In the "Police Action" of 1950-1954 BARs and Thompsons went with Their Users everywhere (even to the "Head" and Sleeping Bag. Any one of these Weapons left unattended "Disappeared" and a Carbine left in its place.

 

[Spotteddog]

C'mon Jimmy?
Would anybody have really done that?
(Hee, Hee, Hee!)

 

[Frank237]

Thud's and the green fatigued USAF......

Forty years ago...(Holy ****! 40 years!) I worked on F-105 Thunderchiefs and periodically the Survival Shop Tech's changed out the ammo from the M-6 rifle in the survival seat, seat pack. I knew the Tech and he gave me hundreds of rds of Remington and Winchester .22 Hornet FMJ ammo in 50 rd packs . Never saw any soft points though.

I had an old Savage 340 in Hornet and it shot fine. Worthless for varmints...but fun plinking ammo.

FN in MT