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http://weaponsman.com/?p=21822

This cartridge was manufactured in a munitions factory in England. It is a copy of a Wehrmacht cartridge with the code P 490 of Hugo Schneider AG in Altenburg, Germany. These cartridges with a genuine-looking headstamp, in perfectly forged packaging and crates were dropped by the Englishmen during bombing raids at night over German areas. Any German trooper was sure glad about the unexpected resupply. He just couldn’t know that this ammunition comprised cartridges specially altered to blow up weapons. Instead of the normal load of propellant, the powder area is full of an explosive charge. It consists of a shortened English blasting cap that is installed so that its open end is struck by the flash of the primer. About 1.2 grams of plastic explosive is found between the blasting cap and the cartridge case. Above that, the free space is filled with wadding, so that the blasting cap and the explosive stay where they belong, and so that the cartridge is not too heavy. If an attempt to fire set off the blasting cap and explosive, the chamber and bolt would be destroyed. The shooter and anyone standing close to him could be wounded by blown-up weapon parts. The bullet expelled by this explosion would have a significantly lower velocity and energy. The weapons usually would be destroyed.

Very interesting!

I always heard of this but never ran across any confirmation. Thanks for posting.

I had heard about Jews, condemned to slave labor under the nazis, who had deliberately sabotaged artillery projectiles so that they would not arm and explode on impact, and I had heard that a number of allied soldiers were the beneficiaries of these duds. But I had never heard of sabotaged rifle ammo until now. I'm curious how many of these rounds were used to good effect. One wonders if it ever caused the germans to pull all ammo lots out of the supply chain bearing the same head stamp(s), or did they just decide that losing an occasional grunt or two was preferable to interrupting their logistics......which, toward the end, were pretty shaky anyway. It would seem that the primary effect would be on the moral of the individual infantry soldier, who might lose confidence in his weapon system if it fired that cartridge - which if I'm not mistaken would include certain of their beltfed crew-served weapons as well as individual rifles.

I heard the U.S. and its allies did something similar during the Viet Nam war, as part of their psyops campaign, but didn't know about it being done in WWII. Interesting! Thanks for posting.

Send some of that over for ISIS to use.

The Wall wrote:Send some of that over for ISIS to use.

Exactly! Leave some crates or boxes of it behind or scattered around for hem to find and use.

Very interesting. Learn something new everyday. I wonder how long it took them to figure this out...

The Wall wrote:Send some of that over for ISIS to use.

x40

what a great idea

rbwhatever1 wrote:Very interesting. Learn something new everyday. I wonder how long it took them to figure this out...

Not very long, it was merely an extrapolation of stuff that had been tried in the past, with added sophistication. Even relatively recently I have heard the unknowing state that if gunpowder could move a bullet only so fast, wouldn't a more powerful explosive work better. Such experiments were tried long before WWII, with the expected results, and turning a cartridge into a mini-bomb could not have been far from the minds of those whose job it was to think up such things.

Although the Nazis, officially, viewed Jews as sub-human and thus incapable of intelligence, many of those who were forced into slave labor and the camps were actually very intelligent. I was privileged to know, a very long time ago now, one of the survivors, a close relative of my (now late) wife's former landlord. He had been assigned to an ammunition factory. This gentleman had completed his degree and was working on post-graduate studies in physics and chemistry when the whole mess started. One of the things they would do was insert foreign material into the powder being placed in cartridges. It didn't matter much what the material was; the ragged edge off a rag they used to wipe the sweat off their brows; dead, and even live, bugs; basically anything that would effect the burning of the propellant. Ask any experienced handloader, particularly precision, long range, what effect voids, foreign objects, and moisture would have on the load.

The gentleman in question survived and decided to follow his passion and became a professor of music for the rest of his life.

C-dub wrote:

The Wall wrote:Send some of that over for ISIS to use.

Exactly! Leave some crates or boxes of it behind or scattered around for hem to find and use.

The problem is making sure ISIS and only ISIS ever gets access to them, and that's impossible. It would be just as easy for them to dump the ammo on the locals once they figured out the gig. It's kind of like landmines. Once they're out there, it's impossible to ensure no collateral damage happens either during or after the conflict.

I think it might be a bad idea to let certain parties in this country see those. Might give them ideas!!!