Black tip Military Ammo - anything special?

BumbleBug

New member
Digging around in my "catch-all" shooting junk box I found 2 clips of these '06. Anything significant about the black tips? The head stamp is L,C,5,4 at each quadrant.
rcpyt2.jpg


TIA...

...bug
 
Armor piercing. They are pretty potent. I have half dozen of them. They are kind of expensive seeing as you can't really use them for anything. Unless you need to punch 3/16" holes in some 1" thick steel.
 
armor piercing, they get stuck in 3/4 inch mild steel plate. average out to be 169 grains but there's quite a bit of variance from bullet to bullet. it was made at the lake city ammo plant in 1954.

it's still pretty corrosive so clean after shooting, it rusted out one of my springfields pretty good because I didn't know any better.
 
not all

Not alll .30 AP was corrosive......we had a good post a short while back on the topic . Search for same had a lot of good po[nts
 
Yes AP. When I was a kid my dad needed a hole in a square tube farm wagon tongue. He just shot one of these right through. Don't remember the specifics, but was really impressed.
 
U.S made "black tip" is AP. Other countries used a different color coding system, just something to be aware of when finding some that may be in a US caliber, but not US made!
United Kingdom & Commonwealth Countries before 1955
including Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand and South Africa
Code:
Bullet Type                                Color of Tip                           Color of Annulus
Amour Piercing                       Green                                        Green
Ball                                              None                                        Purple
Incendiary                                  Blue                                           Blue
Observing                                  Black                                         Black
Proof                                           None                                        Yellow
Tracer Short Range                   White                                       Red
Tracer Dark Ignition                   Grey                                         Red
Tracer Long Range                    Red                                         Red
Belgium
Bullet Type                                Colour of Tip                           Colour of Annulus
Incendiary                                   Lt Blue                                      None
Tracer                                          Red                                           None
Finland
Bullet Type                                Colour of Tip                           Colour of Annulus
Amour Piercing                       Lt Blue                                       None
Italy
Bullet Type                                                      Colour of Tip                           Colour of Annulus
Amour Piercing                                                 None                                        Green
Amour Piercing Incendiary(Phosphorus)    Blue                                         None
Amour Piercing Incendiary (Thermite)          Green                                       None
Observation                                                        Black                                        None
Tracer                                                                   Red                                          None 
Letter codes other than Manufacture’s Codes on .303 Headstamp
AA                        Pomeroy explosive Incendiary Mk 2 Bullet (circa 1917)
B                            Incendiary Bullet
C                            Cordite Propellant charge(pre 1912)
D                           Drill Round
E                           Smoke Bomb Projector
F                           Semi Amour Piercing 
FG                       Semi Amour Piercing Tracer 
G                          Tracer bullet
H                          Grenade Discharger
J                           Illuminating
K                          Brock explosive incendiary bullet (circa 1918)
L                           Blank
O                          Observation Bullet
P                           Practice Round
PG                        Practice Tracer
Q                           Proof Round
R                           Explosive Bullet
SPG                      Tracer made before 1927
U                           Dummy Round
W                          Amour piercing bullet
WG                       Amour Piercing Tracer
Z                           Nitrocellulose Propellant Charge
 
they get stuck in 3/4 inch mild steel plate.
Not sure what you had or for that matter what I had. But the plate was 1" thick HRS plate. Clean hole through it at 100yds+-.
165 Sierra game king goes through a 1/2 CRS plate at 50yds.
You must have had a DUD or AR plate
 
Not sure what you had or for that matter what I had. But the plate was 1" thick HRS plate. Clean hole through it at 100yds+-.
165 Sierra game king goes through a 1/2 CRS plate at 50yds.
You must have had a DUD or AR plate
nope, full report/recoil. steel I used was off an old piece of farm equipment at 85 yards. bullet tip was just poking through the other side. I wouldn't ruin a perfectly good piece of AR plate by shooting it with black tip.
 
"...165.5 gr bullets to 2715 FPS..." 168 to 2800 fps. Not that it matters.
Most ranges won't let you shoot AP anyway. Even though the USMC used .30 AP for match shooting just after W.W. II, too many idiots have damaged range equipment over the years that most ranges don't allow it.
 
I can tell you for a fact that if you shoot it from a Garand at a heavily cratered 3" thick steel plate at 100 yards to see what it will do, the tungsten core can come back, enter your wrist, travel down your arm, and stop in your elbow.

Felt like a sledge hammer hit me in the arm. I thought that the gun had blown up.

Couple of inches higher and to the right it would have been in my eye, could have been very interesting to see if the safety glasses could stop it!
 
30 AP

Several years ago I was deer hunting in mountains of Virgina. On private property next to George Washington National Forrest. I was using a Rem 742.
I had extra clip with 30APs, in case I had chance for turkey. I was coming back
in, when I saw a huge black fox squirrel coming down an oak. I slipped in APs
and shot squirrel at 40yds. I went over and gutted squirrel, stuck my knife in
tree while wipping my hands. When retrieving my knife I noticed bullet sticking
out of bark. A couple wiggles and I pulled it out. Ap had almost made it through
12" of live red oak! I still have that bullet in my desk drawer, except for rifling
I believe you could load it up again. It did wipe black paint off tip.
 
Lol, shooting tree rats with AP.. How good of body armor are the squirrels using these days?

I cobed onto several EW '43 M2APs. Took a box out with my 1903 Springfield & couldn't hardly get a group better than my AK. With handloads I can shoot between 1 & 1.5 MOA with the rifle so I'm pretty dissapointed.

& 45_auto. Your story literally made me flinch. Glad to hear you survived!
 
165.5 gr bullets to 2715 FPS

^^^ From a 30-06 ^^^

If so that's pretty cool for me . I found 200 pulled bullets at the gun show awhile back I loaded them in my 308 cases . Best group with no preasure signs gave me an average of 2592fps from a 24' barrel and shot a .8 moa 3 shot group . I normally shoot 5 shots but did not want to waist the extra bullets . I had been thinking the fact I was using a 308 rather then 30-06 I was likely getting a very low velocity . A little over 100fps slower then the 30-06 , I'm pretty happy with that :)

FWIW my bullets came out to an average of 165.5gr I'll post the load data if anybody would like to know .
 
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