Steel cases common for LC 30 carbine ???

I was selling at a gun show this last week... I sell mostly reloading components, & my table neighbor asked to put some loaded 30 carbine ammo in stripper clips on my table next to my 30 carbine brass, to get better exposure, as he was selling AR components...

they were steel cases, with a Lake City headstamp ( sorry, I didn't write down the year )... about half of them were starting to corrode, but half to 3/4 of them looked shootable... they had a yellowish cast on top of what almost looked like galvanize... I've never seen "vintage" US manufactured steel cased 30 carbine ammo... so I assume it was not common...

they didn't sell, & thus went back to him after the show... I wasn't interested in offering him anything for them... should I have ??? would they be collectable for the cartridge collection guys???
 
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U.S. .30 carbine and .45 ACP zinc or zinc-based alloy plated steel cases were pretty common in WWII. Early development of the carbine ammunition was at Evansville and Kings Mills, but steel case production was transferred to Lake City early in 1943 (the same year the mint made steel pennies the same way to save copper). It was never approved for general issue, since the supply of brass proved adequate (and the mint went back to copper in 1944). Steel case carbine ammunition was approved for use in training on 11 October, 1945, after WWII was over.

Manufacture and issue for combat of steel case .45 ACP was much more common, though I have not determined how much of the approximately four billion rounds of .45 made during the war were steel cased.

Jim
 
The only headstamp I've ever seen on US steel cased .45acp is LC 43.

I was unaware of steel cased .30 carbine rounds. Looks like there weren't a lot made, compared to brass.
 
Evansville produced over 100 million steel case .45 rounds. I didn't think Lake City made .45 ammo in WWII, though I could very well be wrong on that.

Jim
 
I'm sorry, I must apologize. Old fumble fingers and bad memory.

Not LC 43, but EC 43 on the steel case .45 ammo. (pretty sure it was EC, :rolleyes:)
 
I have collected carbines and accessories for many years (since the first DCM offering) and fired untold thousands of rounds of GI carbine ammo and can not think of a single time where I encountered any steel cased U.S. ammo.
 
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