Booby trapped surplus rifle ammo?

[Harpo]

Here's a quote from a book I just read:

… One area of interest in Malaya (1948) was the doubtful practice of using booby-trapped ammunition by the government forces. Although not a new tactic it was fraught with danger because control of the booby-trapped rounds is lost at the point that they are left for the enemy to find.

In Malaya there is evidence that this practice was actively pursued. In Operation Purvey, some 10,000 rounds of .303 were doctored with high explosive. On firing, either from a rifle or a Bren light machine-gun, such a cartridge would detonate, burst the barrel, and kill or severely injure the firer. There was some concern about the legality of such actions, but General Templer, the GOC, dismissed these.

A further 50,000 rounds were ordered which were filled with a thermite incendiary composition. These when fired would simply melt and seal the breaches of the enemy weapons. The advantage of these was that if the enemy discovered the doctored rounds and managed to get them back into the British supply system they would not kill the British troops. The SAS also doctored weapons such as the Lee Enfield rifles, which were left for the communist terrorists (CT) to find.

It wasn't only the SAS that were involved in such activities. Roy Follows joined the Malaya Police and spent much time fighting the CT. In one incident he recorded that he was summoned to the Officer Commanding Special Branch and given a bandolier of .303 ammunition. He looked at it and on being asked what it was stated that it was the normal ball ammunition. He was then told that in fact the rounds had been doctored and the propellant, a low explosive, had been replaced with high explosive. Follows was then told to leave this ammunition where it was probable that the CT were likely to find it. He recorded that, several weeks after he had left the ammunition, there was an ambush by the terrorists in which it was reported that, as they opened fire, there were a number of breach explosions, which resulted in the ambush being abandoned…

(Source: “Malice Aforethought – A History of Bobby Traps from World War One to Vietnam”, Ian Jones, p 225, 226)

I suspect the same practice has been used many times. With all the foreign surplus ammo on the market today, I can't help but wonder if such rounds could be out there somewhere, perhaps at some gun show...

Harpo

 

[2RCO]

Interesting. Have never heard of anyone running into it but anything is possible. I am a big fan of the WWII Enfields and even have a few Ishies around. Never have shot surlplus ammo through them though.

Talk about overloads though!

 

[Carl N. Brown]

sabotaging ammo or weapons is common in wartime
Czech arms workers forced to make rifles for the
Nazis would booger the front sights so the rifles
would shoot left or right by a meter or so at 100 meters.

It is good to know the source and provenance (paper
trail history) of all military surplus.

 

[mec]

there was gun magazine talk about doing it during vietnam- filling ak rounds with bullseye or such. The military discouraged it for the same reasons as listed above.

 

[armoredman]

Don't know, shot bunches of 7.62x54R surplus with no problem, have 18 rounds of 1950 production 303 ammo in the safe that won't be fired. Never ran into one of those, thank heaven!

 

[Hoppy590]

we did it in vietnam to 7,62X39 ammo i believe

 

[Eightball]

Yet another reason to only use factory-new, or surplus out of sealed spam cans from a reputable sales company.

 

[Sylvan-Forge]

Good post Harpo

 

[Thin Black Line]

How about the 99 batch of ADCOM 5.56 (made in the UAE) that was over-crimped and sent to the USA?

 

[stubbicatt]

Yep. Handloading has its place.

 

[Hoppy590]

Yep. Handloading has its place.

untill some one packs the wrong powder at the factory

your gun can explode for a number of reasons. this is the nature of utilizing a controlled explosion.

dont worry. 303 rounds are not hand grenades. and the likely hood that you will get battlefield pick up ammo in surplus is slim. and compare that to all the ammo we are getting from places who had massive stockpiles of untouched ammo. if i was shooting surplus. id be more concerned with that indian .308, which was an unaltered run that blew up guns than exploding booby trapped ammo

 

[Slamfire]

Sometimes the Quality Control in second world and Communist block countries is so bad, that the ammunition may be unsafe.

A friend of mine purchased a spam can of Chinese ammunition. I assume it was 7.62*39, but it could have been 7.62*54R. This can was factory sealed. Now when he opened it up and examined the ammunition, he found that the rounds were filled with a slurry of gunpowder and water!

Both of us were totally puzzled on how they could have got their machinery to work with a water and gunpowder mix, it should have gummed things up. But, guess not.

Anyway the QC was so bad that the ChiCom's let something like this get packaged up for their "People's Army".

Does not give one a lot of confidence about the rest of their ammo. Though I have not heard of any Ka Boom's to date.

 

[Sylvan-Forge]

China? They think of us as their enemy.
I'll pass on the chinese ammo..
and candy..

oh, and toys..

and..well, mostly everything.

 

[bp78]

Interesting piece of history, a quick search turns up more on Google Books:

Postwar Counterinsurgency and the SAS, 1945-1952: A Special Type of Warfare
By Tim Jones

 

[dfariswheel]

This was done by special ops in Vietnam under code names like "Italian Red" "Italian Green" "Bolo Beans" and others.

This started with pulling bullets of ammo and replacing the powder with a full case of Bullseye pistol powder.
This was successful enough that the military had special ammo filled with high explosives manufactured on Guam and Taiwan.

Booby trapped ammo included 7.62x39, mortar shells fused to explode as soon as they were dropped down the tube, and hand grenades fused to explode as soon as the arming lever was released.

The practice was for Special Forces, LRRP, SEAL and SOG units to "salt" ammo caches that were found, or to simply leave a few rounds near a trail where they'd be found.
The programs were so successful, the military issued special orders to American troops to NOT use any enemy ammo or munitions.
In order to allow use of enemy caliber ammo by South Vietnamese troops, the US had special runs of 7.62x39 ammo made in Taiwan.

There have been several cases in the US where booby trapped ammunition has been left at shooting ranges.
For this reason, NEVER shoot ammunition you find.
It may be improperly loaded, or even deliberately booby trapped.

 

[chauncey]

I think if you find a "booby trapped" round you'd better go play the lottery. your odds are probably better.

I doubt much ammo picked up in the field ended up in a government warehouse somewhere, where it was stored and later sold to a US distributor.

rounds picked up in the field were probably used, and if a round that my buddy picked up blew up in his weapon, I probably wouldn't turn the rest back into supply.

This was a tactic primarily used against guerilla forces, as I understand, who scavenged for a lot of the ordinance they used. Vietcong, for example.

I guess anything is possible, but if a round from a third world supply blew up I would suspect poor quality control long before I suspected booby trapped rounds.

 

[GRIZ22]

we did it in vietnam to 7,62X39 ammo i believe

The programs were so successful, the military issued special orders to American troops to NOT use any enemy ammo or munitions.


I was told this when I got to Vietnam in 1968 but never saw any authoritive source quoted.

dfariswheel, I'm not trying to sharpshoot you but where did you get your info?

 

[dfariswheel]

I read the part about orders not to use enemy ammo in several books written by Vietnam Spec Ops people.

Also several accounts about the "salting" of booby trapped ammo.
If you read many of the books written by SEAL, LRP and LRRP team members, they often make short references about taking "special equipment" on patrol.
Most people take that to mean electronics and silencers, but in many cases, they were referring to sabotaged munitions.
You have to read close because you can miss these very brief references.
The fact that they were doing this was a secret, and most of these people STILL maintain security they swore to uphold.

 

[Harpo]

I don't think it would have to be ammo "picked up in the field". These rounds were produced to look exactly like standard issue, and there was probably very few people who knew their actual content. This would make it quite possible that they would be gathered up with other ammo from various warehouses and added to surplus.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

Wasn't there a policy of disposing of questionable ordnance,
friendly or enemy, by burning or exploding it in pits?

From what I gathered from Roy Dunlap's book about his service
as an ordnance man in WWII most armies were pretty picky
about putting recovered or salvaged ammo back in service.

The exception was the Italians. While the Italian Carcano rifle
served well in the sand of North Africa, Dunlap found repacked Italian
army ammo where a six-shot Carcano clip picked from a crate
had rounds from six different lots (factory and year headstamps).
It was like they dumped odd lots of ammo in one big bin and
repacked and reboxed it. Maybe Italian Army policy was just chaotic
in North Africa WWII, but the British, German and American ordnance
did guard the integrity of their supply chain.

 

[Fred Fuller]

GRIZ22,

I worked at USAJFKSWCS as a "useless civilian" for more than a decade, and was privileged to hang around with a number of old MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command Vietnam- Studies and Observations Group) hands, many of whom were instructors or administrators in the 'schoolhouse'. I can assure you that planting doctored ammunition in 'found' enemy ammo caches was one of SOG's tasks.

Several sources mention the Vietnam era SOG projects online- search for the project names like Pole Bean, Italian Green, Eldest Son etc.

Also see John Plaster's book Secret Commandos for mention of various SOG activities to include Eldest Son.

Here's one web example:

http://www.usvetdsp.com/vn_pw_bios/t014.htm

Small reconnaissance teams clandestinely operating along the Ho Chi Minh Trail frequently found large caches of enemy ammunition that was impossible to carry away or destroy on the spot. General Jack Singlaub, Chief of Operations for MACV-SOG, devised a plan to sabotage these caches. Codenamed "Project Eldest Son," "Italian Green" or "Pole Bean" depending on timeframe, cleverly sabotaged AK-47 and mortar rounds that would blow up in weapons killing or wounding enemy troops when fired was inserted into the caches. Eldest Son 82mm mortar ammo usually came in heavy crates of four rounds each, which made it too heavy to routinely transport during ground operations. The bulk of Eldest Son ammunition was disseminated through the construction of false caches in areas known to contain real ones.

The possibility of any such ammo surviving to this day and finding its way into inventory anywhere is vanishingly remote IMHO.

hth,

lpl/nc

 

[GRIZ22]

Thanx Lee you've removed a cloud of doubt regarding this issue.

 

[Thin Black Line]

Wasn't there a policy of disposing of questionable ordnance,
friendly or enemy, by burning or exploding it in pits?

We're doing this in the sandbox.

I was serious about the UAE ammo. Crimped so hard that it blew the primers
out when you shot it.

 

[icebones]

one more reason to buy ammo (and everythings else) that is made in the USA

 

[Jubjub]

In the book Shots Fired in Anger by John George, he described test firing a Japanese sniper rifle that he recovered on Guadalcanal. He mentioned checking the ammo very carefully for any signs of tampering, and said that they had never actually run across any booby trapped ammo, but were wary. Apparently it was a known practice in WWII as well.