Tag Archives: 7th Infantry Division

A New Golden Age of M1 Garand Ammo?

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For guys who own a few vintage and rebuilt M1 Garands– like this guy– sourcing suitable .30-06 ammo to feed them can be rough. Why not just use commercial .30-06 hunting rounds, well, the guns were designed for 150-grain ball at a certain pressure, and the newer, hotter stuff, can snap op rods, which are kinda expensive and tough to find these days. Plus, go price a box of even mid-shelf Federal blue box 150s ($34.99 per 20 plus tax and shipping) and you realize that shooing matches or practicing for such hurts the wallet at $2 per “bang” and $16 per “ping.”

When I first got into Garands in the late 1980s/early 1990s, the CMP had just pulled in tons of surplus M2 ball ammo from European sources (Norway, Greece, etc) with most of it produced in the coldest period of the Cold War to feed their FMS’d Garands, M1903s, and M1919s then stockpiled for “Der Tag.”

You could get it pretty cheap. Like $99 a 192-round spam can packed in bandoliers and en bloc clips delivered to your house kinda cheap.

CMP imported over 25 million rounds of 150-grain Greek-made Pyrkal HXP ammo manufactured in the 1970s and smaller quantities of AYR-marked Norwegian Garand food crated up in the 1950s, both of which have proved popular in service rifle matches and target shooting for more than a decade.

By around 2017 the last of that boon had dried up, seemingly for good, and the only glimmer of hope out there was that Sellier & Bellot in the Czech Republic and Privi Partisan in Serbia were boxing up low-pressure 150-grain loads for about 75-85 cents a round and you could even get Berdan-primed gray-case 168gr FMJ Wolf Military Classic for about 60-cents per round.

Then came the Great Ammo Whammy of 2020 in which everything, everywhere sold out and became unobtainable, even common 115-grain 9mm ball, and the production of niche low-pressure 150-grain ’06 halted overnight.

This left some moody 1970s-produced Ethiopian ammo as about the best option by about 2020.

Now, we have a three-punch combination of great news to try and fix the shortage.

Punch One:

Last February, RTI in Florida announced they were bringing in containerloads of U.S.-made Korean War surplus .30-06 M2 ball from Ethiopia, packed in factory-fresh 384 round cases. The cost, at launch, was $800, which I said at the time was way too high (over $2 per round).

Echoing my thoughts exactly, RTI smartened up and dropped the price to $499 (sometimes lower on weekend sales) per case, and have almost sold out at this point, with just about 30 cases left still listed as being “in stock.” With the drop in price, I bit the bullet so to speak, and bought a couple, and am really happy with their condition.

Check it out.

Each tin contains four bandoleers with six loaded 8-round M1 Garand clips.

This totals out to 384 rounds, 48 reusable clips, and eight cloth bandoleers with cardboard inserts. Kind of an ok deal for $500. Not great, mind you, but OK.

Punch Two

Winchester just announced they are making new U.S.-production 150-grain M2 ball ammo, especially for Garand users. Of course, that’s nice, but the price is a “whomp-whomp” worthy $35 a box. so there’s that.

Punch Three

The Civilian Marksmanship Program just announced the recent acquisition of .30 carbine, .22 pistol, M2 ball, and .22 Long Rifle surplus ammunition supply that will soon become available to CMP customers.

CMP recently received significant quantities of surplus ammunition, and it appears to be American-made Lake City stuff from the 1960s, at least according to the crate stamps.

Ohhhh, baby.

Via CMP:

Currently, the items are in the cataloging and assessment stage by staff members.

“The CMP plans to make the ammunition available to our loyal constituents sometime this spring, after the surplus ammo goes through all CMP in-processing procedures,” said Mark Johnson, CMP’s Chief Operating Officer and Director of Civilian Marksmanship. “Purchase limits and restrictions will be set to ensure that the mission of CMP is well served.”

The CMP intends on maintaining a surplus ammo inventory large enough to support CMP Matches for the next several years and to provide discounted surplus ammo to competitors attending CMP events. All sales will include set limits to remain in compliance with guidelines specified in the Memorandum of Agreement between the Department of the Army and the CMP.

CMP recently received significant quantities of surplus ammunition.

Further surplus sales details will be forthcoming in the near future. Commercial ammunition sales are currently available on the CMP E-Store to qualified individuals. Register for an account or browse the CMP E-Store at https://estore.thecmp.org.

I’m headed up to Anniston/Talladega next month for the Shooting Sports Showcase and will be sure to get the scoop as to where this stuff came from and what the deal is with it.

Stay tuned, and cross your fingers.

Update on that RTI Milsurp .45 Ball

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Earlier in the week, I had a post about Royal Tiger’s recent– albeit highly-priced– score of arguably collectible Korean War-era M2 .30-cal ball ammo, i.e. Garand, M1919, and BAR food.

Well, the other shoe has dropped and RTI just announced a beautiful larder of circa 1943-44 made .45ACP.

For lack of a better word, it looks amazing.

“Each crate of ammunition contains 1200 rounds of WWII era .45 ACP. Each crate contains 2 sealed metal tins, each tin contains 12 boxes of ammunition with 50 rounds per box. The ammunition is like new, crate condition is generally good to very good. The crate may have dings, dents, scratches, or small cracks in the wood. Metal tins are sealed from the factory.”

Sadly, it is also even higher priced than the .30-06, hitting the shopping cart at well over $2 a round (plus $23 shipping!) for just a 50-round box. Spam can and full crate sizes aren’t much cheaper per cap.

Sure, range-grade ammo right now is going for .45 cents a round, and this USGI stuff is not really for shooting but more for putting in a display case with your vintage M1911A1, but it still seems outrageously priced. 

As my buddy, Vic Fayard says, “Of course, it is up to you guys to judge if the juice is worth the squeeze. We are just reporting it.”

Flotsam of Korea, via Addis Ababa

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Royal Tiger Imports has announced they have successfully received cases of original Korean War-era .30-06 M2 Ball ammo from an overseas source.

Late of the former Royal Ethiopian Army, each vintage wooden crate contains a pair of sealed metal tins.

Each tin contains four bandoleers with six loaded 8-round M1 Garand clips. This totals out to 384 rounds, 48 reusable clips, and eight cloth bandoleers with cardboard inserts.

Ethiopia was the first nation in Africa to contribute a complete unit of ground troops to the UN Korean command in 1950– the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Kagnew Battalions.

Formed from the Royal Guards division of the Imperial Ethiopian Army, the Kagnew Battalions drew their name from Haile Selassie’s father’s warhorse. They served alongside the U.S. 7th Infantry Division, receiving U.S. kit. They suffered 121 dead and 536 wounded during the course of the conflict.

The Ethiopians continued using the M1 Garand well into the 1970s.

The RTI-imported ’06 larder is expensive for my tastes ($800+ shipping) running over $2 a round, which, as it has been stored in Ethiopia under unknown conditions for the past 70 years, may or may not go off.

I can remember buying 200-round lots of loose 1970s-vintage Greek HXP from the CMP for $129 as recently as 2014, so I may be jaded, but it feels like the better price for the Ethiopian cases may be around half as much as RTI wants.

Still, it is nice to know that such old milsurp still exists.

Further, RTI is also teasing old surplus .45ACP and .30 Carbine ball, which may be of more interest. Watch this space for updates, as they say. 

Hey, That Bush is Shaped Like an L-5

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Check out this great image of a row of camouflaged Army Vultee-Stinson Sentinel L-5s undergoing maintenance “somewhere in Korea” on 12 July 1950.

U.S. Army Transportation Museum photo.

The pokey little L-5, introduced late in WWII to replace the Army’s Grasshoppers, was Big Green’s primary liaison and spotting aircraft in Korea– a conflict that came just three years after the Air Force was split away from its parent service, taking just about everything fixed-wing with it in the move.

Notably, unlike the Grasshoppers, Birdogs, and Piper Cubs used by the Army for the same purpose, the L-5 was purpose-designed for military use and had no commercial variant.

Capable of buzzing around at 100 knots for three hours or so, the L-5 was rugged and could operate from just about anywhere.

CPL Morehead, 7th Infantry Division Air Section, refuels an L-5 at 7th ID liaison airstrip, Tanyang, Korea. Jan. 15, 1951.

The Army phased out the L-5 by 1962

Sometimes a picture tells less than 1,000 words

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(Photo Credit: State Department via U.S. Army)

(Photo Credit: State Department via U.S. Army)

Here we see an image of a typical late 1940s/early 1950s U.S. anti-tank team with a 75mm M20 recoilless rifle. Fielded by March 1945, the M20 saw limited service in WWII, but did yeomen work in Korea and in the early days of Vietnam. The three-man team looks pretty standard: M1 combat helmets sans covers, OD uniforms to include M1943 field jackets, leather holstered M1911 and M1 Carbine with buttstock mag pouch for sidearms. The mountains could be the hills of Georgia or North Carolina, or they could be West Germany…or Korea.

Speaking of which, Ethiopia was the first nation in Africa to contribute a complete unit of ground troops to the UN Korean command– the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Kagnew Battalions. The names of the three Ethiopian gunners from Addis Ababa preparing to fire a 75mm recoilless rifle are, from left to right: Cpl. Alema Welde, Cpl. Chanllo Bala and Sgt. Maj. Bogale Weldeynse.

Formed from the Royal Guards division of the Imperial Ethiopian Army, the Kagnew Battalions drew their name from Haile Selassie’s father’s warhorse. They served alongside the U.S. 7th Infantry Division suffering 121 dead and 536 wounded during the course of the conflict. They had none of their members counted among the captured. In general serving one-year tours (with several men serving two or more), some 3,158 Ethiopians served in Kagnew Battalions from 1951-54.

“We knew there was going to be sacrifice. But this sacrifice was not for nothing. It was for peace and liberty,” Col. Melesse Tessema, an Ethiopian veteran of the Korean War, said in a 2010 interview. “My friends, they gave their lives for history and for the freedom of human beings.”