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Here's an interesting clip showing how the US military recycled ammo during WWII
Men working on reclamation of bullets, shells and shell cases in the European Theater.
(There's also some other interesting related subjects on the right side of the page)
Up intil now Harlan, I'd have told you for sure that that didn't happen. I always wondered why they didn't reclaim the stuff. So, they actually did.
My dad told me about a CO he had that would make them recover their brass after action. Apparently for recycle. But he did it during the battles. Dad was with a machine gun platoon in Sicily, Italy, Normandy-France and Germany, Belgium and Holland. This incident only happened a few times and was of short duration. The CO was relieved because he was nuts.
I thought the same thing, Jim. I thought they just had everything new and wasted everything they got their hands on.
There's several other clips on that page showing them repairing/recycling everything from canteens to tires, and you can see it's authentic and working processes. I guess when you think about it, we were at total war back then and the US did have severe shortages at times with raw materials and production too. It makes sense they'd try to recover what they could if it was practical.
But a CO making his guys police up spent brass from a combat zone really is nuts!!
Who woulda thonk?
Zactly...but there ARE trades in the army to do that stuff. So why not do it? I liked the de-linker they used. Made by Rube Goldberg.
After the 1943 "steel' pennies" the 1944 & 1945 pennies were made out of returned shell cases and were or are known as "shell case pennies"
FWIW
Didn't know that one either.
Many of the artillery shells were returned, checked for damage and if in good condition were reloaded. The heads of the shells were stamped with a code to show how many times the case had been loaded in the past. From what I have read it was only brass shells that were reloaded and the steel cases were sent to be melted down.
In the book "Pacific War Diary" the author mentioned loading spent 5" powder cases on a barge for re-use. They only did this when parcticing in rear areas. When involved in combat the powder cases were thrown overboard to clear the deck.
FWIW,
Emri
We did that also on the warships of the Canadian Navy even in the '70s. We were out about 100 miles and on the way to San Diego. After a shoot out there they just chucked the brass over the side rather than pack it home. Made sence to me.
Copper was a strategic war material needed for ammunition casings. Cents issued in 1943 were struck in zinc-coated steel to help free up copper supplies for the war effort. The steel cents proved unsatisfactory (rapid oxidation, confusion with dimes, etc.) so in 1944 copper coinage was resumed. Most of the copper was recovered from spent ammunition, so these cents were called "shell-case cents".Quote:
Originally Posted by Cosine26
Huge numbers were struck to help compensate for the steel cents that were being held as curiosities or lost due to rust, so the average 1944 cent does not command more than a few cents premium. However, in the flip side to what happened with the famous 1943 copper cents, in 1944 a few leftover steel planchets found their way into a press hopper and were struck with the 1944 date. They're not as well-known or as valuable as the '43 coppers but still retail in the thousands.
I was on Assault Craft, we swept, threw, kicked it over the side because of a tripping hazard. Same when we had to replace a brass screw shaft. It was 5" or 6" in diameter and about 15' long. Weight an no room, replace and chucked the old one. Looking back that was a lot of brass.Quote:
Originally Posted by browningautorifle
That was interesting Harlan, thanks.
Jim
We have recycled military equipment, ammo, and weapons as far back as WWI. Battlefields were scavenged for weapons and equipment after the fact. I think pioneer platoons were utilized for the purpose. One of the largest recycle operations in history were our armories in France during WWI. Thousands of 03's were rebuilt in those armories, all scavenged from battlefields. My dad helped scavenge parachutes in the Normandy area for recycle, but he and his buddies would trade the silk to locals for wine and other "stuff". He said they had a mountain of parachutes, which they packed up and shipped somewhere.
jt
Yes, there's always been battle field reclamation. Weapons and serviceable or salvagable equipment can't be left to rust and decay. It just sort of surprised me to see this one.
I can fully understand a warship 'chucking' brass; useless cargo/critical space kind of thing. I always wondered about the millions/billions of rounds of small-arms to artillery brass in concentrations though. I believe that a lot of the VN era brass came back to the states as candle-holders and other gew-gaws. Watching the tear-down of the ammunition made me wonder how many of those 'recycled' rounds were 'duds'; in such a situation (combat) I'd prefer new ammunition, thank you. A couple of days ago, don't remember the source, I saw film footage of ammo in cases/crates being dumped into the sea by the U.K. from LCPs after WWII - believe it was on the Military History Channel.
I spent some time on the cited site and I am amazed at the amount of repair/reclamation work that went on. When I think of 'war' I think of the men (and women) carrying arms; never gave a thought to the people repairing rubber tires, raincoats, helmets etc. This web site is wonderful; I'm going to spend a lot of time learning a lot more about the folks in the background now. Got it bookmarked for an hour or two this evening. Thanks Harlan!
A friend of mine's mother worked in a shell plant near Charlotte, NC and she and the other ladies wrote their names and messages on the shell boxes to the guys on the other end. His dad at the same time was a Navy gunner in the South Pacific and wound up firing some of these same shells that his wife had packed and messaged. Small world.