About 15 years ago, a friend became interested in WWII military rifles, namely, M1's. He acquired 3 of them; CMP and elsewhere. He got some of the Greek ball ammo from the CMP. In his quest for US ammo, he came across an individual with several hundred headstamped LC68. The gent also had a Smith Corona 03-A3 and wanted to sell the lot as a package deal for $800. My friend didn't want the rifle but reluctantly (!!) agreed. We fired some of the ammo in both his M1's and his A3 and it is slow--averaging 2560 fps and with wide extreme spreads averaging 111 fps for 5-shot strings. It would not function my Springfield M1--the last shot would eject but the clip would stay in the rifle. The Greek stuff ran 2700 fps +/- depending on the rifle. I am curious as to what this Viet Nam era ammo was intended for. It seems obvious it was for vintage weapons, possibly for ARVN troops but, with it this slow, operation of machine guns, as well as M1's would be marginal. I finally pulled the bullets on 300 rounds, dumped the powder and reloaded them with 50 gr. of IMR4895 bringing the velocity up to 2720 fps and the extreme spread down to 81 fps. Any knowledge or opinions?
