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Silly question.
During WWI vast amounts of 75MM and 18 Pound Quick Fire shells where expended. Did the French and/or British reload the cases or just process them for scrap. If they where reloaded what type of surcharge marking was added to the shell base.
The military don't reload large calibre cases or have contracts for reloading them. This entails an entire logistics train of accounting, retrieving, transporting, receipt. etc from the battlefield to the reloader. Then the cost of the reloader to clean, inspect, calibrate, etc. The metal of the cases is intended to be used once only, cheaper to manufacture. Think of salvaging these cases in the retreat, or a fast advance, the mud, under fire, moving quickly to new firing positions, etc. Cheaper to buy filled ones.
In reality the Navy has reloaded 3", 4" and 5 inch shells for decades. I would not be surprised if the Army didn't do this too at least during peace time.
Can't say about U.S. but...I'm pretty sure we'd be doing similar practice. My brother was arty and personally attended courses that showed him things like...our IVI ammo plant reloading 105mm howitzer cases. They follow exactly the same procedures we reloaders do for rifle ammo. Sort, clean, deprime and size...reprime and package. Arty ammo doesn't come fixed. It's adjustable and variable. But the cases are redone.
Now, in wartime cases would be written off at an exponential. I expect many of us have seen the pictures of the depot(field) in Europe during WW2 that was covered several feet deep in large cases bound for return to the U.S. for refurbish...or salvage. It amounts to the same.
The CF doesn't reload small arms ammo and they rarely use any bigger stuff in peace time anyway. Isn't worth the effort or cost. Brass does get recycled, but not reloaded. Think in terms of reloading Lake City brass. First remove the primer crimp. Said crimp cannot be put back in.
Like Daan Kemp says, in W.W. I (or at any time in war) the logistics would be a nightmare. Just getting enough ammo to the guns through the sea of knee or more deep, viscous, mud(every book about W.W. I I've read mentions the mud and how bad the trenches smelled.) was bad enough. Keeping in mind that it was primarily horse drawn. There were small gauge rail lines built for big battles like Vimy though.
If you read above you see we aren't even discussing that. The rest you don't seem in touch with. Too bad.Quote:
Originally Posted by Sunray
in ww2 a lot of shell casing got turned into American pocket change..
Can you expound a bit on that one? We had Tombac nickles...and Zinc but brass? Here's one statement I found to go along...Quote:
Originally Posted by pocketshaver
In 1942 the U.S. government feared a shortage of copper for the war effort. Congress decided to change the alloy in the nickel from 75% copper and 25% nickel to an alloy of 56% copper, 35% silver and 9% manganese. To signify the change in alloy a large mint mark was placed above Monticello on the reverse of the coin (S=San Francisco Mint, D=Denver Mint, P=Philadelphia Mint). Even the Philadelphia mint which was usually not represented by a mint mark, was represented by a large “P”. The use of the war-time alloy continued through 1945 when the original alloy was reinstated.
Note that in 1943 the cent lost its copper and was replaced by zinc coated steel. It is not widely known, but in the last years of WWII, whole companies of troops would “police” the battlefields and pick up the brass remaining from cartridges and shells. From 1944 to 1946 one cent coins were made from these cartridge casings.
The value of war time nickels depends on condition but even circulated or damaged pieces are worth more than face value. The coins contain .05626 troy oz. of pure silver.