I didn't say the clips couldn't be re-used if serviceable, I said they were not really intended to be re-used. Like the ammo itself (and men's lives), the loss of clips was considered part of the cost of fighting a war.

I have a bunch of 7.5 ammo in those clips and while they are cheap, IMHO they are better than the Swissicon cardboard and tin stripper clips. The modern approach is the engineering one - there is no need to make a product better than it has to be to meet the need. The old timers over-engineered everything, from handguns to railroad locomotives, because they couldn't determine the failure point without creating a failure.

Jim