Ammo belt

[mattgunguy]

for twenty buck at my favorite surplus store shop i didnt think i went wrong, but which pattern had the tabs to hold the clips in.



thank you for any help

Information

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[gsimmons]

It's an M1923 belt, for the 5 round clips

[browningautorifle]

Yep, and it was green so it's probably Korea vintage if not later. It could be late WW2 but probably not. There should be a date somewhere on the back if it's not washed out. By the way, the little snap tabs are for one of the two five round clips not holding in the eight round M1 clips...

[Harlan (Deceased)]

You did great for $20.

Jim is correct. It's most likely Korean War vintage. Check carefully inside on the left and see if you can find the remnants of a date.

Most early to mid WWII web gear was made in the lighter shade called OD#3 that looks more like 'khaki' and the late gear when to OD#7 that's often referred to as olive drab green.
'Some' early gear was made in a darker shade too, so nothing is written in stone.
Most of the darker WWII vintage seems to be a dark greenish brown but the late WWII gear became a dark green and continued that way through Korea.

I just pulled out some of my gear recently and put a couple of sets together.

The set on the left is the lighter shade and the set on the right is the darker shade. (The set on the right is mostly USMC gear)


Here's a couple of detail photos of the inside with maker markings and dates



The darker shade belt on the right


This is another belt in the OD#3 -



The 1923 belt was designed to hold 1903 or 1917 stripper clips two to a pouch with the strap separating them and a garand clip fit perfectly so they continued using the same design and manufacturing them.

I didn't even realize these belts were the same manufacture until I just took these photos, but they were made by many companies and colors varied greatly.

[browningautorifle]

Harlan, that just shows that they were making everything at once and no rhyme or reason. When it changed, they probably didn't even notice.

[mac9990]

I don't think any M1923 belts were made with the straps after WWII.

[gsimmons]

The darker OD no.7 started to be used around 1943.

[Harlan (Deceased)]

Harlan, that just shows that they were making everything at once and no rhyme or reason. When it changed, they probably didn't even notice.

You're exactly right Jim. They weren't concerned with having web gear that 'matched' perfectly in our collections 60 years later!

I have a couple of pieces of web gear made using both the lighter khaki (OD3) and darker green (OD7) on the same item. They're known as 'transitional' by collectors implying they were made after the military decided they wanted things made in the darker green, and the makers were using up their supply of khaki. That's probably the case most often but I have a couple of 'transitional' items made very early. I think it just shows manufactures used whatever material they could acquire and hues probably changed often from different sources and from one batch to another.

[Harlan (Deceased)]

This is an earlier design cover for the US e-tool (entrenching tool, or shovel) with transitional colors.
The later design had three positions of hooks and all of them I've seen are solid OD7 green

[LimeyCarbineLover]

oh now you are talking my language...great web gear set ups guys....love the M1905 bayonet in the M1910 scabbard....and NICE 1st pattern M43 shovel cover in OD3 with type 1 hanger

Kudos

Regards

Limey