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Picture Page February 2011 A box of 1917 Frankford Arsenal .45 ACP.......
Here's a relatively early box of .45 automatic Colt pistol cartridges packaged at the Frankford Arsenal on November 16th, 1917. The .45 ACP cartridge was adopted in late 1911, first produced at the arsenal in August of 1911, and commenced production the following month. . .
The 16 cartridges that remain in this 20 round box have headstamps indicating production in April, June and October of 1917. All of these have the four-position headstamp, as shown in this picture and the one below. Beginning in July of 1917, the month was supposed to have been dropped from the headstamp, but examples can obviously be found having been made after July, as seen on the October headstamped cartridges in this box. The primers on these early .45 ACP cartridges are usually made of copper, but as is also obvious from the pictures, the primers in this box are brass. . .
. . . . . The information stamped on the top of the box is difficult to read in places, but appears to be: NOV 16, 1917 Loading Machine 31 Loader 10 U.Primer Gauger SE 20 Inspector 29 24 Packer 39 ??ADE 27
. . . . According to Hackley, Woodin and Scranton in their Volume I of History of Modern U.S. Military Small Arms Ammunition, brass primers can be found on some rounds dated 1916 and 1917, and these are believed to be Remington primers. The 'U Primer' in the top stamp may refer to the UMC (or Remington) primer, which might account for the primers on these cartridges being brass. . .
A Spanish-speaking box of Geco .38 ACP.....
Here's an interesting Spanish language box of Geco cartridges. Geco was the trade name for Gustav Genschow & Co which had ammunition factories in Berlin and Durlach, Germany. It would appear the cartridges were made for the Spanish gun manufacturer Astra, as the 'Unceta y Cia - Guernica' address on the box is the address used by Astra. .
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. . . The rather poorly aligned side label is also in Spanish, and was apparently applied to indicate that there was a 1,50 peseta tax which was paid to import the box of cartridges. The phrase 'Para articulos de importacion' translates to 'to import items' and 'cartuchos cargados' to 'loaded cartridges'. . .
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The
cartridges themselves are headstamped Geco. 38ACP; I'm not sure how common
this headstamp is, but I did not have one in my collection of single
cartridges, nor do I recall having seen one before. 