Rarden 30mm

[m151tx]

Hi Guys.

 

Can anyone tell me what the colors and markings are for 30mm Rarden rounds.

 

Thanks

 

Mark Witham

[sirhc]

Mark,

This varies depending on the type of round. I have the book here, If I remember I'll scan the pages, unless someone else gets there first.

 

Chris

[Marmite!!]

Mark,

This varies depending on the type of round. I have the book here, If I remember I'll scan the pages, unless someone else gets there first.

 

Chris

 

I think you will get there before me Chris, can't find my copy :cry:

[AlienFTM]

I searched for +"NATO" +"ammunition" +color and found the following.

 

http://www.tpub.com/content/administration/14067/css/14067_160.htm

 

FWIW here are memories of 76mm ammunition for Scorpions. There were only five rounds ever seen:

 

Practice rounds ("PRAC").

High Explosive, Squash Head ("HESH"), an armour defeating HE round.

High Explosive ("Shell") a standard HE round, which only offered slightly improved HE capability over HESH, so HESH was the standard all-purpose round.

Smoke.

Canister. Think 76mm shotgun. Banned under Geneva Convention, but so long as rounds exist, existing stocks may be used up. Better at reducing hordes of oncoming Chinese conscripts than burning out the barrel of a GPMG. Popular during the Korean War. Typically ONE round would be fired per firing camp to demonstrate its effect (and use up the stocks) About as devastating to the barrel of the gun as to a horde of Chinese conscripts.

 

Strictly speaking, HESH, PRAC and HE were designated HESH-T, PRAC-T and HE-T because they burned a (pink) trace during flight.

 

The PRAC payload was light blue. (This does not mean that the round was inert: it looked, fired and handled in flight like a Shell round, only a few mps slower than a HESH round, and if it hit anything, the kinetic enregy could still do some damage to a softskin target.)

 

The HESH payload was black (indicating armour-defeating) with a yellow tip indicating HE.

 

The Shell payload was Olive (indicating ammunition) with a yellow band (indicating High explosive)

 

Smoke was light green. Fore firing, the fuze was protected by a conical brass cover, discarded as the loader set the fuze time.

 

ISTR Canister was Black, but no description seems to exist in the linked document (probably because of that Geneva Convention).

 

On the ranges, most of the parctices were carried out using PRAC. These did not damage Hard targets at all and they merely punched a 3" hole in a screen target.

 

As explained above, we rarely saw HE rounds as the HESH round was dual purpose.

 

HESH rounds would be fired at hard targets so that hopefully the gunner might see the effect of the round on real armour. They would NOT be fired at a moving target as this tended to destroy either the towing cable or the wheel / sled mechanism and reduced the range day to hurry up and wait while German civvies emerged from their bunker to fix the target.

 

Smoke didn't have a trace because:

 

1. the round was so slow in flight that you could see it;

2. unless the commander (loader) set the fuze so long that it bured itself in the ground before igniting, you'd see a pretty smoke cloud develop.

 

These colours ought to tie up with 30mm rounds as this was a NATO standard (se elink).

 

The 30mm also had an APSE round (Armour Piercing, Special Effects). I never did find out what this round did or looked like, mainly because all my gunnery was on 76, not 30mm.

 

HTH

 

;o)

[Marmite!!]

The 30mm also had an APSE round (Armour Piercing, Special Effects). I never did find out what this round did or looked like, mainly because all my gunnery was on 76, not 30mm.

 

HTH

 

;o)

 

I have some of these, hard to get hold of & not cheap, I'll take some photos the weekend & post them.

[m151tx]

Hi Guys.

 

Thanks for the help, not much available in the States on Brit stuff, normally have to wait till I get home to the UK to find anything.

 

Mark