30cal Ammo Can Holder

[Stuart Kirkham]

G'day All

Can you help?

Does anyone have an original 30cal ammo can holder as per the photo.
If not, does anyone have any detailed photos, diagrams or measurements so that one can be replicated.

The holder is of basic construction, is attached to the machine gun (not the pintle mount) and I have only seen it on ADF vehicles.



Thanks

[maple_leaf_eh]

The C1 MG mount for the M38A1 and Lynx recce vehicles had a clumsy side arm to hold up the ammo can. As I recall, the plate fit on the left side, as in the photo, with one end bolted through the main 'elevation' screw holes and the other end at the through the 'pintle traversing and elevation mechanism' holes. I forget how the can attached, but I do remember it wasn't much good. Most of the time, we hardened Militia light armoured recce types sat the ammo can on the floor, on the folded windshield, and hand held the belt.

[rob love]

Above is a photo of the Canadian mount with GPMG installed. The ammo can just hung off the side plate as MLeh mentioned, but was not overly secure.
I shoot mine fairly regularily, but had to make a cradle to hold the larger 8mm ammo boxes. With Canada's current restrictions on magazine capacities (5 round rifle mags/10 round pistol mags) it is nice to shoot something that you can spend more time shoting than reloading. The origional full capacity 100 or 250 round belts are exempt.

[maple_leaf_eh]

Rob and I agree that it was a clumsy design. I remember some little plate steel blocks with small steel fingers to engage the ammo box cover latch stampings. There was nothing to hold the whole can, just its right-most surface. And nothing to keep the can from bouncing off. A better idea would have been a tray (like in Rob's picture) or at least a horizontal all around canvas strap.

Maybe the guy who designed it had a good idea, but it never seemed that way to us.

On the topic of right ideas, when the mount was swung to the left and the gun fired from the passenger's seat, the trigger bar of a loaded machine gun came to rest very nicely against the 'chicken bar'. Several clouds were wounded by looping accidental discharges.

BTW, the Canadian linked 4-ball,1-trace had/has flat cardboards to protect the bullets. If you didn't remove them before firing, the feed cycle would drag the cardboard out and jam or just look amateurish hanging off the bullets.

[rob love]

The cardboard in the boxes were to take up the extra space between the length of a 30-06 cartridge (the can is demensioned on that cartridge) and the shorter .308 round.
It is not listed in the installation instruction of the mount, but we used to install a canvas strap wrapped around the can that went behind the steel block that held the lip of the ammo can.
One has to remember that the GPMG mount was the product of those dark liberal days, when the Forces were treated like an expensive liability. It would have been suicide to have gone into any kind of combat (or even a domestic) situation with a soft skinned Jeep (although they usually did have at leat 8 coats of that heavy paint on them) and the C-1 version of the GPMG which had several technical errors in it's design.

[maple_leaf_eh]

Originally posted by rob love

It would have been suicide to have gone into any kind of combat (or even a domestic) situation with a soft skinned Jeep (although they usually did have at leat 8 coats of that heavy paint on them) ...

The fact that those were lead-based paints added little to their protection factor.

[edstorey]

Here are a couple of images from the installion instruction.

[Stuart Kirkham]

These Canadian Jeep 'swing out' machine gun mounts look like 'overkill' compared with the mount on my Land Rover LRPV.

The mount on the LRPVs were simply made of galvanised water pipe.

[maple_leaf_eh]

Yes, they do look excessive, but steady and stable are the keys to successive machine gunning. I don't remember ever feeling unsecure firing off either the Jeep mount.

The tubes are at least 2" heavy wall steel, with ball detent plunger-type locking pins. The recoil of a 7.62 MG is not insignificant, nor are the forces of a 20lb gun out shaking on the end of a long mounting arm. During firing the pistol grip as the only place to hold on, so a solid mount makes sense.

The Lynx recce vehicle had a slightly different version of this mount, with a diagonal elevation lock (?) coming up from the post to the rear of the mount. The M38A1 jeep version had no such fixture because of the shape of the vehicle.

Thanks for the photos Rob.

At the OMVA gathering, a fellow in the Friends of the War Museum off-handled said he had the technical papers for the jeep mount and wire cutter. A next year project for me.

[rob love]

There are a dozen of both the wire cutters and the MG mounts sitting at the local Manitoba milsurp yard. Why make repros when the real thing is out there?