20mm Vulcan Round - projectile colours

[wardenc]

Hi,

I have 4 Inert 20mm Vulcan rounds - unfired heads. Two are light blue projectiles, which I know to be the colour of practice rounds. They have hollow bases and look to be alloy tipped.

The other two are what appears to be original matt black. They have a flat base and appear to be Steel bodied with a tip that cannot be determined without scratching the paint off.

This leads me to ask if there a standard colour coding used by forces worldwide to indicate what type of 20mm Vulcan (an possibly same with other calibers) it is?

 

[lbdrummer3]

I have found M55A2 projectiles in both light blue and black and both were from the mid 60's. I'm not sure why they painted TP rounds different colors though. I'd like to know what some of the other color codes are as well.

Fred

Hi,

I have 4 Inert 20mm Vulcan rounds - unfired heads. Two are light blue projectiles, which I know to be the colour of practice rounds. They have hollow bases and look to be alloy tipped.

The other two are what appears to be original matt black. They have a flat base and appear to be Steel bodied with a tip that cannot be determined without scratching the paint off.

This leads me to ask if there a standard colour coding used by forces worldwide to indicate what type of 20mm Vulcan (an possibly same with other calibers) it is?

 

[ogreve]

Hi,

Well, here are some that once were all mine, but some of them were traded a few weeks ago against Japanese items.

Matte black (typically with white text) indicates APCR (= Armour Piercing Composite Rigid), having a tungsten penetrator.
Matte black with a red band (typically also seen with white text) indicates API (at least in Belgium and The Netherlands).
Somewhat shiny black with a lower blue half and white text indicates US API.

As for the other types shown:

The darkish blue ones with white text are Dutch TPs, the lightblue one with white text is a US TP, the white one without text is a French TP; this latter one has an ink headstamp.

The yellow-red ones are HEI, IIRC, some of them also had a tracer. I no longer have these, so I cannot check precisely what configuration with reds indicates the 'incendiary' component vs. what indicates the tracer. It is also unknown to me if pure HE ones (which I would then expect to be fully yellow) exist.

Then some assorted ones:
The one with the green "plasticky" projo is a Dutch break-up round, the black sharp pointed one is a FAP round (don't laugh, it means Frangible Armour Piercing, instead of the other 'FAP' word ) and the silvery one is a dummy.

For more details, I can recommend you to contact 'cornman' who specialises in medium calibre aircraft ammo, with the line of 20x102 being his particular favourite and crown on the collection.

Cheers,
Olafo

 

[lbdrummer3]

Thanks for the info Olafo!

 

[cornman]

Most common colour coding like Ogreves pictures shown are:

TP: blue. There is not a particular blue used on TP rounds. I have a lot of different TP rounds also from the same manufaturer with slightly diffent blue paint. But I also have 2 TP projectiles, one US and one Danish, from the `60 `s which are black, a French white TP. So as you see there are exceptions.

AP: black

API: black with red band But as you can see in ogreves pictures the US M53 is black without the red band, again an exception.

HEI: yellow or yellow with red band

HPT: purple

Regards, Cornman