7.62mm Nato Packaging
rmarg-jim,
Your memory is not quite as faulty as TonyE thinks, as if you were a cadet you may well have shot at Bisley with ball ammo that had either red, green, or purple annuli! Tony is quite correct that the British annulus code for ball was purple, but the cadets were issued with (by the MoD) ball that was made by DAG, and Raufoss, and both these had a green annulus. The Raufoss was a contract job (I think), and actually had the designation L16A1, and this was on the 20-rd box, but not in the h/s, whilst the DAG was just bought in "off-the-shelf", and so had just the usual German markings on box and h/s.
In 1990, the NRA was selling off some ammo that was in tan 20-rd card boxes, with sealing label marked R.G., and stating it was L2A2 ball. The h/s was (+) RG 90, but the annulus was red! From the style of h/s, I strongly suspect it was made on contract for the MoD by Hirtenberg.
As for the 20-rd boxes generally, there were originally just the ones marked BALL L2A2 with the black disc to indicate ball (hence the expression "Black Spot"), then at some point for the better stuff, they started adding the word SNIPER, then we started to get boxes marked Target Ammn, in green print, with a green disc (hence "Green Spot").
RG started trying to market this commercially as target ammo, in pretty green boxes of various design. Sometimes the "Target Ammn" label was green, and the spot was black!
Then came the 155-grain bulleted ammunition, and some times the boxes were marked "COMP", sometimes "BALL COMP", and sometimes "BISLEY TARGET". Some also had the bullet weight of 155-grns marked on, some didn't. The markings all seemed to vary.
If anyone really wants something on the history of 7.62 target ammo itself, I'll put something in one of the more appropriate sections.
Roger.
