The Germans captured a great many of the Belgian Mfg Nordenfelt guns along with great stores of ammunition. The only three types of shells known to me for this gun are Canister, Base fuzed common and a point fuzed segment shell. The great majority of ammo captured was canister, as these guns were used in forts to sweep the open ground in the event of an infantry breakthrough. In 1916 the Germans rebuilt these guns with a recoil system and mounted them on flat bed trucks for use as anti-tank weapons. At this time, three types of ammunition were designed and Mfg by the Germans. There was a new canister design (I have not ever seen one of these, just a drawing in a manual), a point fuzed HE, to take the place of the black powder filled Belgian Ammo and an internal fuzed APHE for use against tanks (presumably the British MkIV's) The APHE was copied from a Naval design as was the one made also for the 77mm gun. With the HE filling, these had the power to disable or destroy a tank at 2000 meters. The Germans also made and headstamped their own cases. The Belgian guns were used in the AT role and in the A7V Tank, but the next batch of captured guns from Russia went into replacing the 6 pr guns on captured British tanks. The projectiles from the Belgian/Nordenfelt guns are quite differrent from 6Pr projectiles and were not inter changeable (to the best of my knowledge). The information given at the beginning of this thread of a Shrapnel projectile for this gun is interesting. I have never heard of this before and have not seen one. The Austrian headstamp shown is also new to me. I have a Russian Headstamped canister, both types of the German HE and APHE, a Nordenfelt canister and Nose fuzed common and three types of Belgian ammo, canister, segment shell and base fuzed common. Would dearly love to see a shrapnel projectile if any of our friends from faraway have one in their collections.......Oh, one other interesting thing about these guns, my German headstamped cases all predate the first use of British tanks on the Somme in November of 1916. They are dated April, May and June of 1916. Seems the Germans may have had some warning of the new secret weapon after all.....
