.45 ammo box with Royal connections

**Adrian Stevenson** · 07-07-2008, 04:10 PM

Hi Guys, looking at Bill's thread earlier which showed a box of .45 ammo. So I thought I would share this one with you from my collection.

I was doing a WW2 military display at a local museum some years ago. I got chatting to another exhibitor who was there with a display of model warships. The following day he returned and gave me this box of .45 Colt ammo. He was a retired Police Officer who used to shoot pistol until the pistol ownership ban here in the UK. He was originally given the box of ammo by an old Police college many years previous. This Officer was in WW2 a bodyguard to his Royal Highness King George VI & Queen Elizabeth. He was issued with an M1911 .45 Colt Auto. This was a box of ammo he was issued with at Balmoral, one of the Royal estates. It is dated 1940. Due to the pistol ban, he decided to shoot off the rounds rather than hand them in for destruction. He said they all shot perfectly.

Cheers, Ade.

**Bill Grist** · 07-07-2008, 04:37 PM

by Adrian Stevenson

Hi Guys, looking at Bill's thread earlier which showed a box of .45 ammo. So I thought I would share this one with you from my collection.

I was doing a WW2 military display at a local museum some years ago. I got chatting to another exhibitor who was there with a display of model warships. The following day he returned and gave me this box of .45 Colt ammo. He was a retired Police Officer who used to shoot pistol until the pistol ownership ban here in the UK. He was originally given the box of ammo by an old Police college many years previous. This Officer was in WW2 a bodyguard to his Royal Highness King George VI & Queen Elizabeth. He was issued with an M1911 .45 Colt Auto. This was a box of ammo he was issued with at Balmoral, one of the Royal estates. It is dated 1940. Due to the pistol ban, he decided to shoot off the rounds rather than hand them in for destruction. He said they all shot perfectly.

Cheers, Ade.

Very nice box of Lend-Lease Winchester .45 ammo...BILL

COMMANDO · 06-05-2011, 07:47 PM

Hi Adrian, can you tell me what dimensions the box has (in mm)
Thanks in advance

Peter

**Adrian Stevenson** · 06-07-2011, 09:51 PM

Hi Peter, I can, but give me a few days to get it out.

Cheers, Ade.

**Adrian Stevenson** · 06-18-2011, 10:13 AM

Hi Peter, hope this helps?

123mm x 67mm x 35mm.

Cheers, Ade.

**M18922** · 06-18-2011, 10:23 AM

cool! lucky

**TonyE** · 05-12-2012, 02:55 PM

Forgive me for reviving this old thread from last year, but I was searching for something in the back pages and came across it and wanted to add a little more info.

It is a common fallacy that any U.S. ammunition supplied to Britain in WW2 is "Lend-Lease" ammo, but this is not true. Briatin began ordering ammunition from America almost as soon as war broke out and contracted directly with Winchester, Remington etc., paying for the ammunition in cash from British reserves. Ammunition from the U.S. Government was purchased via the United States Steel Export Company to circumvent the U.S. Neutrality Act but again these supplies were paid for with cash. It was not until the Lend Lease Act was passed into law on 11th March 1941 that any supplies were received on this basis. Thus for the first eighteen months of the war all the aircraft, vehicles, guns and ammunition were bought by the British Purchasing Commission on a strictly commercial basis with cash.

The very nice box shown above is dated August 1940 on the side so is part of this purchased ammunition. It would have been part of contracts let to Winchester Western in May and June 1940 for 219 million rounds of .45 ACP at a cost of $22.65 per thousand. Included in these contracts were 50,000 dummy rounds and a picture of one of these is attached together with Winchester 9mm dummies from another contract.

The first contract for .45ACP had been let to Remington in February 1940 for three million rounds at a cost of $24.50 per thousand and it is believed these were for the early deliveries of Thompson guns. A box picture is attached.

The whole question of British ammunition purchases in the U.S. prior to Lend Lease is very interesting and I gave a talk on this at the International Ammunition Association Seminar in St.Louis last month. If any of you are members of the IAA I have an article in the current issue of the Journal.

Regards
TonyE

**Adrian Stevenson** · 05-14-2012, 08:14 AM

Thanks Tony. Great info!

I am glad you are looking through the back pages. Some good stuff is just waiting to be re-discovered.

Cheers, Ade.

**TonyE** · 05-14-2012, 11:31 AM

Thanks.

What is odd is that whilst the original contract documents called for the ammunition to be packed in 50 round packets, at some time it changed to 42 rounds. Both Winchester and Remington packed in 42 round boxes.

This was not just to use up some convenient sized packets on hand, since as you can see, the Remington box was specifically altered to 42 rounds.

Quite why 42 rounds I do not know. The only multiple it fits is 6 x 7 rounds for a 1911, but this ammunition was for Thompsons.

There are a couple of old threads I noticed that I could add to so will post some comments later.

Regards
TonyE