The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

Afternoon Peeps,

Just bought some "PPU" 303 and the primers have a red varnish ( fairly bright and distinct,) around the primers.
The ammo was not in a PPU box but the headstamp says "NNY-81 303 MK8Z "
Any ideas if this is standard PPU ? I don't want to be putting vickers fodder through my dear old 1910 smle !
Any thoughts gratefully received.

ttfn
the greek

Looks like the machine gun ammo MK8Z

You lucky person getting that, it used to come loose in cardboard boxes with web handle, I've put thousands of those rounds through my 303s with no ill effect, I seem to recall the only difference is the bullet but as my memory is now a forgetery I stand to be corrected on that.

Thanks Dromia,

I thought it might be "non standard" but I did not know about powder/pressure/other stuff...

Regards from a relieved greek

mk8z was a heavier boat tail bullet intended for Vickers heavy machine gun , the z bit indicated nitro cellulose propellent rather than cordite . the red laquer is to weather proof the primer , the bullet may have a black pitch seal . Very good ammo , bit fierce for elderly smellies I thought.

Oh by the way it's corrosive primed , 1981 dated. Just make sure you clean it when you've shot it , boiling water from the breech end does the job of killing the debris from the primer .

8z had a heavier bullet than mk.7

Also had some old Kynoch 303 S.L. in the dim & distant past.
(StreamLine....a.k.a. boat tailed in normalese)

Mk8z ammo was, as already mentioned produced for the Vickers machine gun.

It was a hotter round than the Mk V11 round, it had a charge of 41.5gn of nitrocellulose (not cordite) and had a m/v of 2550fps compared to the MkV11 at 2440fps.

The main difference was, that it had a slightly heavier 175gn boat tailed bullet, as apposed to the 174gn flat based bullet in the Mk V11 round.

It was found that the boat tailed bullet caused accelerated throat wear in Enfield rifles and its use was actively discouraged for this reason, except in extreme emergency when no other ammunition was available.

ukrifleman.

I had a couple of these rounds turn up in a box of mixed surplus 303 about 10 years ago (those were the days). They were made by Privi for military contracts, back in the 80's 303 still had a few military users.

I thought they still used .303 in the South African army?

saddler wrote:I thought they still used .303 in the South African army?

Don't the Canadian Rangers and Indian Police still use the .303 as well?.There's plenty of them knocking about in Afghanistan also.......

I remember this stuff on sale in the UK about 20 years ago either as privi Partizan or another similar brand name.
It was known as Yugoslavian 303.
Did no obvious harm to my No4 or SMLE so as long as you are not going to use 1000s of rounds of it and the price is right go for it.