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At the range yesterday I was given a plastic bag of pulled .303 bullets with a silver tip by one of our older members who is struggling to continue shooting.

They are 148 grain.

I have an idea that they are armour piercing. Is this correct?

A quick google suggests they may be tracer.

UNITED KINGDOM AND COMMONWEALTH COUNTRIES BEFORE c 1955, ie Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, and South Africa – used bullet tip and annulus code from about 1918 onwards

Bullet Type

Armour Piercing – Green tip, Green annulus

Ball – Purple annulus

Incendiary – Blue tip, Blue annulus

Observing – Black tip, Black annulus

Proof – Yellow annulus

Tracer Short Range – White tip, Red annulus

Tracer Dark Ignition – Grey tip, Red annulus

Tracer Long Range – Red tip, Red annulus

from http://www.harringtonmuseum.org.uk/the- ... cartridge/

You need to hope they are not AP :-)

Pulled 7.62x54r rounds. Silver tip, copper jacket steel core. Not AP.

Must have had a mental blackout when I said AP..I meant to say I suspected they were tracer

Furiouspilgrim..Thanks for the photo of the 7.62 rounds, that's exactly what they are

Some people pull them from steel cased 54r ammo because of corrosive primers and reload into new primed brass.

Yep, as others have said they are Russian LPS light ball with a steel core.They had silver tips to distinguish them from heavy ball, which had yellow tips, and the silver tip was dropped in the early part of 1977 as stocks of heavy ball had be used and it was no longer deemed necessary to colour the tips of light ball.

For Russian 54r the following tip colours were/are used;

Green - Tracer, either the old brass-cased T-30 (57-T-322) T-46 (7T2) or T-46-M (7T2M) bullets (T-46-M is a modernised stepped bullet that more closely matches the trajectory of LPS light ball bullet.

Black/red - API (armour-piercing incendiary)
Red - ranging incendiary, PZ (73P2) bullet

There is a "Heightened breakdown cartridge 7.62 PP (7N13)" that has a heat treated tool steel core that with punch through 10mm of steel plate at 200m and designed specifically to defeat body armour......it has no distinguishing tip colour but the sealing laquer is violet in colour instead of the usual red

Green tipped can also be armour piercing tracer bullet 7.62 BT (7BT1), only way to tell between this round and standard tracer is the different bullet designation on the "spam can" and the wooden crate they come in.

Hungarian 54r is usually silver tip for LPS light ball, silver/yellow for steel core heavy ball and yellow for the older lead core heavy ball.

bnz41 wrote:Some people pull them from steel cased 54r ammo because of corrosive primers and reload into new primed brass.

I've had to do that - I had some old steel cased mil-surp that persistently split upon firing in my Mosin Nagant M44 - spitting crap back into my face. The insides seem to have corroded and weakened.