In 2010 I was given a set of bullets, some fired and some unfired that came from a German crime lab. Most of the bullets are what you might expect. Samples of some of the known bullets are on the top row.
On the bottom row are bullets that I don’t recognize. Does anyone have any ideas?
Cheers,
Lew
Lew, the first from the left is a .38 Special/.357 Mag. QD1 and should weight c. 6 g, and the last one is a 9 mm Parabellum QD2 likely recovered from gelatine. Both are MEN products, as you surely know.
Now I’ll try to identify the rest.
Regards,
Fede
2 & 3 on the bottom row look like some sort of brass version of an Action-bullet with the nose cone gone. The plastic one looks like a “Concepts in Ammunition” plastic bullet, but it’s hard to imagine one of those obscure bullets showing up in Germany
Fede, I wondered if the QD on the left wasn’t 38/357. I also agree with the one on the right.
The other two could be Action loads, but the deformation in the front is surprisingly regular and quite different from other rired Action rounds in the set. Seems like too much deformation for gelatine and too little for something stronger, but that is likely the best explaination.
Cheers,
Lew
[quote=“Fede”]Lew, I agree with Matt on no. 2 and 3, they both look like an Action 3 by DAG.[/quote]I agree with Fede on the Action3. they look like the ones we dig out of the backstop at Hanebjerg, the favorite range for SF/police training these days, Cases from A3’s are found there as well. Even 4.6x30 boxes turn up in the trashcans, showing the greater level of training they do.
Soren
Lew… top row far right, I was given one of them with a case headstamp of .357 MG TVH SFM brass case copper primer and red p/a. As I dont have anything like it, I know nothing about it, so any info would be great, thanks…paul.
Paul,
That is the THV (Tres Haute Vitesse) bullet by SFM in France. THV stands for Very High Velocity. It was made in a number of calibers and copied in production quantities in at least South Africa and Iraq. It is well described in “Manual of Pistol and Revolver Cartridges” by Brandt on page 619. It has also been discussed a number of times on the Forum and you can reach these discussions by searching “THV”. Unfortunately, a member also uses THV as their Forum name so the search results are a bit clumsy.
Cheers,
Lew
All bullets with channels running throuht them are 100% sure Action-3.
Action-3 was in use by the Netherlands civil polices forces from 1991 till 2004.
It was also in use by Dutch military police force and security guards from about 1993 till 2011. Military headstampes differ from the civil police force version.
EMZ, You are probably correct for production rounds, but there are some experimental rounds by other manufacturers that have a hole all the way through. The hole seems to me to have only two purposes in the Action rounds, to blow out the plastic cap on the bullet and to bleed down the gasses in the barrel during firing. I can imagine the reasons for both but do not know why it is done on the Action 3.
Could you illustrate the Military headstamps and the civil police versions?
Cheers,
Lew