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During WW2 no .30 inch blank cartridge was approved for British service, but there is no doubt that American blank ammunition was in use, especially with the Home Guard who were mainly armed with .30 inch Model 1917 rifles and Browning machine guns.
Blank M1909
The standard American blank was the Model 1909 which consisted of a normal case, open at the neck and with a red card wad roll crimped into the top of the neck.
Headstamp could be any contemporary U.S. military headstamp.
Blank L10A1
No development of .30 inch blank took place in the U.K. until the early 1950s when Kynoch produced a copy of the American M1909
blank against a British order. 8,000 rounds were produced in July 1960 and sent to Enfield. The round was to I.C.I. design AP.95 and was loaded with 10 grains of 81mm mortar propellant.
This design was not adopted, but based on it "Cartridge S.A. .30 inch Blank L10A1" was approved to design DD/E/20448/GF/417 in April 1961 and shown in Lists of Changes Paragraph C.9831 dated June 1961. Drawing Reference was QV26GF and the blank was declared obsolete in October 1993.
The case was Berdan primed and was closed with a six petal rosette crimp. There was a single neck cannelure below the crimp which served as a locating point for the wad. The headstamp included the code "L10A1". This blank was unique among British .30 inch cartridges as the only one given NATO style nomenclature.
The charge was 10 grains of double base propellant with one wad. The propellant was 81mm mortar powder.
Blank - Kirkee
In 1948, prior to the adoption of the L10A1 blank , Britain had examined three .30 inch blanks made at Kirkee in India.
All were loaded on American cases, one with a wood bullet and two with black plastic bullets (one being a modification of the other). All were covered by the Indian Army Design Reference I.A.809.
In the event, no action was taken and these blanks had no input to British design or service.
Left: Kirkee made blank with black plastic bullet.
Grenade Discharger Blank
There was no .30 inch grenade discharger blank approved for British service but certainly some were issued. Not only do photographs exist of Home Guard units armed with .30 inch Model 1917 rifles fitted with grenade cup dischargers but British ammunition publications dated 1945 and later show a grenade discharger round as being of British manufacture and intended to fire the No.68 grenade.
This round is something of a mystery as little data exists. It may not actually have been of British manufacture or more likely, used American cases filled in the U.K. The filling data does not correspond to any of the three American grenade cartridges (M1, M2 or M3) and nothing further is known.
Grenade Blank M3
This was the standard American grenade discharger cartridge in WW2 and U.S. records show that over 13 million rounds were supplied to the Allies under Lend Lease.
The case was a standard .30 inch case closed with a rosette crimp over a red wad.
The propellant charge was 5 grains of black powder and 40 to 45 grains of IMR4895 nitrocellulose powder.
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