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British Military Small Arms Ammo is my site dedicated to the study of British military small arms ammunition from the advent of the self contained metallic cartridge in 1866 until the present day.

It is designed as a resource for researchers, historians and collectors. Here you will find details, drawings and photographs of a wide range of British military smallarms ammunition from .22 Long rifle up to but not including 20mm.

There is much information about British military small arms ammunition scattered about the Internet, but it is often incomplete and sometimes completely wrong. My intention is to provide all available data on one site and for it to be as accurate as possible.

Information has been garnered from many sources, Ordnance Board Proceedings, Small Arms Committee Minutes, Manuals, Lists of Changes, National Archive Files and other published works. Not least of the latter is the work of the late Peter Labbett and Freddy Mead.

I was extremely fortunate to inherit Peter's files and Freddy's original drawings which have contributed greatly to this site.

Where the original specifications were in Imperial units of length and weight I have continued to use these. Thus a .303 inch cartridge is .303 inch and not a 7.7x56R. For later types where the specification is metric I have used metric.

Most of the ammunition illustrated is from my own collection, but some of the rarer items are in the collections of friends and colleagues who have generously allowed me to photograph them. They know who they are and I thank them sincerely.

Update

It is now six months since I started this project and am pleasantly surprised how much I have managed to get done. I have worked from the introduction of the .577 inch Snider forwards with the initial aim of finishing all pre1945 ammunition before starting on the "modern" 7.62mm NATO, 5.56mm and .338 Lapua Magnum.

We are nearly there. All the major calibres have been completed but there are still a number of minor and limited issue rounds to cover, but I hope to get those done in the next week or so.

Then we can start of the post WW2 rounds.

Tony Edwards

1st July 2013

2019 Update

It has been a few years now since I took over this website, I feel honoured to become the custodian of such a fantastic resource. I have made small changes and additions over the time but only where proven information or original documentation has been present, which I will continue to do but only where proven information is available.

I have also been fortunate to inherit not only the above-mentioned files of Peter Labbett and Freddy Mead but also the reference collection of Tony Edwards the author of this site. I was fortunate to get to know Tony in only a small way and I wish I had met him years ago, he was always helpful and forthcoming with information and his knowledge is sorely missed. The joint reference collection as mentioned totalling almost 45,000 pages of drawings, documents, correspondence and other information has been scanned digitally and I have spent the last few years sorting and cataloguing it all but as you can imagine it will take time. This has been done with the grateful help and finance of the International Ammunition Association “IAA” and is already available to its members on the IAA website.

Many thanks from me for the help and support of Tony’s close friends and family, the website will grow and develop but it will always stay true to Tony’s original layout and design. Please feel free to contact me if you have any information or material that you feel would benefit the enhancement of this website.

Richard Tordoff

24th October 2019.