✅ SOLVED 37 MM M16 F.A. 1942 - World War II Monster For Training Or Actual Use?

[Old Pueblo]

Found this in the shed of an old abandoned house in southern, Pima County, Arizona.

On the bottom it says its for a 37 mm cannon, which I guess was a very commonly used weapon in World War II. It also says "F.A. 1942", which I assume stands for Frankford Arsenal and obviously the date of manufacture. There is no primer or primer cup or whatever that thing in the middle is called, and the wooden head was on it when I found it. Ive seen other World War II era stuff made with wood like this, for training purposes. Is that what this is?
And does anybody know how much this thing is worth? I would never sell it, or anything else I have found, but am just curious.

 

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[Outta Place]

No idea what it's worth but really cool nonetheless.

 

[Old Pueblo]

thanks

 

[Charlie P. (NY)]

Possibly an electrically (solenoid) fired round for the M4 autoloading cannon in 37mm (used in the M-39 Aircobra and later on PT-Boats). Probably deliberately "de-milled" and made inert for display or practice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_cannon

 

[NOLA_Ken]

It's not an electrically fired shell, as you said the entire primer and ignition tube are missing but it was fired with a firing pin like a regular bullet. The wood projectile I'm not sure of, the training rounds I've seen that were wood, the entire thing except the base were wood since they needed the brass for live ammo. It may be original, I just don't remember seeing one made that way....

It was made for the M3 gun, which had a couple variations, towed and vehicle mounted. It started as an anti tank gun but was quickly out classed by the thick German armor it came up against and was slowly being replaced by a more powerful gun by the time your shell was made in '43. It stayed in service though and it's role was shifted to anti personnel, ( A bit of trivia.....there were actually case shot shells made for that gun, a lot people don't know that case shot was still being used in WW2.)... and against light vehicles and pillboxes. It saw a lot of use in the house to house fighting in the villages of France and Germany, and if I remember right it was used against Japanese machine gun and artillery positions in the Pacific as well.

Value wise I'm not really sure, I've seen full inert rounds with the projectile and primer go for as little as $40, all the way to $150, I don't know how to make any sense of that.

 

[Old Pueblo]

Thanks a bunch.

 

[DirtyPockects]

I would say primer removed, primer pocket drilled out, wooden projectile added for display

 

[Old Pueblo]

You could definitely be right, since nobody else has seen one like it before.

 

[NOLA_Ken]

I would say primer removed, primer pocket drilled out, wooden projectile added for display

,

It's not drilled, these shells are somewhat different from a regular bullet that you may be used to. The primer isn't just a metal cup in a pocket in the base. They have what is called an "ignition tube" which runs a good way up into the shell. Some are a few inches long, some in bigger shells are over a foot long. The reason is that there is so much volume in the shell that the charge wouldn't ignite and burn properly from a simple base primer, so the ignition tube is designed to fire the entire charge all at once. In this pic, the black arrow shows the primer, which in a lot of ways is similar to a 209 shotshell primer just much bigger. The red is the ignition tube which the primer is pressed into and then that whole assembly is pressed into the shell or on some types it is threaded in using a special spanner. On Old Pueblos shell you can see the stepped in ring where that tube has been knocked out. The correct ignition tube assembly for this shell by the way, is the M-23A1 just in case you happen to come across one and want to have a more complete shell.