Lugansk Brass washed???

[padams8888]

Going through some of my x39 ammo yesterday and came across this 1951 Factory 270 (Lugansk) round....besides being in excellent condition, what threw me off was It looked to be brass cased at first, but after the magnet check I can only conclude that it is brass washed... Did the Soviet Union even do that?

[Phosphorus32]

It looked to be brass cased at first, but after the magnet check I can only conclude that it is brass washed... Did the Soviet Union even do that?

You've got very strong evidence sitting in front of you that they did That's definitely the Lugansk factory code and "yellow brass washed" (65/35 Cu/Zn) is just a bit of extra zinc away from "copper washed" (or red brass 85/15 Cu/Zn), so process wise I would think it's similar.

[running-man]

Pretty neat piece of history Pat.

Did the Soviets ever made brass cased M43?  Good question, I have no idea.  They most certainly did make brass cased 9x18 from the quote I post below. 

Digging through some forum posts on the International Ammunition Association site, I found the following photo by user inertammo:


I also found a nice description of them from John Moss:

I can only speak to the question of Lugansk"s production of 9 x 18 Makarov. After the Makarov Pistol (PM) was officially adopted in 1951, with production beginning in 1953, Lugansk was the first company to serially produce the 9 x 18 mm Cartridge. They began in 1953, producing brass-cased rounds in 1953, 1954,and 1955 and steel-cased rounds in 1955 and 1956. These all had letter-code dates from the Soviet System, with the Cyrillic versions of D, E, I, K. There are two forms of the letter "E" on headstamps, and Letter "I" is found on both brass and steel cases, for a total of six known variants in ordinary ball. There are a couple of dummy variants known as well. The factory designator on all of these rounds is "270."

In 1956 production of the Makarov cartridge was transferred to Yuryusan, using the factory designator code "38." The first Yuryusan cartridges also have the letter-coded date "K" representing 1956. From at least 1957 on, the dates were recorded on the headstamps in uncoded numerals. They produced the round, probably every year, until 1989.

Interesting to note that the Д, Е, И, К (D, E, I, K) used here do not correlate to what the SKS community thinks they do with Д='56, Е not being used, И='57, and К='58.  This seems like it could be a major issue with one or the other's dating system, but then I found another Jon Moss post that lays it out this way:

Lew - No, you read my answer wrong. I said that the date codes on ammunition do NOT represent the same dates, necessarily, as those found on Makarov Pistols (and I assume other firearms, but I do not have the knowledge to address more than the PM). For example, the Cyrillic Letter "D" (I have not learned how to reproduce the Cyrillic alphabet here, although I can it in Word and Word Perfect documents) represents 1953 in ammunition. However, because of certain features found on "D"-dated Makarovs, it CANNOT represent that year on the pistol.

Jon - you are correct. The letter codes representing dates on ammo are the same at least on 7.62 x 25, 9 x 18, and 7.62 x 39. Note all the same codes necessarily exist on all those calibers though. For example, the code representing 1952 appears on 7.62 x 25, and I am sure on 7.62 x 39 as well, but does not appear on 9 x 18 mm simply because 1953 was the first year the 9 x 18 mm cartridge was serially produced, that falls within the time frame that the codes were used.

Maybe this was the downfall of the letter = date system.  If the letters didn't mean the same thing universally, what good were they?  You would need a separate translation book for weapons, one for ammo, one for refurb facilities, etc.  Could turn into a real mess right quickly...