| These red wooden rounds are 'bulleted blank', used for training with automatic weapons like the Bren gun. There was an attachment in the flash-hider at the muzzle that shredded the wooden bullets to coarse sawdust on their way out. The purpose was to generate sufficient gas pressure in the barrel to drive the piston without launching a highly-lethal projectile.
I don't know what the propellant was, but I'd guess some form of nitro as I don't remember clouds of blackpowder smoke when these things were fired in the CCF cadet group I was a member of in the 1960s.
I would imagine that, fired from an unobstructed barrel, they'd be seriously dangerous up to many tens of yards and perhaps further.
Regards,
MikB |