Shooters BEWARE of Winchester ammo!!!

[Got Uzi]

This is a heads up to anyone shooting a Thompson with Winchester ammunition….yesterday at the TATA shoot, we had two case separations out of two completely separate lots of ammo….the following lot numbers are the ones that the issues came from:

TE01L14

TH13L14

I will be calling Winchester tomorrow and expressing concern. These occurred in a Colt 1921 and a Savage M1A1. Two separate guns, two separate shooters, two separate lots of ammunition. Once the first incident occurred, the ammunition was unloaded from mags and kept separate. A completely different lot of ammo was used for the afternoon shoot and it happened again. Here are pictures of the results…..I’m grateful that I didn’t have an M1A1 bolt in my Savage M1A1 gun as that would have been even worse. 
 

The ring on the front is where the second round in shoved the broken portion of the case into the forcing cone area of the barrel, causing the ring. The brass appears super thin and it’s unclear if this is a result of bad ammunition, or thin brass to save on manufacturing costs that blows out due to oversized SMG chambers….i will follow up once I get some sort of results from Winchester. 

[Maine-iac]

Thanks for the heads up!

[1gewehr]

Wow!  The brass at the break does look really thin!  Do you have lot #s or any other info?

[Lewisfan]

Looks like OOB (out of battery) detonation. Maybe firing pin stuck extended with dirt / debris? 

The base of the case is pooched out like it was not chambered when it went off. If that's the case, then the unsupported case would not withstand the pressure = split case.  Just my 2 cents.

With all that said, Winchester white box is the only 9mm that I've ever had a squib round with. 2 rounds ended up in the barrel. The second provided lots of flash and kaboom out the chamber. No injuries to shooter or gun. This was in an MP34.  They're built like a tank. I don't shoot Winchester to this day.

 

[Got Uzi]

Wasn’t an out of battery on either as the separated section was in the chamber and the firing pins were fine before and after. Also it being two separate guns makes the odds of it being stuck firing pins makes it even more unlikely.

 

The lot numbers are in my original post. 

[reconbob]

    Thanks for the warning. It will be interesting to see how much cooperation you get from Winchester - for example, will they ask you to send the ammo so they can inspect it? I have never seen the “Z” shaped fracture shown on both cases. My vote would be some defect in the manufacture/drawing of the brass either due to the brass, the drawing process/tooling, or both. But we’ll probably never know..,

Bob

[TSMGguy]

Here's a S&B .45 FMJ 230 gr. cartridge that my cousin purchased new just last week. I have no headstamp photo or lot number. The round is as it was when first removed from the box. It has not been chambered.

 

 

Edited August 21 by TSMGguy

[Rekraps]

 Just like the smaller bags of chips at the grocery store selling for the same price, it would not surprise me to find that the mfg's are testing the limits of the ammo production and performance thresholds. Since the vast majority of commercial ammo is used in sem-auto applications, (not open bolt) I bet they may have made thinner casings not anticipating. 

If my memory serves correct, doesn't the round in the TSMG actually fire just miliseconds prior to being seated fully in the chamber? In semi-auto applications, the round is fully seated in the chamber before ignition. 

[Bridgeport28A1]

5 hours ago, Got Uzi said:

This is a heads up to anyone shooting a Thompson with Winchester ammunition….yesterday at the TATA shoot, we had two case separations out of two completely separate lots of ammo….the following lot numbers are the ones that the issues came from:

TE01L14

TH13L14

I will be calling Winchester tomorrow and expressing concern. These occurred in a Colt 1921 and a Savage M1A1. Two separate guns, two separate shooters, two separate lots of ammunition. Once the first incident occurred, the ammunition was unloaded from mags and kept separate. A completely different lot of ammo was used for the afternoon shoot and it happened again. Here are pictures of the results…..I’m grateful that I didn’t have an M1A1 bolt in my Savage M1A1 gun as that would have been even worse. 
 

The ring on the front is where the second round in shoved the broken portion of the case into the forcing cone area of the barrel, causing the ring. The brass appears super thin and it’s unclear if this is a result of bad ammunition, or thin brass to save on manufacturing costs that blows out due to oversized SMG chambers….i will follow up once I get some sort of results from Winchester. 

Are you able to share how these two lots of Winchester were packaged? Are they recent Winchester production or older lots?

 

 

[reconbob]

     Rekraps - Yes, what you are referring to in The Engineering Design Handbook for Automatic

Weapons is called "Advanced Primer Ignition". The cartridge actually fires a split second before the

bolt closes all the way, and the remaining forward movement of the bolt acts as a shock absorber

for the recoil of the bolt. This is why the recoil springs on the closed bolt semi autos are so strong

making them so hard to cock. The semi fires with the bolt at a dead stop and cannot take advantage

of this "shock absorber" effect. I would bet that 50 years ago when they first designed the gun it did

not take them long to realize that if they used a standard full auto recoil spring that the bolt would

recoil violently damaging the receiver.

Bob

[Got Uzi]

Here’s what the boxes look like. 

[Rekraps]

2 hours ago, reconbob said:

     Rekraps - Yes, what you are referring to in The Engineering Design Handbook for Automatic

Weapons is called "Advanced Primer Ignition". The cartridge actually fires a split second before the

bolt closes all the way, and the remaining forward movement of the bolt acts as a shock absorber

for the recoil of the bolt. This is why the recoil springs on the closed bolt semi autos are so strong

making them so hard to cock. The semi fires with the bolt at a dead stop and cannot take advantage

of this "shock absorber" effect. I would bet that 50 years ago when they first designed the gun it did

not take them long to realize that if they used a standard full auto recoil spring that the bolt would

recoil violently damaging the receiver.

Bob

I kinda thought so. Perhaps we did have a slight premature ignition and the thinner case, designed for semi-auto's, could not take the pressure. 

[Gnat]

In 2017, I was doing CCW qualifications. A shooter stepped to the line. Clean target and all holes off the target pasted. First shot two holes appear, what the . . . ? Second shot, two more and third shot two more. He now has six holes for three shots. I stop him so we can figure out what is happening. Winchester White box ammo looks good and his pistol seems ok. Fourth shot one hole and fifth shot two holes. That's it, I take his ammo and shoot it through my Glock. Three rounds and six holes. I tell him his ammo is unsafe and ask him to let me have it so I can send it to Winchester. He says he will shoot it at home. He qualifies with his pistol and other ammo. If you look at the photos one hole is a bit ragged. I think the jacket was separating from the lead core. The ragged hole is made by the jacket and the crisper hole by the lead core. No more Winchester White box for me!

Gnat

Edited August 5 by Gnat

[Bridgeport28A1]

4 hours ago, Got Uzi said:

Here’s what the boxes look like. 

Thanks for the posting photos of the Winchester packaging.

[Got Uzi]

Winchester called me back today and I have filed the initial report. I was told “the processing department will get back to you in 5-7 business days” which is to say “we don’t really care and will get to this when we feel like it” she really didn’t know what to say when I told her I have close to 5,000 rds of Winchester 45 acp ammunition I didn’t trust anymore….

[Dan K]

13 minutes ago, Got Uzi said:

Winchester called me back today and I have filed the initial report. I was told “the processing department will get back to you in 5-7 business days” which is to say “we don’t really care and will get to this when we feel like it” she really didn’t know what to say when I told her I have close to 5,000 rds of Winchester 45 acp ammunition I didn’t trust anymore….

John, digging through the brass I picked up at the spring TCA shoot, I found two pieces of Winchester very similar. Something in their process is not right.

[spall]

For what it's worth, probably 6-8 years ago, I had similar issues shooting 9mm Winchester white box ammo through my MP5.

I had the occasional failure to eject, which is very uncommon... it has been a very reliable weapon, even after going many hundreds of suppressed rounds between cleanings. Subsequently beating the cases out with a cleaning rod revealed the cases had swelled and split along the chamber flutes in multiple places. I'd only ever had this issue running aluminum cased ammo (CCI?), but in that event there was no splitting, just swelling and sticking.

The only WWB ammo I've shot since then was some 300 blackout through a 7" AR. It functioned well, but it was notably dirtier than other range ammo I'd shot through it previously.

Edited August 6 by spall

[Got Uzi]

Dan-I was shooting Winchester at the TCA shoot and it was out of the same lots that I was using at TATA. Never had an issue or noticed anything but it’s conceivable that it’s all out of the same batches and those never separated so it wouldn’t have been noticed as I wasn’t saving my brass. The plot defiantly thickens over this. 

[Rekraps]

I'm throwing my bets on the following:

Winchester did in fact alter the specs of the ammo in question at some point to a thinner case wall. This was done because testing of the ammo in semi-auto weapons showed no issues with bulging or spit cases. In other words, the full seating of the now "thinner" cased shells prevented any separation of the metal/splitting/bulging. What Winchester did not contemplate, was the ammo being used in open bolt blowback/impulse operated SMG's. Certainly most if not all modern SMG's, fully seat the round prior to ignition imitating the semi-auto operation of pistols etc. 

The catch is that someone in engineering forgot that there are still many applications of this ammo in older SMG's, i.e. open bolt configurations that ignite the round ever so slightly out of battery, thus allowing the thinner case to rupture/split/bulge.

 

[Mike Hammer]

Has anyone measured the brass wall thickness for comparison against other makers?

[Got Uzi]

Not yet but then again I haven’t been saving brass for a couple years now 

[StrangeRanger]

I don't think it's a wall thickness issue.  It looks like a failure to properly anneal the cases after forming.  New brass is supposed to be very ductile but becomes more brittle with each cycle of firing and resizing.  This stuff clearly is not ductile, it is already brittle.  I have had similar failures in a lot of JBA .43 Spanish brass that were solved by annealing the cases

[Rekraps]

4 hours ago, Mike Hammer said:

Has anyone measured the brass wall thickness for comparison against other makers?

Well Golly Gee.... what a perfect question. Get out those calipers guys...

[Dan K]

4 hours ago, Rekraps said:

Well Golly Gee.... what a perfect question. Get out those calipers guys...

I mic'd (using a ball mic, calipers are not reliable for measuring tubular wall thickness) at 11.5 thou at the case mouth the two cases I have from Winchester that split. I measured 10 other cases from various makers, all in the 11 thou range.

This is not a material thickness issue. There is an underlying material chemistry, heat treat, other raw material issue, or process issue.

Winchester will likely find the root cause or be able to determine it from samples. Whether or not they will be forthright with John I do not know. I am send my samples back to John, it's all him now.

Edited August 6 by Dan K

[Rekraps]

I stand corrected on my theory! Good work Dan K!