Expert: Keith H. Patton - 10/27/2009

Question
I have an artillery shell casing from WWI that my inlaws gave me. It is marked: 75 DEC,   D,326L,18,D  (also above the C, there is a small E with a down facing parentheses below it). My research is telling me that it is from a French 75mm Field gun and the 18 means a 1918 manufacture date. Can you clarify how to read the markings and what the other markings mean? I am assuming that 326 is the lot #.

Answer
JR:

First way to verify it is a 75mm is to measure the throat of the casing, if it is 75mm it will be that diameter or very very close, maybe a bit larger, but not by much.  American cases made for the 75mm were marked pretty plainly, (go to the second link for some examples) so yours is probably of foreign manufacture, maybe french if it is for a 75mm.  It appears that american cases from WWI were clearly marked 75mm and the peice type:  howitzer, gun etc.  So it is probably not American from WWI.

I located some info on a post by another expert:

DEC stands for DE CAMPAGNE a field gun. 18 stands for the year of manufacture 1918.

A post on one of the links below might yield you more detailed info on the rest of the stamping codes.


http://cartridgecollectors.org/headstampcodes.htm

http://www.big-ordnance.com/EarlyUSCasings/USCasings.htm

http://www.xs4all.nl/~ator1149/wfm/ww1/stamps3.html German markings, none of which fit

http://www.elalcazar.com/items/154082/en6store.html  this page has some pictures of case markings for french cases, none of which fit your markings.