I should have asked this question in my previous posting about M10 ammo boxes but it didn't occur to me. Were the boxes end opening as 105mm ammo, or were the lids simply pried off such as 57mm boxes? Please tell me they were top opening!! Otherwise its back to the drawing board.

Hey Biggles2,
Most U.S. ammo crates I've seen were opened from the top.
Like these, these or these.
They're still doing it for their M1A1 ammo.
Perhaps they were designed to be opened several ways.
Cheers

jjumbo

Hmmm...if you closely at the 105mm amo set by Verlinden (the first photo posted) you'll notice that two of the boxes are top opened, but one of them is end opened which is the way I've seen most WWll photos of these boxes open. I don't like to rely on manufacturers products for reference as they are not always correct. However, it's not the 105's that I'm interested in, but the 76mm. I scratch built a bunch of open ammo boxes with the tops removed - it occurred to me later that maybe they were actually end opening boxes. But since the 75mm boxes were top opening I guess it would be safe to assume that the 76mm boxes were the same.