[maple_leaf_eh]

Rob and I agree that it was a clumsy design. I remember some little plate steel blocks with small steel fingers to engage the ammo box cover latch stampings. There was nothing to hold the whole can, just its right-most surface. And nothing to keep the can from bouncing off. A better idea would have been a tray (like in Rob's picture) or at least a horizontal all around canvas strap.

Maybe the guy who designed it had a good idea, but it never seemed that way to us.

On the topic of right ideas, when the mount was swung to the left and the gun fired from the passenger's seat, the trigger bar of a loaded machine gun came to rest very nicely against the 'chicken bar'. Several clouds were wounded by looping accidental discharges.

BTW, the Canadian linked 4-ball,1-trace had/has flat cardboards to protect the bullets. If you didn't remove them before firing, the feed cycle would drag the cardboard out and jam or just look amateurish hanging off the bullets.