Old ammo boxes recovered from local yard

[flyingspringbok]

Hello from a newly joined member of this group - I live in South Africa and collect WW2 military equipment.

Recently I bought three old WW2 steel ammunition boxes from a local yard for the princely sum of the local equivalent of GBP10! They are not in the best of condition but can be sympathetically restored to a decent state without much difficulty. They are a B166 dated 1942, an H50 dated 1944 and a P60 dated 1941. I do have a few questions which someone might be able to answer:

What do the I and II represent - a sub variant or the 1st/2nd half of the year of manufacture?
What does the MPB (on the P60) and the VAL on the H50 mean? The B166 has a logo of a "Y" and an "I" superimposed on top of each other after the year which looks like a crow's foot - this resembles the old marking of an old steel producer in South Africa, making me believe it is possibly SA made.


The P60 and H50 seem to have been originally painted a light grey - would this have been correct?
The B166 has very bright green paint on it which I believe is not original and since at the moment I can find no other paint, can one assume it may have been used in bare metal?

I see on images posted here that boxes appear with shaped wire clips as well as bent flat steel clips to close the lids - is there a way of determining which are correct for year/manufacturer etc - only my H50 has wire clips while on the other two the clips are missing. If possible I would like to obtain/manufacture the correct type of clips for them.

Thanking you for any assistance you can provide.

 

[LCplCombat]

I think the I and II represent the "mark" or version of the box.
MPB, VAL are the manufacturers initials.
Light grey paint indicates a chemical.
What is the colour on the inside of the B166? Before Service Brown no2 became the standard colour, green was used.
The "wire" clips seem to be the original attempt at a clip, and seems to have been superseded by the "steel" clips. Modern British boxes use the "steel" clips.

I can't offer an opinion on the "Y" and "I". Can you post a picture so that we can view it in context?

 

[flyingspringbok]

Thank you for the information - would you know what the Manufacturer's initials stood for?

More recent South African Defence Force ammunition boxes also used the same kind of steel clips - perhaps I can salvage some from old boxes to use on these. I will try and take a photo of the "Y and I" logo but the surface area has rust and bubbling old paint, I will need to give it a good scrub with a nylon brush to remove some of it first.
The local steel industry was controlled largely by ISCOR (Iron and Steel Corporation) / YSKOR (Yster en Staal Korporasie) whose corporate emblem was a superimposed I and Y -they produced much or the ordnance and associated material during the war which leads me to believe that the B166 Mk II is SA made. The interior of this box is largely rusty bare metal but there is some of the same bright green paint as found on the outside - I assumed this paint is not original since it seems to have been applied with a paintbrush whose bristles were in the process of coming adrift! What was the shade of green used before Service Brown?

Thanks again!