Posted on 07/31/2002 11:36:58 AM PDT by blau993
TUESDAY JULY 9 2002
An Open Letter to Members of Congress
© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
Dear Honorable Congresspersons:
One of your vital tasks is to ensure that our warriors who hang it all out on the killing field are equipped with the right stuff.
I don't see that happening anytime soon unless you get enough straight skinny to counteract lobbyist propaganda and other military-industrial-congressional-complex spin. So to help provide more fair and balanced input, I plan to occasionally pass along some of the most commonly recurring bitches that come my way weekly in e-mails, letters, phone calls, etc., from our warriors.
Let's begin with the M-9, the 9 mm Beretta pistol which our combat troops say is the first item that should be tossed into the junk pile!
"They're constantly breaking," reports a warrior from Afghanistan. "To make matters worse, the 9 mm round is like firing paint balls. I had to pump four rounds into an al-Qaida who was coming at me before he dropped. We're dealing with fanatical crazies out here who won't quit until they die for Allah."
The Beretta can only be used bone-dry. Even then, it jams repeatedly if sand or grit gets into moving parts. Its ball round has proven to be worse than the .38 Colt pistol slug used by the U.S. Army in the Philippines until it was retired almost a century ago in favor of the .45 ACP M-1911 pistol fielded to stop the Moros, who ironically were also Islamic fanatics.
Now Special Forces and Light Infantry soldiers in Afghanistan want to bring back the century-old .45, and some elite Marine units already have. A Special Forces sergeant says, "The large-caliber, slow-moving .45 bullet puts the bad guys on the ground. Lighter stuff like the Beretta's 9 mm will, too eventually but on the battlefield you almost always have to double tap, and in close combat a gunfighter hasn't the time or the ammo to lose firing two rounds."
Rangers, Marines and most Special Ops troops are some of the other elite warriors in the U.S. military who carry personal firearms in combat while the brass look the other way. Quite a few choose to pack two purchased handguns. But the only Rangers who use the Beretta even as backup are those who can't afford to buy their own firearms, and they and the rest of these elite fighters unanimously agree that they "can't trust this fragile, unreliable sidearm."
Almost all the Rangers engaged in hand-to-hand combat during Op Anaconda packed their own personal sidearms. "When I ran out of ammo with my rifle, I pulled my pistol," a Ranger sergeant says. "It saved my life. I hit a number of enemy 30-40 yards away who went down immediately from my .45 rounds. With a Beretta, I wouldn't have made it because of the far-too-light 9 mm bullet, play in the action and its limited range."
In another fight, a Ranger fired several torso shots with a .45 pistol before his foe fell. "When we looked at the corpses, we found their mouths full of khat," he says. "It was like these guys were pumped up on PCP. With the Beretta, I'd have had to fire all 15 rounds and then thrown the pistol at this wild-eyed dude."
We went into Vietnam with a bad weapon, the M-16 rifle, which was responsible for killing thousands of our soldiers. It was a jammer, and if you have a jammed rifle in a firefight, you're dead. The M-16 was such a loser that some jungle-smart grunts refused to carry it and packed captured Soviet AK-47s instead.
What the M-16 was to Vietnam, the Beretta is to Afghanistan. And a soldier with no confidence in his weapon isn't the most motivated fighter in Death Valley.
"We're frustrated here that no one in Washington seems to have the slightest concern for our survival," writes a sergeant from Afghanistan. "It's a damn good thing that we have air superiority and so far haven't had many heavy fights."
Perhaps you congressional folks can figure out how to recycle some of the bucks we'll save from the Pentagon-zapped Crusader and get our combat troops a decent sidearm. This would surely relieve some of that frustration and, just by the way, keep our warriors alive.
On the battlefield I'd want the best quality, most reliable piece that's made, and I'd want it in .45 caliber - when I say "best quality" I mean the most dependable and trouble-free.
No-one needs a weapon that's made so "tight" that a speck of dust renders it useless!
If one is an energy junky, and a surprising number .45 ACP afficianados are, then take a good hard look at a 10mm auto. Even those of you who love the high velocity, high energy and lightweight .45 rounds need to look at the numbers the 10mm puts up. Certainly the .45 ACP 165gr JHP from Cor Bon is a screaming hot round, with lots of penned up energy to dump into the bad guy. 577 foot pounds of energy is impressive indeed, however, the 10mm wins the energy battle. The .45 ACP has but one loading, the 165gr, that reaches these energy levels, and about three different makers of this loading. With the 10mm, fully 6 loads (and there are more out there!) in four different bullet weights can be chronographed to BEAT the energy levels of the 165gr .45 ACP loads by at least 20 foot pounds (some by substantially more). And these loads give a wide range of bullet weights, from the screaming hot 150gr loads, to the hard pounding 180gr Cor Bon. If youre into light loads that create big stretch cavities you should be looking at the 10mm, not the .45 ACP or the .40 S&W or even the .357 magnum!
Concerning momentum, many 10mm loads beat the .45 here too. Momentum basically aids in penetration, so rounds with high momentum numbers should get good penetration, provided that they dont expand too quickly, like the 165gr .45 ACP loadings would. A 230gr .45 ACP from Cor Bon has the highest momentum of that caliber (keep in mind this is a +p load). The run-of-the-mill 230gr has a momentum factor almost 8.3% less! Yet, the 10mm has half a dozen loads which meet or exceed those figures. If you like good penetration potential, why not shoot a 10?
Another area where the 10mm beats the .45 ACP, the 9mm, .40 S&W, .357 magnum or any other cartridge is in the department of bullet weight variety. The 10mm has bullets for defensive use alone in weights of 135, 150, 155, 165, 170, 175, 180 and 200 grains. Thats eight weights! Plus the 190gr, and 220gr weights which are NON-JHP and for other shooting applications. The .45 ACP has 165, 185, 200 & 230 grains four different weights. 9mm has 90, 115, 124, 125, 127,130, 135 & 147 thats eight different weights, but Im being nice by separating out the 124, 125 and 127gr loads. .40 S&W has weights of 135, 150, 155, 165 & 180, thats five different weights. .357 magnum has 110, 125, 140, 145, 158 & 180.
Furthermore, only the lighter weight .45 ACP loads are going to open up in the enemy with any reliability. This problem is compounded in the short barrel .45s. If someobody has meat, and big phone books to soak, and old clothes to put over this stuff, you'll discover that .45s work well in all bullet weights out of a five inch barrel. But shorten it to Glock 30/36 length, and the heavier bullets dont want to expand. Some of the biggest loser bullets you'll find coming out of a Glock 30 are some of the most respected in the .45 crowd. WIth respect to the 230gr crowd: Federal Hydra-Shok barely expands, Federal JHP Hi-Shok doesnt expand; 200 gr. +P Pro Load (a Gold Dot HP bullet) shows minimal expansion, and could prove to be a big disappointment. 185gr Remington Golden Sabre opens a bit, but shoots the unexpanded core forward, leaving the jacket behind. But the full power 10mm loads are all generating upwards of 1200 fps, well above the expansion threshold for most any decent hollow point. Perhaps only the .357 magnum achieves such results, and the new .357 SIG, but then one goes back to dealing with lighter bullets, and lower momentums.
Chuck Taylor said in his excellent 1997 Combat Handgunnery book, on page 79, that the 10mm "is uncontrollable, exhibits excessive muzzle flash/blast and demonstrates massive over penetration". Granted certain loads do penetrate excessively, but there are so many good 10mm loads, in so many different loadings and bullet weights, that plenty of good loads are available. Admittedly some 10 loads flash and blast a lot, although Cor Bons stuff doesn't flash much at all. Concerning the "uncontrollability" factor, people can shoot IDPA, IPSC matches using reloads having similar velocities to self-defense ammunition - this load is a 180gr FMJ-TC, over a charge of around 9.3gr of 800x - usually is sufficient to obtain 1150 fps. Thatll yeild momentum figures 4.6% below the 230gr .45ACP CorBon (.45 ACP 200 gr+p loadi). It would appear that this round can be controlled. This round is quite controllable with practice, something military types should be doing anyway.
Now, the only thing I can't decide is S&W 1076, GLock 29, or Tanfranglio? ONE thing for certain, is that with a ten a double tap most likely won't be necessary (a double tap being like emphasis in italics). Whereas, a 9mm, such as the likes of a SIG-Sauer P-299 (shooting .357 SIG rounds), most often will and require italicised bolding and an exclamation point (head shot) for punctuation.
At under $500 including two extra ten round magazines I am very pleased.
Stay well - Stay safe - Stay armed - Yorktown
The issue with regards to the original post has to do with flawed equipment (similiar to the initial release of the M-16), and is something that nobody really discussed. The Glock G20 was designed from scratch in short order (Glock not knowing the difference between a revolver and a semiautomatic at the time) for the Austrian military. Glock came up with something unique, a polymer (plastic) weapon. Since nobody had ever seen anything like that, the Austrians demanded that Glock's prototype shoot 8000 rounds with no more than 5 misfires. Well, it shot 10000 with only 1 misfire (failure to eject, as opposed failure to feed). Furthermore, it can be dropped into the dirt and still keep firing, and dropped for all angles of contact and not misfire. That's not bad in my book. Oh, by the way, the requirememt of 8000 rounds with 5 misfires was waived for any of the other contenders because it was assumed they could match that. Moreover, the very material a Glock is made out of can stand some very hot loads, and the manner how it flexes accomodates recoil rather well. In fact it has been demonstrated to do so better than all steel build weapons.
Anyway, the U.S. military looked into the Glock, but Glock wouldn't release the manufacturing rights, patents, etc. He wanted to reap what he sowed. Can you blame him? So the Beretta that actually is at fault is not the Beretta, but the U.S. production for military use model made by U.S corporations. Heck, we had that same problem back when the M-16 was first release. Colt said, you got to use these rounds (manufactured to these specs). Congress in their infinite wisdom said, we think these cheaper rounds are just as good. Sure they were, except at the cost of so many U.S. service members lives. That's why the M-16 obtained such a miserable reputation, and most likely why the Beretta in question is being maligned also.
While the .45 ACP might be tried and proven, is it the best technology? Well, lets just say the DC-3 is still flying.
DON'T tell me that it don't hurt to have holes poked into oneself. Not only that but those bullets are hot So when they come to rest they, well, they hurt. Moreover, I know what its like to get hit with a hardball, and a bullet is 100 times more than that and it goes through ones body and sprays out a whole bunch of tissue on the other side. Any bullet does that. The .38 Special is known for its ability of inducing hydrostatic shock. That means if one is hit in the shoulder or arm by such a round, the individual hit could very well die. NOT from any major trauma, but from the affect that the jello ripple has on cellular structure and cumulative affect on physiology.
I'm certainly not going to argue that punching a 1/2" hole into the corpus of an enemy will not cause them grief. You can't argue with me that a 10mm hole in the front side and a 1/4' hole on the back side won't also cause grief to the opponent.
All I know in both cases, they ain't getting up anymore. While in the former it might be because of hydrostatic shock, definately in the latter its because the means whereby that might've been accomplished was a spray of red out their backside.
Anyway, it comes down to preference.
ONE thing that can be said about the 10 is its effect against kevlar. Many in the know are on record saying that they'd prefer getting hit (if they were going to - heaven forbid) with a 12 gauge slug instead something else. A properly tuned 10mm auto slug will, at close range, go through pretty every body armour there is.
Personally, I think the military rifle of choice should be the M1. However, what do I know? I'm thinking that if the 30-30 isn't cutting it, then the Mossberg isn't going to save the day unless the General has a pretty damn good tactician. And if the General needs to rely on such a good tactician, then either the troops are incompetent due to lack of training, or the general is for the same reason (and the troops can be excused for his mistake with their death).
I don't know, that's just how I feel.
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