M1911 vs. M9
Posted on 02/12/2002 11:02:45 AM PST by Dawgsquat
M1911vsM9
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However, in my opinion, between the two I choose the 1911 hands down. They are wonderful tools. The trigger simply cannot be beat. Same pull every time. No double action first shot followed by SA shots. Absoulutely brilliant design that is perfect for customizing. Flat and easy to carry all day long. I like the caliber too.
I like and admire the Beretta but choose the 1911. But who am I to say? I still carry a revolver on a fairly regular basis. LOL.
It's as dependable as it gets, and fun too!
Most of them seemed to prefer a 9 mm, and a couple were very good.
But now that you mention it, I recall being told the military doesn't provide much practice ammo for the pistol. It's an officers' weapon, and person to person skills and report writing are probably more important than actual shooting skills at that paygrade. Up to a point.
Military I have seen at the range have been on their own time and using their own ammo, I'm fairly sure.
Rifles should be emphasized; they can't give up that skill, IMHO. Some day the laser pointers will all be out of order and the GPS will be nonfunctional for one reason or another and the planes won't be flying due to weather, and the enemy will choose that moment.
You are mixing and matching your facts, and Somalia is a particularly bad example of ignorance of causing weapon systems to perform very sub-optimally. There were a number of problems with the weapons and ammo as used in Somalia i.e. there were a number of things that I guess you could call gross violations of "best practices for optimal ballistics". That is neither here nor there, and I could spend a lot of time writing about the bad judgement used regarding a number of things that made the weapons underperform when it mattered.
"AP" is a misnomer for small arms ammunition because you can't punch any armor with it that you couldn't punch without it. In fact, the only people that call it AP are us plebes and the people who try to sell it to us. The military doesn't make that claim for M855. In fact, they have a different designation for the real AP 5.56 (and this "real" AP was used in Somalia). However, it is true that in current military loadings, an "AP" 7.62 will out-penetrate the 5.56. Unfortunately, in field situations you'll likely be stuck with M855 5.56 and standard 7.62 ball. Of those two, the M855 penetrates better. Remember also, that the old steel tip .30-06 (aka "black tip") was not a proper AP bullet either, and was specifically designed to increase what had been observed to be the poor penetration capability of the standard lead core ball ammo used for the .30-06. Adding a steel tip to the lead core .30 caliber bullet was the direct consequence of observed deficiencies of the standard .30-06 bullets in combat conditions when it came to penetration through walls, masonry, and similar. All lead core bullets suffer this problem when breaching "hard" targets. The current lead core 7.62 is a repeat of that problem. Ironically, it was the Belgians who developed the SS109 bullet in 5.56mm to solve the same problem. Apparently the military establishment was a bit slow to learn from their own history, as we had already addressed the exact same issue not that many years prior during the war.
Backing up though, one could question the wisdom of trying to shoot through a mud hut. A rifle is the wrong tool for that job with any type of bullet. Even if you managed to shoot through it, the terminal ballistics would suck.
Bwahahaha! Good one! Competition has nothing to do with combat conditions. You drag your IPSC race gun through the mud, dirt, and water for two weeks and we'll see how well it functions. We'll see how well it groups after you fire through a squib round. Some of the current generations of combat pistols can do all this and still turn in fine accuracy and superb reliability. And when you get right down to it, the skills I see used in competition are frequently directly at odds with the skills used for real combat shooting; people shoot to win the match according to the rules, not to stay alive and accomplish an objective. Even IDPA and nominally "realistic" type matches have this problem (also known as "dojo syndrome").
Among the reasons the M1911 was dropped as an officially supported military arm (though many armories still have a few tucked away -- ours did) was that the military updated their performance standards to reflect the improved capabilities of more recent firearms. Among the biggest shortcomings in testing for the 1911 is the Mean Rounds Between Failures, where it falls well below the current standard and far below the current crop of combat pistols. This shouldn't be surprising and religious zealotry over it is pointless; a LOT of incremental improvements in pistols have been made since the M1911 platform was introduced in 1905. I am not a "1911-hater", as I actually like the way they shoot and am somewhat biased for single-action pistols, but I think it makes for a mediocre combat pistol given the choices available. These days I'd rather have a P220 than a M1911 if it came down to a single-stack .45 with a fine trigger and accuracy, so I don't have a 1911 any more. A pistol is a tool, not a religion.
But one fact is not debateable: you can carry three times as many 5.56 in the same space for the same weight as 7.62.
If it's just you, with no Uncle Sam's ammo truck following you around, what you can carry may have to last all day....or longer.
In the same 4 ammo pouches you can carry 12 X 30 of 5.56mm, or 8 X 20 of 7.62. Throw in another two mags of 5.56mm to make up for the lighter 5.56mm rifle vs the generally heavier 7.62 rifle. Add one more mag to each, what you are carrying loaded in the rifle.
That's 15 mags X 30 rounds = 450 rounds of 5.56.
That's 9 mags X 20 rounds = 180 rounds of 7.62.
Now tell me honestly that 7.62 is so FAR superior to the 5.56 that you would not feel at any disadvantage going out for the day, weekend or week, (no resupply possible, bad guys all over shooting back at you) with 180 rounds of 7.62, vs 450 rounds of 5.56, in the same space at the same weight.
If you don't solve ALL of your problems with those 180 rounds of 7.62, what then? Use your pistol? One good firefight, and you'll be dry.
The man carrying 5.56mm will still have 270 rounds to shoot at you, when you are down to your 9mm or .45, if you are carrying a sidearm.
(Me, I'd rather carry two more mags of 5.56mm then the sidearm, if you are down to using a sidearm, it better be to "save the last bullet for yourself", cause a squad of anybody with any rifles will just pick you off at their leisure.)
I'm not saying there is no place for 7.62 machine guns and sniper rifles. But as the primary rifle? Forget it.
You take your 180 rounds of 7.62, I'll take my 450 rounds of 5.56mm.
And that's not an academic debate over terminal ballistics, that's just cold mathematical fact. No debate. 450 is better than 180.
Tell ya, I really shopped hard when I bought mine, I looked at every normal stock 45 there was, kept coming back to that one. Then started asking people who actually shot them, mostly old colt guys who had switched, well, at least bought a witness and shot it a lot, that convinced me, been happy with it. I heard nothing negative about them. Took it apart before I bought it, checked the machining-A-1 job. I had one stovepipe with really under powered crappy range loads, that's it. It feeds anything I've tried in it from ball to hydroshocks to weird mixed brass plinking rounds.
The first target I shot with it, factory site settings, is still hanging on the wall in the shop I bought it from, too, last I knew. It helped sell a lot of them for the guy.
I honestly don't know if it was tried out in the pistol trials when they picked the beretta, but I think it's better than the beretta or the colt. For the money it's hands down better, my opinion.
Have you ever actually used polymer frame in field conditions? They are tough, generally much tougher than steel and aluminum. They also tend to be virtually impervious to the environment, something I wish was true of all the metal parts of a polymer frame pistol. If a SIG gets dropped on a rock or gets thrown against concrete, I worry about it. But not with a Glock or H&K.
I saw a man put a glock 19 in his back pocket to show me how easy it was to hide. He sat down on it, got back up and the plastic frame was mashed out of the slide.
Back of the envelope mathematics show this to be highly improbable. Besides which I am not sure how that is even possible. The polymers are very light, but extremely stiff; the "tupperware" euphamism is just that. Working with good fiber reinforced polymers is similar to your first experience working with super-strong aluminum alloys; we are so used to the weight of steel that our brains automatically equate "light" with "flimsy" or "weak". And then you find out that you can barely even make a thin strip of it flex over your knee applying all your strength. Welcome to the world of modern materials. (Obviously, my diversionary foray into materials engineering left quite an impression on me.)
Now, I don't recall for the Glock exactly how stiff the frame is and I don't have one here right now to test, but I do know that the H&K frame is extremely stiff. It also has little steel members inside the polymer frame. H&K invented polymer frames in the 1970's and has had a lot of years to work out the kinks. And to reiterate as someone who has intentionally gone about seeing just how flimsy the H&K frame is, it is in fact extremely stiff. A whole lot of parts will fail or come apart before the frame does. As for the Glock coming apart when someone sat on it, it sounds like nonsense or at the very least there is more to the story. That kind of crap just doesn't happen, and I really don't see how it could. I know it couldn't with the H&K, and I am almost positive that it wouldn't with the Glock either. Glock frames are a wee bit more flexible than the H&K ones as I recall, but not THAT much. I've seen Glocks horribly abused, but nothing like that ever happened.
I'll bump for that. Give me a 5.56 assault rifle with a decent barrel and I'll be a problem for someone out to 500 meters all day. The 7.62 is more appropriate for a machinegun though, particularly in open country. And the sound of a long burst from an M60 pointed in your general direction will put the Fear of God in you in a way that a 5.56 machinegun just doesn't. (No that doesn't apply to 7.62 battle rifles. Just the bloody machinegun. A Ma Deuce will work too.)
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