Cartridge Board

Once upon a time, at a shooting range not so very far away, a young fellow walked up to my bench during a break in the shooting. After looking at the half dozen World War I-era Smith & Wessons lying there, he asked, “Why are so many old guns still in existence?” Before I could answer, he said something I was totally unprepared for. In short, he didn’t understand why, with modern guns being stronger and more accurate, we didn’t melt down all the old stuff and buy new guns! Then he added that the salesman who sold him his new concealed carry gun had said a 9mm Luger served 98 percent of all handgun needs.

Where to begin! Then the guy on the next bench spoke up, saying to the young man, “I heard what you said. You’re new to this, aren’t you? Don’t worry, it will pass!” Then the range buzzer sounded and shooting resumed.

It took quite a while to scrub the idea of melting all my old revolvers and replacing them with plastic and metal-injection-molded pistols. Even harder to forget was the statement that the 9mm Luger was adequate for 98 percent of handgun needs. Just why should we toss out our hundred-year-old handguns and replace them with new guns chambered for a 125-year-old cartridge? Right! Makes no sense to me either. The 9mm Luger is a series of compromises, trade-offs and – wait for it – yes, politics.

The chronicles tell us that the 9mm Luger has been known by several names, including 9mm Parabellum, referring to the

phrase Si vis pacem para bellum (If you seek peace, prepare for war). This was a trademark of the great arms and ammunition maker Deutsche Waffen Uno Munitionsfabriken AG (DWM) and first became associated with the Heinemann-Maxim machine gun and Borchardt-Luger pistol (forerunner of the Luger P08).

History now becomes a bit confusing in that 1890 to 1905 saw a frenzy of semiautomatic pistol designs appear in Europe. Hugo Borchardt’s first design was chambered for a round called 7.65mm Borchardt, a bottlenecked cartridge with case length of 25mm and bullet diameter of 7.81mm. A later model 1893 Borchardt pistol was titled 7.65mm Parabellum but used a cartridge having a case roughly .050 inch shorter than the previous round. This cartridge was also called 7.65mm Parabellum. Still later, the Borchardt-Luger (which looked like a modern Luger) was called the 7.65mm Swiss Model 1900 Parabellum pistol. Note that there was not yet a 9mm cartridge for the gun.

The strange-looking Borchardt pistol was reviewed by several militaries. It performed well enough most of the time, but fault was found with the 7.65mm cartridge. Pushing the metric equivalent of a .308-inch diameter 92-grain bullet to 1,200 feet per second (fps) from a 4.75-inch barrel, the round was a then-modern smokeless powder, high-velocity cartridge that was supposed to replace all black-powder military rounds. Extensive testing showed that was not going to happen. Complete penetration of the target, leaving only bullet diameter entrance and exit holes, was common. Living targets often gave no

The (1) 9mm Luger would work better at lower pressure if it were a bit longer like the modern (2) 9x21mm or (3) 9x23mm, but the Luger frame would not allow it without redesign.

indication of being hit unless it struck bone. DWM had a problem, but part of it was solved beautifully.

There seems to be no record of how the ungainly 1893 Borchardt became the Borchardt-Luger, then the modern-appearing 1900 Luger. Yet happen it did. Nevertheless, the Luger design was built around the bottleneck 7.65mm Parabellum round. A larger cartridge was not anticipated, yet prospective customers liked everything about the Luger –except the cartridge.

Georg Luger did exactly what one would expect. He created a cartridge of the maximum size that would fit into the Luger pistol without modifications to the gun. At first this appeared to be a 9mm round built on a neck-expanded 7.65mm Parabellum case. But there was a problem. Most cartridges of the time were named by numerical caliber, and caliber was

the land-to-land diameter of the barrel. The 7.65mm Parabellum, for example, was 7.65mm caliber (land-to-land); however, 7.65mm caliber bullets are 7.797mm or groove diameter.

By using a 9mm caliber bullet (9.195mm diameter) in the new cartridge and case walls thick enough to hold the bullet solidly, the case mouth would be larger in diameter than the base of the parent case! Obviously, this would not work because a certain taper is needed for chambering and extraction in semiauto pistols and the coming submachine guns. Why DWM didn’t just produce a case 0.2mm larger at the base is not known. There is some indication this was tried but required slight modifications to the pistol, which wasn’t going to happen. Apparently both DWM engineers and Georg Luger believed military purchasers would eventually come to their senses and buy the 7.65mm Parabellum.

The marketing folks, meanwhile, were having none of this. They were going to have a larger bore cartridge to sell. It would

be called a 9mm, even if it wasn’t. So, bullet diameter was reduced to 9mm and caliber to 8.788mm. It wouldn’t be the last time numbers in a cartridge title were not what they appeared to be. Everyone seemed happy. The cartridge was titled 9mm Parabellum. 

The first Model 1900 Luger pistol, chambered for the new 9mm round, was ready sometime in 1902. Ballistic figures differ somewhat no matter if given in metric or English form. Testing of the new pistol in 9mm had been ongoing by the U.S. Army and Navy since May 1903. In that year, Springfield Armory released figures from Luger pistols presumably obtained using Springfield equipment and DWM ammunition. Chronographs of the time were far different than today; velocities were given as “at 50 feet.” Obviously, this is not muzzle velocity but is okay for simple comparison.

For some reason, the Springfield results were given in metric measurement, perhaps because no American company then loaded it. These figures have been converted into something useful here. Basically, they show a 123-grain bullet achieving 1,095 fps from a 4-inch barrel, 1,128 fps from a 4.7-inch barrel and 1,171 fps from a 5.8-inch barrel, all at 50 feet. Energy values would come in at 300 foot-pounds (ft-lbs) to just under 400 ft-lbs and were gotten only by raising breech pressure significantly.

Interest in the Luger pistol and ammunition by the U.S. Military stopped after conclusion of the 1904 Thompson-LaGarde Tests. Here live steers, horses and human cadavers were shot with military cartridges from 7.65mm to .476 caliber. The 45 finished on top; the 7.65mm and 9mm failed miserably. The U. S. ran off chasing a 45 auto.

The militaries of the world liked the Luger pistol and 9mm cartridge for their accuracy and light recoil, but not for the feeding and extraction jams. Changes to the gun, magazine and ammunition were quietly tried, but had little effect. The trait still plagues the gun today. Since ammunition is critical to semiautomatic designs, it was pretty much standardized at the ballistics mentioned earlier.

When Germany adopted the Luger and its cartridge in 1908, their success appeared assured. All the European ammunition makers began loading it, but acceptance was slow. Winchester first listed it in 1908. Bullets offered were 125-grain “Metal Patched and Soft Hollow Point.” Others followed, but there was little interest in the U.S., even after World War I when soldiers brought back thousands of Lugers.

Finally, I must mention my favorite 9mm chambered handgun, and though it fits in the timeframe of this report, it’s not a Luger. It was given to me by an uncle who said at the time, “Every boy needs a World War II military pistol that actually saw combat to handle and shoot whenever he feels like it. You will understand some day.”

This pistol is the nickel-plated Walther P-38 shown in the first photo. It was picked out of a pile of German weapons in an ammunition dump somewhere in North Africa just as my uncle’s outfit was preparing to blow up the dump. He shot it and liked it so well he gave his Ml911 away and carried the Walther all the way back to Germany, using it in several firefights. My uncle wasn’t a gun guy, but said it seemed to have greater knockdown power than the 45 so long as the range was short. The original holster disintegrated due to exposure to the weather; the one shown is a reproduction.

Next time, the post-World War II period will be covered to see what the 9mm Luger has become, or at least what many think it has become.