Thread: It's back, it's bad, you know it as the 1911

Its good to hear its coming back. The 1911 ia an excellent pistol, and so iconic.

Good news; I'm no pistol expert, but the feedback I've been hearing is that the real operators prefer the M1911 for it's brute force. I know the US military (in general) has adopted the Beretta 92F, but special forces (and I use that in the general sense) has opted to stay with .45-cal; Delta tends to use custom M1911's (Baer, Kimber, etc.), and SEALs appear to prefer the HK45C or the P220 Combat. Glad to see the Corps going back to the "tried and true" M1911A1.

I remember reading some combat reports from WW2 regarding this handgun. While there was no U.S. alternate to compare it to, soldiers who used it praised it highly. In many cases of CQ combat, the .45 round simply dropped the enemy like a sack of grain, and the ones I remember distinctly are those where it caused death or incapacitation due to blood loss. The big slug simply cuts through organs and arteries in a way that no 9mm can do.

Since the military is restricted to ball ammo, this makes sense. A civilian 9mm handgun can be hopped up in velocity and equipped with hollow points to make up for an otherwise small size. I would not want to use ball ammo in a home invasion scenario with 9mm, but I would be comfortable with ball .45ACP.

The M1 carbine is a similar beast. The original cartridge simply put neat holes in the enemy. But load a carbine with soft-point ammo, it's another league in terms of stopping power.

I agree, if there were no "rules" about military pistol ammo, imagine the kinds of hi-tech, small caliber, exploding "man-stoppers" they could come up with - perhaps they'd be 100$'s a round - but I imagine they would accomplish the task quite effectively. Since we adhere to an old "dum-dum" bullet treaty made in the final days of black powder cartidges - we'll use solid ball ammo (it appears that modern tumbling rifle bullets effectively subvert the intention of this treaty anyways - even the original hollow point they outlawed is back as "open tip match" sniper ammo). I beleive that the strict observance of the small arms ammo conventions tend to make an 11.4mm (0.45) bullet considerably more effective than a 9mm for "treaty" pistol use.