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Seasoned Vet
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This Week's Marine Corps Times
Issue Date: September 29, 2003
Many Marines miss the Colt .45
Others are fine with a 9mm pistol
By C. Mark Brinkley
Times staff writer
JACKSONVILLE, N.C. — When the discussion turns to firepower, someone always says the Corps should trade in its pistols for a handgun that can really knock a man’s socks off.
Or his arms. Or his head.
The weapon of choice usually is Old Faithful.
“We had someone ask us recently when we were going to bring back the .45,” said Sgt. Maj. of the Marine Corps John L. Estrada. His answer? The great minds at Quantico, Va., are working on it.
Not necessarily on bringing back the Colt M1911A1 .45-caliber pistol, but evaluating the Beretta M9 and its usefulness. It’s been a debate for almost two decades, ever since the .45 was retired.
To its credit, some variant of the M1911 delivered the mail for more than 70 years, before it was finally retired in 1985. Even now, most Force Reconnaissance Marines still carry a handcrafted, souped-up .45, earning the weapon further mystique.
But most Marines who rate pistols get the M9 9mm, selected by the Defense Department in 1985 to replace the Colt.
The .45, it seems, was not without its drawbacks.
For instance, the pistol magazine held only seven rounds, requiring frequent reloading in heavy firefights. And the Colt was single-action, meaning that Marines who carried a round in the chamber had to be very careful of accidental discharges, which were frequent. Unlike a dual-action pistol, the single-action Colt must be cocked manually before the shooter can fire his first round, a situation that gave rise to the expression “locked and cocked.”
But mostly, the weapon was too powerful for many shooters. It had knockdown power, to be sure, but learning to hit the target was a problem.
With the stock of .45s running out and NATO transitioning to 9mm rounds as the sidearm standard, the Defense Department decided to go with the Beretta. The 15-shot, dual-action 9mm overcame many of the Colt’s limitations, and the debate has raged ever since.
Not everyone hates it, however. Chief Warrant Officer 2 Timothy Brewer, range officer at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, Calif., has experience with the .357-caliber revolver, the .45 and the 9mm and believes the M9 is a fine weapon.
The sidearm is best for “self-defensive, close-combat” missions, Brewer said. “It’s not an offensive-type weapon.”
He said the relative ease of qualifying with the double-action M9, the smaller likelihood of accidental or negligent discharges and the lethality of the 9mm round make it a good weapon to have when operating in a potentially hostile area.
Brewer said he carried both the 9mm pistol and the M16 rifle while deployed with a sniper unit and would go with either or both again, depending on the mission. The 9mm “is a round of choice,” he said, noting its popularity among many law-enforcement agencies.
“It’s so fast, and it does damage,” Brewer said. “At close quarters, you want as much damage inflicted in a short period of time.”
And for many Marines who rate only a pistol, neither the 9mm or the .45-caliber will fit the bill. The issue for many Marines isn’t one of power, but of distance.
Maj. Jason Adkinson, an AH-1W Super Cobra attack helicopter pilot who recently returned from the war in Iraq, recalled an instance when he and a wingman were forced to land along a highway south of Baghdad because of battle damage. Luckily, the four aviators had traded their M9s for M4 carbines, a cut-down version of the 5.56mm M16 rifle, which they held tightly until a helicopter could come pick them up.
“Obviously, much better to defend from a few hundred meters vice 25 yards with the M9 while waiting for the cavalry,” Adkinson said. “Also, we carried multiple 30-round magazines, giving us much more defensive firepower than the Beretta.”
Or the Colt, for that matter. So the debate rages on.
Gidget Fuentes, Gordon Lubold and Christian Lowe contributed to this report. Fuentes reported from San Diego.
------------------------------------------------------------ Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. ------------------------------------------ 
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Seasoned Vet
 
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MAybe something will come of it.
Go with God, but make Him walk the point.
If you load a mudfoot down with a lot of gadgets he has to watch somebody a lot more simply equipped - say with a stone axe - will sneak up and bash his head in while he is trying to read a Vernier. - Robert Heinlein
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Regular Joe
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Hey, you have to believe anything written by someone named Gidget Fuentes!
From the Army Special Operations Battle Lab at the JFK Center (Special Forces, Fort Bragg)As found at: http://www.sftt.org/oif_ll.html
quote:
"The lessons were gathered from 5 through 10 May 2003 from soldiers serving in the Baghdad sector during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Comments came from Brigade Commanders down to riflemen. The following units were interviewed:
* HHC/1-187 IN, 101st ABN (5 MAY) * 2d BCT, 82d ABN (6-7 and 10 MAY) * 3-325 PIR (7 MAY) * 2-325 PIR (7 MAY) * 3-7 Cavalry 3 ID (8 MAY) * FSB (8 MAY) * 1st BCT, 3 ID (9 MAY) * 3-69 AR (9 MAY)
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"9-mm. Beretta: There was general dissatisfaction with this weapon. First and foremost, soldiers do not feel it possesses sufficient stopping power. They desire a modification to allow for more accurate firing during limited visibility - tritium on the sight posts was a specific recommendation.
The 9-mm. magazine performed very poorly. Soldiers were stretching the spring in order to provide sufficient force to feed rounds into the chamber. Soldiers were not satisfied with the guidance from higher to not stretch the spring and only load 10 rounds in the 15-round magazine.
The issued 9-mm. holster is not used. Most soldiers/units purchased thigh holsters because of comfort, access and availability. If the 9-mm. is your personal weapon, you don't want to have to always wear your LBV in order to have your weapon with you. The leather shoulder holsters did not hold up well in this environment. The thigh holsters came from a number of different commercial sources such as Blackhawk.
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M-4 carbine: Soldiers were very satisfied with this weapon. It performed well in a demanding environment especially given the rail system and accompanying sensors and optics. As one Brigade Commander said, "The M-4 with PEQ and PAC provided overmatch over our threat equipped with AK-47s and RPGs." The general consensus is that every rifleman wants the M-4 vice the M-16A2.
The most significant negative comment was reference the M-4's range. In the desert, there were times were soldiers needed to assault a building that may be 500+ meters distant across open terrain. They did not feel the M-4 provided effective fire at that range. The 82d Airborne soldiers wished they had deployed with M-14's at the squad level as the 101st did.
There is also a significant safety issue that bears further investigation. Apparently when the M4 selector is in the "Safe" position and the bolt is allowed to ride forward, the firing pin still makes contact with the bullet primer. A CSM in the 101st related a story of a soldier who had an accidental discharge while his weapon was in the safe position - the CSM personally witnessed this incident. Numerous soldiers showed us bullets in their magazines that had small dents in the primer. There may be a "Safety of Use" message out on this issue but it is not well known at the battalion-and-below level.
The flip-up sight on the M-4 allowed the soldier to engage targets out to 600 meters. However, the plastic grommet that formed the small aperture was prone to falling out. Soldiers "super-glued" the aperture to the sight.
Don't know about the USMC but the Army has type certified the excellent SIG P228 as the M11. It's used by pilots, undercover, and by people whose hands are too small for the M9. An it is issued with Tritium night sights.
From: http://www.ausa.org/www/armymag.nsf/(soldier)/20025?OpenDocument
quote:
Along with the large-scale fielding of the M9, the Army has a second 9 mm pistol in selected inventories. Designated as the M11, the second weapon is manufactured by SIGARMS (SIG Sauer P228) [in Exeter, NH]. The M11 is slightly smaller than the M9 (the M11 is 7.1 inches long by 5.4 inches high versus 8.54 inches long by 5.51 inches high for the M9) with a magazine capacity of 13 rounds (versus 15 for the M9). "They came into the inventory in 1992," Burchell says.
"We have an Army Authorization Objective of 3,162 of these pistols, which is the number we actually have. The M11s originally were to go to Military Police investigators and the Criminal Investigation Division.
"Since then, the Department of the Army has authorized the M11 for a number of other units, to include the intelligence community and some of the special operations folks. Those are the only two 9 mms in Army inventories right now, at least officially. We suspect that there are individuals who may have some others," Burchell concludes.
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