Many Marines miss the Colt .45 Others are fine with a 9mm pistol

[thedrifter]

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.

http://www.marinetimes.com/story.php...ER-2226352.php


Sempers,

Roger

[the humper]

and distance!!!!!! Wasn't built for that. Was built, to shoot and kill folks!!!!
SF
NC

[Jerry D]

From what I have observed A 45 will knock a perp down with one shot but I have seen video of a perp taking a clip of 9mm and still keep coming at an officer unless he/she was hit in a vital organ. So for self defence one on one a 45 would seem to be the weapon of choice but if you were taking on a patrol of Al-Quaida then a 15 rd clip of 9mm might scare them off .