Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!dimacs.rutgers.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!cbnews!military
From: leem@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Lee Mellinger)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Side Arms For Fly Boys.
Message-ID: <1990Nov6.045158.2315@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 6 Nov 90 04:51:58 GMT
References: <1990Oct30.052445.7246@cbnews.att.com> <1990Nov1.024817.11925@cbnews.att.com> <1990Nov2.202035.28348@cbnews.att.com>
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From: leem@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Lee Mellinger)
In article <1990Nov2.202035.28348@cbnews.att.com> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
:
:
:From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
:>From: leem@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Lee Mellinger)
:>:BTW, the new FBI round, the .40 S&W seems like an adequate replacement for
:>:a light .45 round, but it's not that much more compact.  Besides, if you
:>:need anymore than 7 shots in a pistol, you are probably dead already...
:>
:>... From a defensive point of view, to
:>give up 7 rounds of ammo with the same ballestics does not make any
:>sense, tactical situations cannot be predicted and those extra rounds
:>may be the difference between life and death.
:
:Sure can, if they make the gun sufficiently heavier and bulkier that you
:aren't carrying it on the day you need it, or if the two-column magazine
:that's almost mandatory for the zillion-shot pistols has a feed problem
:at the wrong time.  Other things being equal, nobody in his right mind
:would prefer fewer rounds... but other things are *not* equal and the
:tradeoffs need to be weighed very carefully.  In a pistol intended mainly
:as secondary emergency armament, compactness, lightness, and reliability
:are more important than the ability to fight a six-hour battle without
:reloading.  Especially since going into that six-hour battle armed only
:with a pistol and the usual run of military pistol training is probably
:suicide anyway.
:-- 
:"I don't *want* to be normal!"         | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
:"Not to worry."                        |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry


For the pistols we are talking about, .45 vs. .40/10mm, size and
weight are very close, and in fact some versions of the .40 are lighter
and considerably more pointable, especially by non-expert shooters, as
pilots tend to be.  Reliability in the .45 vs .40/10mm comparasion is a
non-issue,  there has been no real evidence of any reliability
problems with the currently produced pistols (S&W 1006/4006, Colt 10mm
Delta Elite, Glock 22/23 and soon 20).  The Glock pistols are about
30% lighter than the comparable .45 Colt and are extremely reliable.
In one demonstration 20 Glocks were picked at random from the factory.
The guns were all disassembled and the parts placed in containers of
the same parts.  A single gun was then constructed from the radomized
parts, without any gunsmithing.  The gun was then fired continuously
for 3 hours by a team of shooters who put more than 3000 rounds
through it.  There were no malfuntions of any kind during the course
of this test.  This is severe test, pistols are not designed for
continous firing, the heat build up is very large.

The Glock 23 is a .40 cal. pistol of very compact dimensions and it
holds 15 rounds that are the equivalent of the .45.

Lee - Certified Firearms Instructor Civilian and Police

"Mit Pulver und Blei, die Gedanken sind frei."

|Lee F. Mellinger                 Caltech/Jet Propulsion Laboratory - NASA
|4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109 818/393-0516  FTS 977-0516      
|leem@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV