At that time, I selected several top brands of 9mm in different weights and chose to shoot them at extra heavy walled CMU's (aka Cinder Blocks) to see how they performed. To my surprise the best performing bullet was the Remington 115 gr. JHP which penetrated both sides of the CMU, leaving a 9mm hole on entry and a 1" hole on the off side. The 124/125's and the 147's pentrated the first wall of the CMU, but were stopped by the off-side wall and I found them in the void between the walls.
Now ammo has changed a lot since then and one can find heavier bullet loads that will pass my CMU test. But the bottom line is to find out what performs to your expectations out of your gun.
Doesn't really prove anything at all about the way bullets behave in living tissue, unless your cinderblocks were waterlogged at the time.
I also get concerned that if the 147 grain bullet expands, it may not penetrate enough.
147 grain 9mm bullets have the most innate momentum of all the 9mm projectiles, why would you be concerned that they won't penetrate deep enough, or are you concerned about the penetration of every 9mm bullet that expands?
I also don't know that you need to go to +P/+P+ - bullet designs are constantly changing, so a lot of the info you'll find will be based on older designs.
You should save the earlier Word.doc and you have some of Winchester's recommendations. The Federal HST has been getting good reviews, and it looks like Federal has done the same as Winchester-the mouth is larger, and the cuts are longer and/or deeper.
You'll note Winchester's recommendation for short barreled guns is directly opposite to a lot of 'conventional' recommendations. Most folks traditionally have said go +P or +P+ in shorter barrel guns to maintain velocity-Winchester's letter says stick with their 147 gr., but it all depends on the bullet design, and companies usually know their product.
Just thought that post was worth a re-read for the OP and Stryker. You may think that you should try to use the fastest possible bullet in a short barreled gun to make up for velocity loss, but that isn't the best option for a couple of reasons. The largest is bullet design.
You may have noticed that none of the major manufacturers have introduced or bothered to redesign an existing 115 grain bullet in years, with the exception of the DPX, which we'll ignore because we're talking about conventional lead and copper JHPs right now. Actually, let's not ignore it, because it is a good example of the single biggest pactor in handgun JHP behavior- design.
In 1986, when JHPs were still pretty much sophomores at best, you needed high speeds to get a bullet to expand. The designs of the day were unable to expand without a lot of resistance, gained by propelling the bullet as fast as possible. Today's bullet designs can expand much more consistently across a wide spectrum of velocities, because they are designed differently.
The reason bullet design makes a difference is because bullets expand based on resistance and hydraulic pressures acting on their hollow cavity. The way the bullet reacts to that pressure is entirely based on design, because it isn't just a function of velocity, it's a mechanical action that is going on. You can make a JHP that won't expand without 1500 feet per second of velocity, and you can make on that will come to pieces at 900 feet per second. Bullet designer's goals aren't to create products that do either one of those things.
The goal for a long time has been to create bullets that expand as close to every single time they enter living tissue as possible, and that do not fragment at their intended velocity, and that penetrate to a distance that is considered acceptably deep. Bullet designers lately have been able to achieve those goals more consistently with the 147 grain bullets, with the 124s still being a good choice.
Except for Critical Defense, a shallow penetrating, mediocre expanding load designed exclusively for non-duty carry, and the all-copper DPX, no one has introduced a 115 grain JHP marketed for defense in some time. I read quite a bit into Hornady marketing the Critical Defense strictly to the 'civilian' carry market, by the way.
And the 147 grain loads lose less velocity from a shorter barrel than the lighter and faster loads, both as a total number and as a percentage of their starting velocity. The lighter bullets are more likely to be out of their intended operating range than the 147 bullets, because as we've learned, it's not purely velocity or kinetic energy that makes a hollow point behave the way it does, but design and construction.