Hirtenberger SMG Ammo

*Hirtenberger

First off welcome to the forum.
Yeah this has been brought up on several forums in the past. It is most likely over pressure for just about any 9MM+P+ rated firearm. It might be of interest to someone wanting to collect ammo but I would not shoot L7A1 on a bet. The only safe way to use it up would be to disassemble it and reload with a known safe quantity of a known propellant.

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I think it was loaded to cycle MP5s in Arctic conditions. A good amount did come into the US, so while "collectible", it isn't in very high demand or particularly valuable.

dogtown tom said:

https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/hirtenberger-smg-ammunition-debunked.183212/

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I am going to say, that the referenced link to Hirtenberger SMG Ammunition Debunked, is a great thread.

I am going to claim that the cultural memory of so called SMG 9mm is primarily a sales pitch, used to sell old, high pressure ammunition, to a community that does not know that gunpowder pressures rise with age, and, believes that gunpowder is immortal. As any one can read in the referenced thread, there were SMG 9mm that was was very high pressure, limited quantities of the stuff was made, distribution was controlled to keep it out of the hands of those who would fire it in their handguns. And, when it was too old to keep in service, it was dumped on the civilian market.

Heat deteriorates gunpowder at an exponential rate, so heating is used as a way to age gunpowder. As can be seen from these charts, pressures rise as gunpowder gets old. That point, at which pressures rise, militaries want to get old ammunition out of inventory just before that point. It makes sense, doesn't it?, ammunition is expensive, just dumping it based on clock time, when the stuff ages unpredictably, is going to waste money. So first world militaries hire experts to inspect and test their ammunition stocks, and get the stuff out of the bunker, before it blows up in the firearms of their service men.





Now I have noticed several biases in the shooting community, one is that shooters think they are going to live forever, and their ammunition is going to be as immortal as they are. So, the shooting community will accept sales pitches that reinforce their self deceptive biases. Instead of informing buyers that the 9mm ammunition they bought is old, is over pressure because it is old, and the stuff is not going to get better with age, sellers just tell ignorant buyers "it is machine gun ammunition". Buyers accept this, because, propellant aging falls into the category of Agnotology, You can follow the link but Agnotology is the study of culturally induced ignorance. I read this book through interlibrary loan :
Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=11232 and it is interesting how many examples of culturally induced ignorance you can find, if you look for them.

I do believe that if the small lot of real SMG 9mm was surplused, it was taken out of inventory because it had aged, and pressures were going above what was originally contracted. Anyone firing this stuff should expect a well disassembled firearm, given enough tries, similiar to what happened with this Garand

Slamfire said:

I do believe that if the small lot of real SMG 9mm was surplused, it was taken out of inventory because it had aged, and pressures were going above what was originally contracted. Anyone firing this stuff should expect a well disassembled firearm, given enough tries, similiar to what happened with this Garand

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I bought a bunch of Spanish 9mm "SMG" ammo back in the mid 80's. Just under 2000 rounds later, my SWD M11/9mm looked like this.....





The charging knob sheared off shortly before that happened. Should have paid better attention.

The stuff was hot, you could feel it when you were shooting it. The way the wire stock felt in your cheek and the increased cyclic rate was a good indicator.

Back at that time, there was a lot off "SMG" ammo floating around and I shot a little bit of most of it, as it was usually cheap and I had "SMG's", so why not. Some of it was also pretty corrosive. I still have whats left of a couple of cases of Egyptian 9mm SMG ammo that was loaded for their Port Said's. Shot it all day on a hot steamy summer day and got home late and figured things would wait til morning to clean. Next morning when I went to clean the gun, much of it was covered in a fine, bright orange fuzzy "rust", inside and out. Ugly stuff. It too was pretty hot. If Slamfire is right in his thinking, and he usually is, whats left is probably a little hotter now.

I seem to remember there was a lot or two of the Hirtenberger that was recalled back around the same time they were selling a lot of it. I believe the warning was posted in the Shotgun News at the time, and if you had bought any, it should be returned to where you bought it. Same thing happened with a lot of CBC 7.62x51. Apparently, it had damaged a few guns and it too was recalled.

Surplus of any type is always a risk. You have no idea why it was released, and if it is really "surplus" at all. A lot of stuff that didnt meet spec, and/or was refused, gets bought up at the auctions and seems to make its way onto the market, and they can call it what they like.

While I believe the specific Hirtenberger ammo in question is not suitable for shooting, I will say that I have shot surplus ammo for decades...some, maybe most dating to the 1940’s. 7.62x54, 30’06, 8mm Mauser, 7.62x25, even some old cordite loaded 303 ball.
The only real problem is that most real surplus ammo is drying up.

AK103K said:

The charging knob sheared off shortly before that happened. Should have paid better attention.

The stuff was hot, you could feel it when you were shooting it. The way the wire stock felt in your cheek and the increased cyclic rate was a good indicator.

Back at that time, there was a lot off "SMG" ammo floating around and I shot a little bit of most of it, as it was usually cheap and I had "SMG's", so why not. Some of it was also pretty corrosive. I still have whats left of a couple of cases of Egyptian 9mm SMG ammo that was loaded for their Port Said's. Shot it all day on a hot steamy summer day and got home late and figured things would wait til morning to clean. Next morning when I went to clean the gun, much of it was covered in a fine, bright orange fuzzy "rust", inside and out. Ugly stuff. It too was pretty hot. If Slamfire is right in his thinking, and he usually is, whats left is probably a little hotter now.

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In hindsight, we are all wiser. But it takes time and and a fair amount of evidence to reject the conventional wisdom of those smart guys who were educated by those "in print experts" that gunpowder lasts virtually forever, and when it does go bad, it fails benignly. It took a lot of evidence for me to decide for myself the smart guys were idiots, conventional wisdom was bunk, and those "in print experts" are shills. I also came to the conclusion, that you have to educate yourself, as none of the in print experts are going to educate you on what not to buy.

What I have been railing about in this thread, is a very false industry narrative, that stories about 9mm ammunition being "machine gun" ammunition, are probably false, were always false, created by those who knew better, in order to convince the shooting public to buy dangerous ammunition.

Your post is an excellent warning about the risks inherent in surplus ammunition. President Bush signed legislation capping the number of machine guns in public hands. If I only were wise enough to buy a closet full, but I was not, and the prices which I thought ridiculous, have risen to obscene. If you have a $20,000, $50,000, or $100,000 machine gun, and you blow it up firing cheap surplus ammunition, and the registered part is destroyed, you don't get to rebuild the thing. Your machine gun, and all the money you spent, is gone. Machine gunners need to consider that.

And, despite the nonsense of conventional wisdom, that ammunition fails benignly, it does not, it gets worse as it ages. And if the cheapo surplus ammunition you are shooting shows any evidence of high pressure, it would be wise to pull the bullets, dump the powder, and reload the cases if they don't show show the type of corrosion that occurred in this 1989 factory ammunition.

Slamfire said:

In hindsight, we are all wiser. But it takes time and and a fair amount of evidence to reject the conventional wisdom of those smart guys who were educated by those "in print experts" that gunpowder lasts virtually forever, and when it does go bad, it fails benignly. It took a lot of evidence for me to decide for myself the smart guys were idiots, conventional wisdom was bunk, and those "in print experts" are shills. I also came to the conclusion, that you have to educate yourself, as none of the in print experts are going to educate you on what not to buy.

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It is funny, how some seem to think, that if you havent experienced it personally, it cant possibly be, isnt it?

We had a similar discussion a few years back when I ran into some 20 +/- year old reloads and powder my dad had loaded and stored, starting to fail, and that was just sitting in the box and unopened cans of powder, all due to powder degradation. Much of what I saw, was exactly what you show in your pics above, and worse.

Ive had discussions with a number of people who insist, that ammo doesnt go bad, they have shot ammo from the 20's and 30's without issues, that I didnt have a clue as to what I was talking about, and I was being Chicken Little. Hey, whatever. I was just pointing out, that Id had a different experience, and they might want to check. What can it hurt to pull a bullet or two here and there and see what things look like. That brass isnt corroding and cracking like that for no reason, and that blueish green stuff on the bottom of those bullets is telling you something.

I guess the best lessons learned, are those you learn the hard way. Hopefully, you get out of the lesson with all your fingers, toes, and eyelashes.