Earliest use of the phrase "Wonder 9"?

When a modified (rail sights) Browning High Power won one of Col. Jeff Coopers original 'Leather Slap' matches. Don't recall the exact date but I think Jeff Cooper coined the phrase at the time (maybe early 1980's)

Good luck

Jerry

"Wonder Nine" was coined to describe the new 9mm service pistols that combined double stack magazines, DA/SA triggers and a decocker with steel or aluminum frames. This started when the Smith Model 59 started gaining popularity. Wonder Nines were set to rule the world until Glock introduced its "Combat Tupperware" and gave them to police departments for free.

The Glock has never been a "Wonder Nine" as it doesn't have a decock lever or a DA/SA action.

It's been many years since I've heard the term "Crunchenticker". Good times. Good times...

It was pretty spontaneously "everywhere" all at once.
All of the periodicals had some brand new, super fantastic, better-than-sliced-bread, nine mike-mike on their covers, and every flipping month. That was also the height of the 9 vs 45 "wars" so the big-and-slow crowd constantly had some spiffy new 9mm shoved in their faces.

So, there was some resistance. Stand there in the grocery store, and each of the 6 or 7 gun magazines each had a different nine being touted as the "best ever." Even the gunwriters started to get some 9mm fatigue--manufacturers no one had heard of, small, medium, large frame sizes, every possible magazine capacity, each was "the best evah!"

Brands no one had ever heard of were suddenly in the limelight, at least until the next edition of the magazine was printed. After a while we all began to "wonder" whether it would ever stop. Herr Glock burst into the US market about that time, too, so the whole field of materials design was added in to the mix.

Pretty much this only really died down when the 10mm became the exclamation point. The "AE" calibers had foretold the end of the headlines, but they were (and are) flash in the pan for selling magazines.

As others have mentioned the phase was also slightly condescending. The gun magazine writers were bemoaning the switch to these newfangled high capacity guns in the "European" 9mm when real Americans surely used a 7-shot 45ACP or a 6-shot 38 spl revolver. Of course it showed how insular the American gun market was since 9mm had been used as a military round since 1902.

First, NO it was not all a competition between 9mm and .45. The revolver was king, and the market in the US for the wondernine was to replace revolvers, both for police work and the general public who thought a .355 bullet thrower was fine. Read many things back then when gun rags were all I had to go off about how 9mm is rather more cartridge than a .38, and of course the capacity. Someone had a term but it was along the lines of carrying 3 revolvers in your holster (multiples of 6).

It also is why the selective double action. Though opposite in actual action, that was available on most revolvers (thumb cock or pull straight through). A number of the wondernines came in DAO mode as well if you bought that and guess why? Because a lot of combat revolvers had the SA notch filed off (by design or after being placed into service by the department armories), so it was a thing for the revolver crowd.

These also often had magazine safeties, again because revolvers. Bad thinking, but the theory was: open the cylinder on a revolver, safe. Remove the magazine, also want to be safe so revolver-to-auto cops don't have to change the mindset, remember chambers.

The — very few — well informed gun writers of the time were entirely aware the wondernine thing was taking the world by storm, and very much included the P88, and the Steyr GB (friend had one: pretty nice and 18 rounds back then!), some FN HP updates, and the Star 28 as early concepts along these lines. A lot of these were submitted to the JSAAP trials in phase 2 or 3 as well, and I suspect that influenced the thinking that there was a single concept of a Modern Fighting Handgun to replace the venerable .45.

I never heard of things like the Glock, P7, VP70 et al referred to as wondernines at the time, though much of the googling now indicates they were. Selective DA hammers (not DAO, not strikers, etc) was the definition. In retrospect, I guess Glock et al sorta killed the term as a result.

You are ignoring a major part of the Wonder Nine period. In 1985 the US military dropped the Colt 1911 45ACP and replaced it with the Beretta 9mm. That is what really kicked off the switch to 9mm. Once the US military "endorsed" the 9mm that made police departments confident to switch from revolvers to pistols. Even today a large segment of gun enthusiasts are still butthurt about the military replacing the 45ACP with the 9mm.

shoobe01 said:

First, NO it was not all a competition between 9mm and .45. The revolver was king, and the market in the US for the wondernine was to replace revolvers, both for police work and the general public who thought a .355 bullet thrower was fine. Read many things back then when gun rags were all I had to go off about how 9mm is rather more cartridge than a .38, and of course the capacity. Someone had a term but it was along the lines of carrying 3 revolvers in your holster (multiples of 6).

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Nope, I didn't forget and said "JSAAP," which is how we (eventually) got to the M9.

By then, a lot of these guns existed as they were submitted to the competition.

My point was that we've forgotten how absolutely ubiquitous the revolver was at the time, AND that that a good way to make money is government sales. One decision only decided on the US service pistol, but there are thousands of LE agencies, needing to replace their (mostly old by then) revolvers. So, that was the market for many of the designs, and many were modifed (lightly) from military submissions for the US or elsewhere, for domestic LE needs.