Be careful I had an ammo mix up!

[Dr. Tad Hussein Winslow]

Hmmm, I didn't know a .38 special would feed & chamber in a 1911. What was your 1911 chambered in, stillaftermath? .45 acp or .38 super or what?

 

[Chester32141]

Does anybody have any experience w/ firing a 9x18 Makarov in a gun chambered for 9mm ? Shell is a little shorter but other than that is should fit pretty good ... mat not have the power to work the action but I wonder if it would be dangerous ...

Chester

 

[Deltaboy1984]

Mak rounds go in Mak guns only the bullet is bigger around than the 380 or 9mm Luger.

 

[ny32182]

I wouldn't think firing a 9mm in a .40 could cause a catastrophic failure. Actually I'd be surprised if there was enough pressure generated to get the velocity necessary to cycle the action... You'd be headspacing with the extractor tension I guess.

I've wondered what happens if I load up a 9x18 case and put it into a 9x19 gun. I find 9x18 in my range brass sometimes, and wonder what would happen if one slipped through. It would be headspaced with the extractor as well. My biggest worry would be that the bullet would be loaded, the cartridge would be the same OAL, and that would lead to less neck tension and therefore excessive setback/set forward, etc.

 

[Dr. Tad Hussein Winslow]

I fired some .32 auto through a .380 auto a few years back. Took me 15 or 20 rounds to figure it out. Poor accuracy.

 

[hardluk1]

I gave a older ruger 45 pistol i had to my son=in-law. At the range the first time after the gun was his he loaded the clip and fire it and it fired and jamded up on the brass. It had never in 11 years i had it falled to fire correctly so i said pull back clear the jamb and hold the gun tight ,another jamb. Went to his lane and checked the gun.... He had MY 40cal S&W 180 grain in his 45. Two blowed out and split cases and has been through about 600 more rounds of the right stuff after that screw up. Guess ruger make tough pistol.

 

[SMMAssociates]

Many single-stack 1911-style in .40 and .45 caliber can accept each other's magazines, and ammunition. I never found the .45 mags reliable when using .40 ammunition, and expect that the opposite is true, too, but while you can't get .45's to chamber in a .40 firearm, the .40's WILL chamber in a .45.... Could get interesting....

And, for something completely different, some revolvers made for the 8mm French Lebel (which is a blackpowder round) can accept the .32 S&W (& S&W Long). Really a bad idea.... (The .32 ball is smaller by just enough to keep the pressures down, and the guns are very large, but....)

You can also raise a burr on a 9mm rim and shoot 'em in a .38 revolver. I would recommend at least a K-frame.... I'm told this was done in the Far East during WWII when 9mm ammunition was a lot more available than .38's in places like Australia.

And, let's not forget the .455 Webley. I'm not sure what the heck it'll do, but it's the British version of the .45 - can't recall if there was a different revolver round than the one's made for a 1911 chambered in that caliber, but something to watch out for if you're into "surplus store" stuff.

Regards,

 

[stillaftermath]

Hmmm, I didn't know a .38 special would feed & chamber in a 1911. What was your 1911 chambered in, stillaftermath? .45 acp or .38 super or what?

You know, I'm actually not too sure. Read it again and you'll see I was about 6 at the time, so that was 23 years ago. My dad had some kind of conversion kit that would allow him to swap back and forth between .45 ACP and .38 Special wadcutters. I'd never really thought to look, but looking around now, it seems like this kind of thing is out there, but uncommon enough I can't find any specific kits. I can find reference to Colt offering their Gold Cup Target 1911's with interchangeable parts for .45 ACP, .38 Super, and .38 Special wadcutter, and there are the rare and expensive Jim Clark dedicated platforms, but I'm really not sure at all what specifically I was shooting that day.

I'll shoot an e-mail off to my dad and ask him if he remembers the frame and kit he was using.


EDIT: OK, got a reply from my dad. Sent it in PM to help keep the thread OT, but thought others might be interested to, so I'll stick it into this post.

Colt made kits that was a slide and barrel, the barrel was a re-chambered .38 Super cal. Not sure if they just made them for the military or if it was a general item of trade. The load was a full wadcutter loaded with 5 grains of Unique, a standard .38 Spl load but not for a wadcutter gun! Standard Gold Cup .38 Spl magazines worked, I just recently sold one of the magazines for $100 ! Still have one I think. I also have a S&W M 52 that is a .38 wadcutter gun. It is great fun to shoot.. but I don't ever load wadcutter ammo with full powder charges!

EDIT 2: Er... and a follow up with more info he just sent.

Here is some more info, the army marksmanship unit had Colt make a special run of .38 WC guns, chanbered for a .38 SPL cartridge that was rimmless. The case head was cery much like a .38 Super. The cartridge was headstamped .38 AMU for Advanced Marksmanship Unit. The pistol team was using those when I was on the 5th Army rifle team. I used to have a box of brass but I think it is now gone.

 

[junior geezer]

i have direct knowledge of a .380acp fired in a 9mm TT33 tokarev. commercial reloaded 9x19, one round of .380 in box of fifty. the round stripped from the mag and fired. the result: a broken firing pin. apparently, the firing pin first drove the cartridge forward to headspace; then the extended firing pin took up the recoil while serving for the breech. i figured out what had happened the moment i found the one .380 empty in the ammo tray.

 

[msiley]

This has happened to me, shooting .40 in a 9mm.
I was in a training class and your partner was supposed to be reloading your mags
while you were on the course. He didn't look to see what ammo my pistol took
and assumed it was 9mm (we had the same brand handgun). Nothing bad happened but
the class had to stop momentarily because I couldn't easily unjam it (case expanded).
Pretty embarrassing.

 

[The Annoyed Man]

I almost messed up big time. I had been to the range shooting 9x18mm and 40 cal. Some how I got a 40 cal S&W clip loaded with 9X18 mm!!!!!:banghead:

I did exactly the same thing a couple of days ago. I was intending to load up a Glock magazine with 9mm, and instead accidentally picked up my USP Compact .40 cal magazine and stuffed it with 9mm ammo. Both pistols were sitting next to one another on the same table. Then, I picked up the USPc and the magazine, walked to the firing line, and inserted the magazine. I didn't notice that I wasn't holding a Glock until I went to drop the slide release and charge the gun. OOOPSIE!!! Fortunately, I never actually released the slide into battery. So, I ejected the magazine and walked back to the table behind me, looking sheepish, while my son rolled his eyes at me.

I can only plead that it was 104º with about 90% humidity, and my brain was apparently no longer firing on all cylinders. Thank God that I discovered the problem before actually pulling the trigger. We called it a day shortly after that.

About 18 months ago, shooting with my wife, she loaded up my Kimber UCII magazine with .40 cal. ammo. I discovered her error when she she released the slide into battery and the first round was a misfeed - which she handed to me to fix.

And a couple of years ago, I was in the local Bass Pro shop waiting to use the range, and a guy was sitting there on a chair with a bemused look on his face. It turned out that he had just purchased a 9mm Glock and a box of 9mm ammo so he could go straight to the range and try out his new toy. Unfortunately, the guy behind the gun counter, while charging him for a 9mm gun, had actually handed over to him a .40 cal gun. The error wasn't discovered until after the customer had capped off a half dozen rounds, and all the spent cases were - of course - badly deformed. At first, the gun counter guy didn't want to take back the "used" .40 cal. gun, even though the purchase was for a 9mm gun, and he was at least partly, if not fully, at fault for the error. However, the word "lawyer" came up, and Bass Pro got busy making it right.

 

[WinchesterAA]

I've had some ammo mistakes, but from what I've seen it had no obvious drawbacks, and didn't seem to be all that dangerous of a situation...

I've shot -

A 20 gauge round out of a 12 gauge (Ammo mixup. My ammo bag used to be public access, and I also shoot at night. Effects - "Whiff" sound instead of dedicated "BANG!", no recoil, shell would not extract.

A .40 cal out of .45. Effects were a minor crack, slide did not cycle, case fell out of the barrel afterward. I bought a box of .45ACP that was filled with .40S&W, and was "in a hurry (<Read- being foolish)". Academy clerks can't be trusted to know the difference between .45ACP and .40S&W, mostly due to the inability to sort, and keep organized boxes of ammo, since they all can look very similar to the untrained eye, people rely on box headers such as ".45ACP" and various brands therein, but occasionally you'll get the box of .40S&W and not realize it until your gun malfunctions. Don't be in a hurry.. ever.

 

[Jim K]

The condition I mentioned was not just firing the wrong ammo but having the wrong ammo in the barrel when the right ammo is fired. The "20 in a 12" is a good case. Firing a 20 gauge shell in a 12 gauge gun as Winchester AA describes, is fairly harmless. But drop a 20 gauge in a shotgun and its rim stops in the forcing cone. More than one shooter has done so, looked at the "empty" chamber and loaded a 12 gauge behind the 20. The error becomes apparent a few milliseconds after pulling the trigger.

Jim

 

[hardluk1]

After my num-nut son in law did the 40 in a 45 thing i to could not believe the 40's even stayed in the mags . After try'n it myself ,yes it was practical to screw up, they stayed in pretty well. I have a 40 witness and 9mm converstion for it so i desided to try the 9mm in 40 mags . No deal ,waon't stay in,thats good i then took all my 9mm mags as i have 4 and with a gray marker wrote 40call and 9mm in large letters on all sides ,Just in case ,dum a** jumps out at me. Try to keep stuff in different area's but you never know.