Chieftain said:
Well if just 5% of the combat deaths that Germany inflicted on the Russians in WWII (twenty million), was inflicted by the 9mm, by primarily submachine guns, and pistols, that would amount to 1,000,000 deaths.
That's an interesting take, but it's one I certainly don't agree with.
For starters, even the Soviets claim that only 6.3 million soldiers died in WW2. Western historians, especially Richard Overby, think that figure is wildly inflated and believe the total of Soviet military dead to be around 3 million.
Even so, to extrapolate that the mighty Nazi 9mm pistol killed 300,000 (or 600,000, if you're Russian) is a wild guess, at best, and even if we agree on that total, it only proves that the Germans had pistols and that the Germans killed people.
The other side of that conflict (i.e., the Soviets) didn't use the 9mm in any shape or form. And, guess what, even despite this obvious shortcoming, they beat the Germans. Furthermore, the USSR abandoned the submachine gun in the mid-1950s, and issued their pistol-packing clerks 9x18mm Makarovs, which putt along at about the same velocity as a non-P+ .38 special. Take from that what you will, but I don't think the Soviets, who are alone among European nations in actually winning a war since 1918, would agree with your beliefs about the 9mm, or that it's use in pistols by non-combatant European troops suffices as an endorsement of it's awesome killing power.
Chieftain said:
In the retreat, the Germans inflicted 15 to 1 casualties on American troops after D day. We could go on.
Let's do. We won't talk about, say, the defensive advantage of the Germans, or landmines, or the Siegfried Line, or 88s, or Stuka dive bombers...The same argument you make can be turned around to show that the Nazis were totally destroyed on the Eastern Front solely because of Sgt. Ivan and his 7.62mm Tokarev pistol. There you go; if the Nazis had just kept chambering the Luger in that original bottle-necked cartridge, they'd be speaking German in St. Petersburg.
Chieftain said:
Then try to say their weapons were of insufficient caliber? (yes I understand that tactics are prime, but insufficient weapon calibers would have been a problem, and shown it's self on one of the fronts. It didn't)
The whole point of this thread, if I understand it correctly, is that the European experience with 9mm Parabellum proves that the cartridge is a real man-stopper, and so far, I haven't seen anything to prove this assertion.
Yes, it's issued, and there ample reasons why Europe is wise to choose the 9mm. I would argue that inertia is uppermost, followed by well-deserved contempt for the effectiveness for pistols of any caliber, not to mention that the cartridge is already in use in submachine guns. Why would they waste time and money looking for alternative pistol chamberings when it works "okay," i.e., recruits can hit the paper target in boot camp? None of these reasons are good enough for our military. They don't sway me, nor should they convince anyone else.
And finally, remember that we're talking about Europe. No offense to the mother continent, but the nations of post-war Europa have had very limited experience in warfighting, compared to our troops. 9mm FMJ ball 115-grain NATO ammunition works great for them because they never fire shots in anger.
Chieftain said:
The reason another caliber wasn't looked for, was the 9mm did everything it needed to do. Just as it has for our troops.
I'd like to hear that from some of our troops, actually.
Maybe we could start with the
U.S. Marine Force Recon. They can explain why they pack .45s rather than Berettas.
And here's a rant from the Late Col. David Hackworth regarding the issue.
UESDAY JULY 9 2002
An Open Letter to Members of Congress
© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
Dear Honorable Congresspersons:
One of your vital tasks is to ensure that our warriors who hang it all out on the killing field are equipped with the right stuff.
I don't see that happening anytime soon unless you get enough straight skinny to counteract lobbyist propaganda and other military-industrial-congressional-complex spin. So to help provide more fair and balanced input, I plan to occasionally pass along some of the most commonly recurring bitches that come my way weekly in e-mails, letters, phone calls, etc., from our warriors.
Let's begin with the M-9, the 9 mm Beretta pistol – which our combat troops say is the first item that should be tossed into the junk pile!
"They're constantly breaking," reports a warrior from Afghanistan. "To make matters worse, the 9 mm round is like firing paint balls. I had to pump four rounds into an al-Qaida who was coming at me before he dropped. We're dealing with fanatical crazies out here who won't quit until they die for Allah."
The Beretta can only be used bone-dry. Even then, it jams repeatedly if sand or grit gets into moving parts. Its ball round has proven to be worse than the .38 Colt pistol slug used by the U.S. Army in the Philippines until it was retired almost a century ago in favor of the .45 ACP M-1911 pistol – fielded to stop the Moros, who ironically were also Islamic fanatics.
Now Special Forces and Light Infantry soldiers in Afghanistan want to bring back the century-old .45, and some elite Marine units already have. A Special Forces sergeant says, "The large-caliber, slow-moving .45 bullet puts the bad guys on the ground. Lighter stuff like the Beretta's 9 mm will, too – eventually – but on the battlefield you almost always have to double tap, and in close combat a gunfighter hasn't the time or the ammo to lose firing two rounds."
Rangers, Marines and most Special Ops troops are some of the other elite warriors in the U.S. military who carry personal firearms in combat while the brass look the other way. Quite a few choose to pack two purchased handguns. But the only Rangers who use the Beretta – even as backup – are those who can't afford to buy their own firearms, and they and the rest of these elite fighters unanimously agree that they "can't trust this fragile, unreliable sidearm."
Almost all the Rangers engaged in hand-to-hand combat during Op Anaconda packed their own personal sidearms. "When I ran out of ammo with my rifle, I pulled my pistol," a Ranger sergeant says. "It saved my life. I hit a number of enemy 30-40 yards away who went down immediately from my .45 rounds. With a Beretta, I wouldn't have made it because of the far-too-light 9 mm bullet, play in the action and its limited range."
In another fight, a Ranger fired several torso shots with a .45 pistol before his foe fell. "When we looked at the corpses, we found their mouths full of khat," he says. "It was like these guys were pumped up on PCP. With the Beretta, I'd have had to fire all 15 rounds and then thrown the pistol at this wild-eyed dude."
"We're frustrated here that no one in Washington seems to have the slightest concern for our survival," writes a sergeant from Afghanistan. "It's a damn good thing that we have air superiority and so far haven't had many heavy fights."
Perhaps you congressional folks can figure out how to recycle some of the bucks we'll save from the Pentagon-zapped Crusader and get our combat troops a decent sidearm. This would surely relieve some of that frustration and, just by the way, keep our warriors alive.
