45 CALIBER/AUTOMATIC CENTERFIRE PISTOL

Before I go into loading data...let me absolutely state, this is for 45 autos in excellent shape AND with a very heavy springs and guide rod assemblies, that includes a heavy firing pin spring. And as reloaders you have control over your reloading not me, so start below my figures and work up.

One of the very fine loads for the 40 S&W is the 135 grain hollow point rated at 1250 plus fps from a four to five inch barrel. Cor-Bon’s 165 grain 45 ACP load from my Daly 1911 five inch barrel gives just under 1300 fps. Cor-Bon advertises it’s ammo as full loads and only for guns in good shape mechanically.

And that's as it should be, because most 1911a1..45s are in good shape. Certainly the S&W autos chambered for the round are so new on the market they are strong enough...and the Colt clones also relatively new are in that category also. But I repeat, you don't want to batter a good gun to death...so a heavy recoil spring is very necessary. My spring is so strong that it takes a good effort to chamber a round by hand.

There is nothing wrong with approx 230 grains of blunt bullet, at near a half inch in girth, moving at 800 fps, which is the standard 45 loading...this load has been proven for over 88 years in military combat and special forces missions. Even today with the military going with the nine mms...most special forces units are armed with 45s. It is a popular police caliber also...and as I have heard dozens of times...the 40 S&W and the 45 acp are truly ballistic twins. Street statistics of shootings are now beginning to prove that statement is more than mere opinion. Personally I think the 45 can shade the 40 S&W.

The original specs put out by the military for a new handgun and load was...to be an autoloader, a 200 to 230 grain bullet (ball) at 800 fps...to be loaded in the brass provided by the military testing board. Brass was easy, they cut the rear end off of 30-06 cartridges to test the theory, it worked so they used those specs with slight changes in the extractor groove.

We will be touching on the interesting parts of the 45 acp history later on..but suffice to say the original 200 grain ball at 800 or so fps and then followed by the heavier 230 grain at the same velocity, has been a winner for decades under the harshest of conditions. Many have selected the Colt 45 acp as the handgun of the century and I certainly agree with that. It is the autoloader that brought auto loaders into the main stream of American use.

My first experience firing the 1911 was when I was in my single years. A skinny kid, with ears that stuck out...and already a budding love for anything that would go bang. A loving Grandfather let me shoot his 45 ACP. The story inside the family is the Old Man took the gun home with him from his service in the U.S. Cavalry, in the early part of this century. He officially "lost" it, and paid the price the Army charged him for his so called neglect...some $20 plus dollars. Which is about what a Sargent in the Army made in those days in a whole month!

After having me go thru the motions of loading and dry firing a number of times, he let me fire live rounds. The only thing the Old Man failed to tell his young grandson was that the gun would recoil in frail hands and arms. The first round brought the gun back and smacked me in the face. Which got my grandfather laughing..and made me very hot under the proverbial neck band. We were standing in a horse field and there was a large half wooden barrel that was used to water the stock. I was so angry that I emptied the rest of the clip into the barrel's sides.....and the 45 acp has been one of my very best favorites since, over fifty years.

Over those years, I have never been far from a 45 ACP in the 1911 format of some make or model. I probably killed the largest animal ever killed with a 45 and military ball ammo. In Africa in the late 1950s, I was training the military small arms professionals that would train the military forces of the nations that received our small arms. While out in the field in East Africa, we ran into a village that had no males in it. Just women, and they were either very young or old...no in between. They were starving, so my driver and I ran an Eland. I placed two rounds from my 45 into it's right side, thru the lungs. I figure it was somewhere between 1500 to 2000 pounds on the hoof...and those ladies sure knew what to do with it, when we dragged it with the jeep back into their village. We notified the authorities of the situation. They figured it was slavers that hit the village took all the men and boys.

In southeast Asia I once shot a water buffalo with a military 45 and ammo. The buff was doing mayhem to it's wagon driver. And I got in trouble with the village for that. Seems the animal was more valuable then the driver. Killed that one with one shot to the neck/head area...again 45 ball ammo military issue. It had to be way over 1000 lbs.

I have always had a 45 Colt or clone in law enforcement. My career spanned almost thirty four years. The 45 auto never let me down. One of the things I noticed with the big auto was the reaction of those that were being arrested...where a revolver pointed at a professional criminal, could be ignored somewhat by him...the 45 always got their attention.

I also found that the side of the slide had a number of uses. It made an excellent argument stopper when slapped up alongside someone’s head. Also the big hole in the muzzle had it’s effect, I remember one day in a raid, asking one miscreaton if he could see the bullet in the chamber of my 45...since I had it up against his eyeball. He said no he couldn't but he sure could remember where the heroin was hidden. Of course in today’s police world I would go to jail for that, the defendant would go free, and the drugs would hit the street! Have we lost something in the last 8 years of the Clinton administration? Is America a safer place to live, are criminals put in jail, why are so many of our children criminals???

We read a lot about one shot stops today in the gun press. And the 45 is with ball ammo in the high 70%. Or so they tell us. Well what I would like to know is, where were those other 30% shot? In the arms and legs? I know people hit with 45 ball ammo wearing Kevlar, and it still put them out of action for awhile. But and it is a big but...one shot stops with any caliber handgun are highly over rated.

If a small soft creature like a deer can run for 100 plus yards after having it's heart and lungs shredded with a 45-70-405 round...no handgun round in a handgun of a size that a person can carry for enforcement or personal protection, is going to give instant incapacitation on every one shot.

But with the new high tech ammo and the ability of the reloader to brew up his own...the old warhorse is ready for the new century. The light weight bullets for the 45 are in the 150 to the 170gr. class. They can easily be pushed 1200 to 1300 fps from five inch barrels.

I found three powders that were outstanding with hyper loads for the 45 ACP. Not that there are no others, just that these three stood out well for me. If I had to pick one powder for all weight bullets in the 45 it would be Accur#7. Blue Dot would be next and the old standby Unique third. Several runners up, but the best of those is Accur#9 with heavy cast bullets.

I have mentioned before that at one point I had a commercial reloader load the Keith 260 grain semi-wadcutter to just over 950 fps and 500 ft lbs plus of energy. We had the reloader do it, because the enforcement agency I was with at the time had a restriction on reloads. Because of questions readers asked about the load data used, when I mentioned it in a previous article for SIXGUNNER.COM. I asked the the gentleman who owned the company, if he could look it up in his old records (he's retired now).

He states he used brand new brass...if memory serves it was WW...with commercially produced Keith cast bullets, and met our standards for accuracy and velocity. The powder he used was Blue Dot...he thinks the load was around 9.5 to 10 grains...which puts the pressure around 26,000 psi. High but our guns took it without a burp.

I don't recommend that load for sustained use...but for carry and protection the 260 Keith loaded to what ever your gun can take without straining it, is a good way to go. That big bullet punches it's target like a large ball-peen hammer. I had my enforcement agents qualifying not only with their carry guns on standard qualifying runs, but also at fifty yards, 70 yards and 100 yards...and they qualified quarterly. And they became good with handguns. I also had each agent qualify with all kinds of guns that we confiscated, to get used to all kinds of makes and actions. You never know what kind of situations you can get into...and what gun you may pick up, when the dance turns hot.

Today's ammo in the high tech arena can certainly duplicate the power of that load. This latest generation of jacketed hollow points are formidable to say the least. The Federal Lawman series is excellent. That 200 grain bullet is affectionately called the flying ash tray. In soaked phone books it will go 10 to 12 inches and open to 70 caliber easy. Cor-Bon’s 165 grain or 185 grain loads are in that league. I don't think a human would survive a chest shot with one of these, unless he got to a hospital within minutes of being hit. Would it be instant incapacitation? For some yes, but the determined man could stand and fight till he was dead on his feet....be it 5 seconds or 5 minutes.

Without a brain or spine hit, a human can go a long way and create a lot of damage in just a minute or more. Remember the Miami disaster, one of the two criminals was shot at point blank range in the chest with a WW Silvertip 9mm....and still went on to kill and maim a number of agents. I don't think a 45 in the same place would have stopped that individual any sooner...he was out to die and take as many police officers with him that he could. The only weapon in that kind of shoot out I recommend is a 12 gage, loaded with heavy BBs or buckshot.

14.5 grains of Accur #7 will push a 160/165 grain bullet close to 1300 fps from a five inch barrel at around 24,000 psi, 9 grains of Unique will go to 1230 plus at the same pressure. 14 grains of Accur #7 under a 185 grain hollow point will go well over 1200 fps...while 8.5grains of Unique, will certainly brake 1150 fps. With the great 200 grain Speer over 12 gr Blue Dot I get near 1100 fps...it penetrates 10 to 12 inches in soaked phone books and gives a three inch plus cavity for six of those inches, then tapers down to an inch and half.

I have used Gold Dot/Speer, Hornady, and XTP 45 acp bullets...they are all excellent and they all perform. Gold Dot 230 grain hollow point is a good example of the new order of heavy weights. 12 grains of Accur #7 will kick it to 1000 fps, it will out penetrate the 200 grainer, expand to 70 plus caliber..and is just deadly. The heavy weight is the 260 grain jacketed Speer hollow point. That can be pushed well past the original ballistics of the old 230 gr. ball ammo. 11.2 grains of Accur #9 will push it to 950 fps and well over 500 ft. lbs. of muzzle energy. And the same load under the big Keith cast bullet will go a few feet per second higher. All of these loads generate close to 500 ft.lbs. of muzzle energy or more.

The first Browning designed 45 ACP put on the civilian market was the model 1905, shown in the photos from Edward Ezell’s book HANDGUNS OF THE WORLD...certainly one of the great epic handgun books. Encounters that went badly for our Army with the Philippine Moro tribesmen brought a cry from the field about the anemic Colt 38 revolver at the turn of the century. That brought the old Colt 45 Single Actions out of storage and back into service. The smokeless powder load for those was the 255 grain bullet over 6.4 grains of Bullseye for approximately 720 fps. Also the military purchased Colt’s double action 1878 model scaled up to the 45 Colt ammo, in the thousands for the Philippines.

The first 45 ACP Colt/Browning was brought about on the part of Colt engineers upgrading the Browning designed 1902/38 ACP to 45 caliber in 1905. This gun and load...200 grain bullet at 800 fps was offered to the public for a short time, but it was a different cartridge then the one the final autoloader used.

In January of 1906 Brigadier General William Crozier sent out letters to inventors and manufactures for revolvers and autoloading pistols of 45 caliber for tests for a new handgun for the military.

The U.S. Ordnance Department supplied the ammo. They cut the 30-06 cartridge base off and opened the extractor groove, and the 45 acp case was born. Rimmed cartridges were offered for revolver entries. In late 1906 the first trials were held. Colt, Savage and Luger were the three finalists...out of 19 offerings. All the finalists were autoloaders...which tells us what the military was really looking at. Even though the Army and the Marines had thousands of Colt double action revolvers chambered for a rimmed 45 in the Philippines as well as the single action Colts, it was always thought that this was interim measure till the auto came into existence.

In the later selection process it was obvious even thou a better pistol, that the cost of the Savage pistol at $65 was very high compared to the $18.50 for the Colt autoloader. Also Savage couldn’t produce their pistol fast enough...the company just didn’t have the resources. The Colt upgrade of the model 1905 to the 1906 had a number of problems that Colt worked on and produced the Model 1907.

The first delivery of Colts to the Army was 200 pistols in 1907, known as the mod 1907. This model had a number of problems that were eliminated in the model 1909. With minor requested changes the model 1909 received acceptable reviews from the field...the model 1910 followed, it needed extraction changes...and then the model 1911 was the result. In the early 1920s minor outside changes were made creating the mod. 1911A1, and it is history from there on. The final ammo was a 230 grain ball (full jacketed) at approx 800 fps from the five inch barrel. The Philippine problems were pretty much over by the time the pistol ever made it in any number to our forces there. But that’ fine because it’s real test would come a few year’s later in Mexico and then into WW1. It has served our Nation in four large wars and countless other military actions over 88 years of service...and is still the choice of many as the premier handgun for military and civilian enforcement. And with the new high tech ammo of today it is ready for a whole new century and a whole new set of challenges as yet unknown.....