https://youtu.be/y3EIud0KKCM
Full video cut available on the History of Weapons & War app.
The Uzi was originally designed in the 1950s, and it was on the technological cutting edge at the time. The stamped receiver, telescoping bolt, and compact magazine-in-grip layout made it an inexpensive and effective weapon. Its sedate 600 round/minute rate of fire helped as well, making it easy to shoot effectively. Uziel Gal experimented with a compact version at that time, but dropped the idea when he proved unable to make a smaller version with the same low rate of fire as the standard pattern.
Fast forward to the late 1970s, and the designers at IMI revisited the idea of a compact Uzi. They were willing to accept the increased rate of fire of a shorter receiver and lighter bolt, and their first prototypes were ready in 1978. full export sales began in 1980. The gun was advertised as having a 900 rpm rate of fire, but the reality was much higher.
The final step of classic Uzi development was the Micro Uzi, introduced in 1986. This was actually developed form the semiautomatic, closed-bolt Uzi Pistol made for American commercial sales. That pistol was given a select-fire trigger group and a folding stock, and it became a micro-compact submachine gun for only the most tactical of operators. It was advertised as having a 1200 rpm rate of fire, but this was again underestimated to improve sales.
In reality, the standard Uzi does fire at about 600 rpm. The Mini (in closed-bolt form) ran at 1300+ in my testing at S&B, and the Micro was over 1400 rpm. Where the original Uzi is best kept in fully automatic mode and can easily fire single shots when desired, the Mini and Micro Uzis are definitely best suited to semiautomatic use. Firing them in fully automatic is a much more difficult proposition if one wants to maintain any level of accuracy and situational awareness.
Thanks to Sellier & Bellot for giving me access to this set of Uzis to film for you!
Rate of fire may actually be lower with that correct pressure S&B ammunition,
especially compared to the under loaded crap that was commercial united state 9mmP during the 1980s when mini and micro uzis were popular.
Lower pressure ammo giving a shorter cycle (if it would even cycle!) compared to the full pressure loads.
I distinctly remember reading American articles in the early and mid 1980s about how to prepare handholds “hot” enough to get lugers to cycle, because American factory loads I those days weren’t.
I’ve always found the whole “you need hot loads in a Luger” thing hard to understand.
The P.08 action was set for the standard German service load; an 8 gm FMJ RN at 320 m/s. (Or in English, a 124 grain at 1,050 F/S, for about 300 FPE.) Fed that bullet weight with that muzzle velocity, a P.08 functions perfectly.
Fed “hotter” (higher velocity) loads, it tends to cycle the action so fast that the bolt “runs over” the top round in the magazine and fails to chamber it. Fed lighter loads (under 1,000 F/S) it tends to smokestack.
BTW, the P.38 exhibits similar characteristics with “hot” or “cool” ammunition.
As for supposedly “hot” wartime 9 x 19mm, those were intended for use on SMGs such as the MP40 and the Beretta Mo1938, and their packaging was usually marked “Not For Pistols”. (In German or Italian, of course.)
I’ve long suspected that one of the reasons for the myth of the Sten Gun’s “unreliability” is that when it was originally developed and issued, it was regulated for Italian 9 x 19mm SMG ammunition, because that what the British Army had, having captured literally millions of rounds in North Africa.
When U.S. and Canadian-made 9 x 19mm became standard, it was of course loaded to U.S. and Canadian standards. Which were equivalent to the original German military pistol ballistics.
Naturally enough, as the North American commercial loads were designed for the only 9 x 19mm pistols likely to be around in North America in the 1930s; German P.08s and M1916 Mausers brought back as war trophies in 1918, or ones bought from Stoeger’s in New York City in the interim.
As originally designed, the 9 x 19mm was roughly equivalent to the original .38 ACP (not “Super”) automatic ammunition. Or to put it another way, it was in the power range of the Remington-UMC or Winchester-Western .38 Special “police” revolver loads. It was not a “Magnum” and was never intended to be.
Trying to “Magnumize” the 9 x 19mm is sort of like trying to put a full liter in a half-liter water bottle. Something is going to “pop” that you’d prefer did not do so.
One more reason we need a new 9mm cartridge; or else just revive one or more of the older, longer-cased ones.
clear ether
eon
What you say about the Sten and Italian 9mm ammo certainly rings true. From Eric Blair’s (AKA George Orwell) wartime diary (in the Home Guard):
“Fired the Sten gun for the first time today. No kick, no vibration, very little noise, and reasonable accuracy. Out of about 2500 rounds fired, 2 stoppages, in each case due to a dud cartridge—treatment, simply to work the bolt by hand…..Most if the ammunition for our Sten guns is Italian, or rather made in Germany for Italy. I fancy this must be the first weapon the British army has had whose bore was measured in millimetres instead of inches. They were going to make a new cheap automatic weapon, and having the vast stocks of ammunition captured in Abyssinia handy, manufactured the guns to fit the cartridges instead of the other way about.”
One does not hear reams of stories about catastrophic 9mm fails in present-day weapons. I seriously doubt a new 9mm with tweaked case and ballistics is the solution to what is not so very pressing a problem.
“(…)myth of the Sten Gun’s(…)unreliability(…)”
This might due to varying degree of working-as-intended among examples AND failing being more memorable. One example is testing of Mark II https://www.tankarchives.ca/2018/05/canadian-sten.html where one specimen worked correctly and one jamming up every time full auto is attempted.
@Eon
the point I was trying to get across
until the advent of +P loads, American commercial 9mm was drastically underloaded.
so much so, that it wouldn’t reliably cycle the pistol that the round was originally developed for.
we can debate why this may have arisen, for example perhaps fear of litigation if a geriatric glisenti put its bolt into the firer’s eye socket…
but the underloading itself remains as a historical fact.
as a follow-up to that, it was a frequent comment in the 1980s that the correctly loaded S&B or Lapua was “hot”
not at all,
that’s what 9mmP was supposed to be.
surplus SMG loads were also available and cheap, but the results of firing those loads in pistols were not pretty.
browning hi powers appeared to withstand it (though it was probably battering them)
but I saw more than one P38 with a cracked slide, and a very expensive Finnish lahti with the bolt blown out of its rear end, and a P08 luger with a broken toggle
I suspect that there may be more to the story of that luger than just SMG loads – the story was that it fired a burst of full auto before breaking
that was about 40 years ago. I’m guessing that the people who knew the details will all be dead by now.
About the only handgun I’m certain is capable of handling the so-called “carbine load” 9mm loadings is the Glock series in 9mm.
I learned this the hard way, by discovering that that really hot and affordable unmarked 9mm from IMI was actually loaded to UZI specification. When I was informed of this fact, I’d already put about a thousand rounds through my Glock 19, and the dealer who sold me the ammo was super-apologetic. From what he related to me, he’d been misinformed as to what that ammo was by the distributor, and it had broken a bunch of other pistols when people fired it. My Glock barely noticed it…
In my experience, the Glock .40 S&W pistols were pure trouble with a lot of the heavier loads. Same with the Glock .45 Colts; the 9mm and 10mm pistols were trouble-free with regards to “hot” ammo, being massively overbuilt for those cartridges.
I still remain dubious of anything other than 9mm and 10mm in that line of handguns.
I disagree with the proposition that the 9mm Parabellum needs “more”.
Let’s face facts: They’ve tried replacing that damn cartridge how many times, so far? And, we keep right on going back to it…
The situation reminds me of the constant drumbeat you hear for people wanting “one cartridge to rule them all”, which has never quite worked out in the real world. Every time they try it, the result is inadequate for purpose at one end of the spectrum or the other… America tried it with 7.62X51 NATO, discovered that was “too much”, and wound up defaulting to a two-cartridge solution with 5.56X45. The Soviets tried it from the other end, discovered that that didn’t work, either… So, they put 7.62X54R back into the squad with the PK series.
Similarly, everyone has tried replacing the 9mm. Where did that go? Uhmm… Yeah. We’ve all wound up gravitating back towards the 9mm, because it’s in the “sweet spot” for what it needs to be.
After a bit, you have to start paying attention to the “Desire Path” methodology; even the Soviets wound up saying “Yeah, 9X18 isn’t quite enough…”
Not to mention, there’s this little issue of the “installed base” to consider. More people use 9X19 than anything else, worldwide. That, in and of itself, is a huge argument against trying to replace it.
At least, until it proves to be totally inadequate. Which I think is going to take quite awhile to actually eventuate.
I think what will do it is the increasing use of body armor in military service.
It’s not enough that a bullet “gets through the armor”. Doing that requires kinetic energy to be expended, and once it’s expended, the projectile has less to do damage with. Which is, after all, the whole point of armor to begin with.
So firing a 9 x 19mm bullet with about 350 FPE at somebody wearing some type of vest that takes 300 FPE or so to get through the layers? You end up hitting the target with about the energy of a .22 Short.
Will it hurt them? yes.
Can it kill them? Absolutely yes, if it hits something vital.
(Things like that are why, as a ballistics guy, I don’t ever want to be shot with anything.)
But if it doesn’t kill them but just causes pain? Now you have some mad, mean so-and-so running on 110-octane adrenaline who wants to do you in. Not optimal.
I think the future “floor” for pistol ammunition energy for tactical use is going to be somewhere around the energy of the 5.56 x 45mm, i.e. about 1000 FPE. Enough that it can “sacrifice” at least 30% to 40% of its available kinetic energy getting through the vest and still deliver enough to the target itself to get the job done, with or without a “Golden BB” hit.
The way to go might be the 5.7 x 28mm or 4.6 x 30mm class of weapons, provided that they can get MV up high enough to deliver 5.56mm levels of energy out of the pistol-length barrel.
So far, neither one has done it. The best you can get out of the 5.7 x 28 in a Five-Seven pistol is about .22 WMR (or to put it another way, .38 S&W 146-gr. lead) energy levels. No one has tried the 4.6 in an actual pistol AFAIK, but I wouldn’t expect any better results.
As I’ve said before, if that’s the environment we’re going to be operating in (whether due to body armor in military ops or tougher auto safety glass in police tactical situations), then service sidearm energy levels will have to increase to deal with it.
And as long as we’re using the 9 x 19mm cartridge specs with conventional propellant powders, we can’t get there from here. Not even if we accept the risk of +P or +P+ loads inducing “catastrophic self-disassembly” of the launch platform, as the old British euphemism went.
I hate to say it, but that’s what the math says. As do the results in the AARs.
cheers
eon
“(…)AARs(…)”
What is this?
Daweo, the acronym “AAR” stands for “After-Action Review” in the acronym-happy US military lexicon.
eon… I have to ask the one question nobody seems to bother with when discussing body armor: How many times do you actually encounter someone wearing that armor, out in the real world where the 9mm lurks as a defensive weapon?
I don’t think it’s anywhere near as prevalent as the fantasists insist on it, just like hardly any real-world users in Ukraine are crying out for “mo’ cahtridge”. They’re doing just fine with what they have, thankyouverymuch.
Here’s the problem with all of this: Everyone is living in their little dream worlds, wherein they pick and choose realities. To the parties behind NGSW, the major concern is body armor and range… Not “Are we using the small arms we have effectively?”
You know where I fall on that question. I’m of the same mind when it comes to 9mm in a handgun; in the vast majority of use-cases that a 9mm handgun carrier is going to actually be using that pistol cartridge, there are limited chances of them encountering effective body armor which will preclude the 9mm pistol doing its job. Even if he runs into someone wearing heavy plates, once you smack those plates with anything, they’re going to demonstrate some effect of those hits… Which will likely produce the tactical effect needed. Cop friend of mine was in full body armor with plates the day he got shot; two rounds hit the plate, one hit the edge and then broke up (into his chest cavity, BTW…) and the other two rounds went into his armpit and side past the armor. The guy shooting at him was not wearing armor, and did not survive the return fire from my friend. The fact that he was high as f*ck probably didn’t help, either…
I question the real-world necessity for all this crap; body armor is not some magical preventative, merely a measure that reduces the effect of weapons when it is fortunate to be in between the weapon and the wearer… Which ain’t always consistent.
I keep asking people: How many of those dead bodies in Ukraine do you see wearing body armor, yet who have wound up dead as doornails from normal weapons? Does that tell you anything?
I know a bunch of guys who took hits in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are only one or two that took those hits, and then continued their missions. The rest were sufficiently traumatized that they wound up on MEDEVAC choppers anyway.
BTW, one of the guys who shrugged off the hit was struck in the sternum by a 7.62X54R armor-piercing round that failed to penetrate the level III plate he was wearing because it first had to get through all the crap he was wearing on his vest and chest harness. He didn’t know what it was that hit him until one of his buddies was playing with the spent projectile and discovered that it was magnetic…
I have my doubts about the efficacy of armor. I mean, it’s a net good, but… It ain’t a magic wand of invulnerability, either.
Kirk;
I think we’re more or less on the same page here. Although most peer militaries tend to do whatever we do, and we’ve been all-in on the whole interceptor vest thing since GW 1.
From the law enforcement point of view, though, the problem is modern automobiles. Due to ever more defined safety regulations, auto safety glass now is about as tough as the cockpit windows on an airliner- which are intended to stand up to colliding with a seagull at 500 MPH.
Looking at reports and also “police pursuit” videos, I’m seeing multiple failures to penetrate auto windshields at point-blank with service pistols. A late model crossover or SUV is as good as an M706 in that respect.
So either the power level of the sidearm and ammunition goes up, or officers have to start using 5.56mm for all occasions. I’m not sure civic authorities want that to be the new normal for public relations reasons.
Something like a large-frame Glock in 9mm Win Mag or even the 10mm Mag (not 10mm Auto) might be the way to solve the problem.
Maybe.
cheers
eon
@eon,
The problem isn’t going to be solved via bigger and more powerful handguns. The FBI proved that with their disastrous attempt at adopting the 10mm back when… Most agents could not make effective use of the heavier caliber, rendering the whole effort moot.
They’re carrying 9mm these days because that’s the biggest thing they can handle in a handgun. So, the obvious solution there is to start issuing them carbines, which has always been the real path forward. You want to try stopping a car or a truck bomb? You’re insane to think that a pistol-caliber round and a handgun is going to do anything more than scratch the paint and allow your eventual pathologist to shrug his or her shoulders and say “Well… They tried…”
Frankly, the reality is that even a rifle-caliber weapon ain’t going to cut it for dealing with the coming vehicle threat. Batteries add so much weight down low that trying to stop one with even a rifle-caliber weapon is a sad joke. In my humble opinion, you’re going to see the Carl Gustav or some other sort of actual anti-vehicular weapon coming into police use.
I’m not a big fan of statist policies, but given the sort of threat we’ve seen at Mumbai or on October 7th, I fear that we’re going to have to establish an actual American equivalent to the European Gendarmerie agencies, and they’re going to have to be armed appropriately with weapons that can actually stop vehicles. And, that’s a bare minimum of something like a Carl Gustav. Anything else just won’t be up to the job, which some back-of-the-envelope calculations will tell anyone.
Not sure how they can set something like that up, within the Constitution, but there’s a clear need for it, especially given all the bad actors they’ve let in over the last few decades. We were monitoring reports of al Qaeda and other extremist materials being found all along the border region back around 2005, and I’m honestly surprised we haven’t had serious Mumbai-style attacks already. I’m morally certain the manpower is here, and the odds are that some of them are not going to get caught by counterintelligence. We need to start thinking about how these situations are going to be handled, going forward. There was a worst-case threat scenario proposed for exercise back around the time I retired that posited a medium-size Western US city being deliberately cutoff by selective road/rail destruction, disablement of airfields, and then a Mumbai-size and style of attacking force taking the area over and then doing whatever they wanted.
I’m not sure that I bought a lot of the assumptions I saw in that scenario, but I do think something like that is well within the range of the possible. And, you’re going to need to have real anti-vehicular weapons available to local security forces in order to deal with that sort of threat. Especially when you consider that the weight and lower mass figures on those damn EVs they want everyone to buy make them incredibly hard to stop with what’s out there right now.
Friend of mine was telling me that DOE security guys were looking at what those friggin’ electric trucks look like to try and stop when and if they’re used on a gate-ramming attack. .50 cal anti-material rifles didn’t cut it, apparently, and they’re trying to get actual M2HB weapons to backstop certain locations.
I really think we’re going to see the police armed about like light infantry, when this is all over.
There was also, briefly, a closed bolt full size Uzi made. Sales were limited to LE/mil since it was post ’86 but many parts eventually made it into the hands of civilian collectors.
C3junkie probably has the best writeup I’ve seen about them
https://c3junkie.com/?page_id=474
That cant be you. Theres no negativity in that comment.