1911 A1 9mm: once considered a sissy gun, the 1911 in 9mm is increasingly popular today

Guns Magazine, July, 2005 by Massad Ayoob

The 9mm Luger cartridge came late to the epoch of the 1911 pistol. Colt didn't really get serious about it until a few years after WWII, when the U.S. military first considered a 9mm pistol compatible with the ammunition of its European allies. Colt experimented with aluminum frames and the 19x9 cartridge in full-size and compact 1911 s, the latter becoming the famous Commander. When the Pentagon decided to stay with the all-steel .45, the company recouped its T&E costs by offering the Commander, which was initially chambered for 9mm Luger and .38 Super as well as .45 ACE Off and on during the latter half of the 20th Century, the full-size Government Model was offered in 9mm too, but it never approached the popularity of the .38 Super in that pistol, let alone the utter dominance of the .45 Automatic Colt Pistol cartridge.

That's easy to understand. I grew up in what my colleague John Taffin calls "the golden age of handgunning." During that time, if you wanted a centerfire Colt pistol, unless you had specific need of the .38 Super's ballistics, you by God wanted a .45. If you wanted a 9mm, you'd get a Browning Hi-Power, or maybe the S&W Model 39 double action. Colt's Government Model was the most powerful autoloader then available, and ordering it in 9mm Massad seemed counterproductive, sort of like asking for a Thunderbird with a four-cylinder engine.

The 9mm Government Model concept got another brief boost in the early 1980s, when the U.S. Government said "this time we mean it" about the NATO pistol compatibility thing. A small but vocal contingent felt it would be much cheaper to simply convert the nation's stocks of 1911A1 pistols to the smaller cartridge. Colt actually made a 9mm Government Model conversion unit for a while. But then the military chose the Beretta 92F to be the standard issue sidearm, newly dubbed the M9, and the 1911 9mm sank back beneath the surface.

These days, we're seeing a small renaissance of the 9mm pistol in the 1911 format. One reason is the popularity of IDPA shooting. Another is the increasing visibility of the female handgunner. A third is the aging demography of the American handgunner. In all three venues, the 9mm 1911 is drawing interest for the same reason: extremely mild recoil.

With a slide whose mass and weight was geared to the powerful .45 round, the 1911 only works with 9x19 amino with a very light recoil spring. That makes it much easier for older shooters, or those with small hands or slender wrists, to operate its slide. Being a distinctly heavier pistol than, say, a Browning Hi-Power, the 1911 transmits only a gentle bump to the shooter when it spits a 9mm Parabellum round. Describing the recoil of a centerfire pistol with the phrase "It kicks like a .22" is one of the most tired and hackneyed comments in gun-writing, but in this case, it comes awfully close to the sensation of firing a 1911 with a standard pressure 9mm load.

IDPA, the International Defensive Pistol Association, has four gun categories. Stock Service Revolver (SSR) for sixguns, Stock Service Pistol (SSP) for double action semiautomatics and Glocks and Custom Defense Pistol (CDP), which is dominated by the 1911 in its usual chambering--.45 ACP--though 10mm and .400 Cor-Bon are allowed if seldom seen. Enhanced Service Pistol (ESP) is for the easiest guns to shoot--single-action autos at the mild 9mm power level.

If you seek one of the specialty awards (high female, senior, law enforcement, etc.) you're competing against shooters in all four of the gun categories. ESP is by far the most shooter-friendly. This fact is recognized in IDPA's own standards for shooter classification. On their demanding 90-shot Classifier course, an SSR shooter can make Master if his revolver score breaks 100 seconds. It's tighter, about 98 seconds, to do the same with a police-type service auto in SSR With a powerful cocked and locked single action, the CDP master cut is at around 91 seconds. With an easy-kicking single action 9mm, however, the pistol is considered so much easier to shoot that the Master time is in the 89-second range.

While the downloaded .38 Super (often in pistols that are de-commissioned IPSC match guns) is commonly seen in ESP class, the 9mm 1911 becomes more popular every year in that environment. I can attest that it works. The pistol I used to make Master in IDPA ESP was a Colt 1991A1 9mm tuned by Al Greco. Multiple time IDPA ESP champion Scott Warren was using a customized Springfield Armory 1911A1 9mm when last I saw him in competition, and he kicks butt with it.

Gila Hayes, one of the nation's best-known female firearms instructors and a shooting champion in her own right, has been shooting the Springfield 9mm a lot lately. A full-size 5" 1911A1 Springfield Armory is her teaching and match gun, while for concealed carry she packs its baby sister, the lightweight compact Ultra Carry in the same caliber. Another top instructor, Frank Cornwall, keeps a pair of Springfield Ultra Carry 9mms on hand for his female students. He tells me their performances almost invariably improve when he issues them one of these easy-shooting loaners.