9mm +P+ Ammo

Recently on YouTube, this video on Underwood 9mm +P+ ammo has been getting quite a bit of attention:

I don’t want my comments in this post to be seen as denigrating the author of the video, he seems like a nice guy. However, with all this “You need to be very careful about this ammo, oh it’s so dangerous, you need a really strong gun, increased wear and tear, increased recoil, blah, blah, blah” stuff, he comes across like someone who possesses just a bit of gun knowledge – and that’s it.

In fact there is nothing innately dangerous about 9mm +P+ ammo – granted a reasonably decent gun. It does not take a very strong gun, as the video commentator suggests, to stand up to it. The Sporting Arms & Ammunition Manufacturing Institute (SAAMI) has set a maximum chamber pressure of 35,000 pounds per square inch (psi) for a 9mm Parabellum load to be considered “standard pressure”; 38,500 psi to be considered +P; anything over 38,500 psi counts as +P+ with no upper limit specified. Though for all practical purposes we can look at 42,000 psi as being the upper limit of what we’re likely to see in pressures from anything loaded into a 9mm Para casing.

While ammunition pressure standards are set in the U.S. by SAAMI, in Europe they are set by the Commission Internationale Permanente pour l’Epreuve des Armes à Feu Portatives (for obvious reasons almost invariably abbreviated CIP). Without boring you with details – which honestly I only understand in the most general sense, myself, I’m not a ballistician, therefore I must rely on input from people who actually are ballisticians – let’s just say that SAAMI and CIP use different testing equipment, and different testing methods, and pressures test higher using SAAMI methodology than CIP.

It’s important to realize that U.S. standards for what is “standard pressure” 9mm Para are extremely anemic by the standards of the cartridge as originally loaded when it was introduced in Germany in 1902, and as it has always been loaded in Europe, even today. How this sad situation came about, according to those with whom I’ve discussed the matter at ammo companies who seem to know, is that, early on in the 9mm’s introduction into the U.S., there were also quite a few examples in-country of an extremely weak 9mm autopistol called the Glisenti, generally brought back from Europe by G.I.s as war trophies. When Glisentis blew up with European spec 9mm, U.S. ammo manufacturers, in order to protect people from themselves, decided to drop pressures in domestically produced 9mm Para down to levels even the shoddiest handguns could survive. And here we are, decades later, long after the Glisenti has become a dim memory, a minor piece of firearms history, when most people have never even heard of a Glisenti, much less seen one, much less fired one, and we’re still stuck with the vast majority of 9mm ammo available to shooters in the U.S. being, essentially, “minus-P”.

Here are some specs for Underwood ammo, from the Underwood website:

9mm 115 grain @ 1400 FPS
9mm 124 grain @ 1225 FPS
9mm 147 grain @ 1175 FPS

By contrast, here ‘s some info from my own personal chronograph sessions, with the Winchester 127-gr. SXT +P+:

4 December 2004 (Chrono: My CED Millennium, 40 degrees Fahrenheit, 273 fasl)
Glock 34, 9mm Parabellum
Winchester 127-gr. SXT +P+ (20 rds)
AV: 1306 HI: 1323 LO: 1278 ES: 45 SD: 10 PF: 165.8

26 Apr 2009 (Chrono: My CED Millennium, 55 degrees Fahrenheit, 273 fasl)
Wilson ESP Classic, 9mm Parabellum
Winchester 127-gr. SXT +P+ (20 rds)
AV: 1311 HI: 1328 LO: 1280 ES: 48 SD: 13 PF: 166.5

Yes, this load, in both guns, makes USPSA Major, albeit barely. (USPSA Major power factor is 165, out of my Glock 34 it goes 165.8, from the Wilson ESP Classic it’s 166.5.) So, by the standards of the Winchester SXT +P+ load which drives a 127-gr. bullet into the low 1,300 fps range, the Underwood 124-gr. JHP in the mid-1,200s is not only not exactly pushing the borderline, it’s actually fairly sedate.

Some folks are impressed by the claim of 1,400 fps for the Underwood 115-gr. 9mm. Well, let me put it to you this way: years ago Remington used to offer a load where they took their 88-gr. JHP .380 bullet and stuck it into a 9mm casing. That sucker would crack 1,500 fps out of a Beretta 92D – and I say that as someone who chronoed that load out of that gun. And it wasn’t even a +P load, let alone +P+. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Underwood can drive a bullet 27 grains heavier but 100 fps slower and still be well within the standards of +P+.

The 9mm Parabellum has an ungodly strong casing, with an extremely thick web. It was originally designed to be fired in both handguns and submachine guns. Not going to say it’s impossible to load a 9mm round so hot (aka double charge it) to the point it’ll blow up, and Underwood 9mm – or any other 9mm +P+ load for that matter – is not what I’d choose to fire in a Lorcin. But for any decent handgun, it’s simply a non-issue.

Here are a few more facts from my shooting logs:

My Gen-3 Glock 34 currently has 41,903 rounds through it. Of those, 175 have been +P or +P+. Here are the amounts and types of “hot” ammo I have through this gun:

Black Hills 115-gr. Tac-XP +P (Red Box): 5 rounds
Federal 124-gr. Hydra Shok JHP +P+: 29 rounds
Remington 115-gr. JHP +P+: 29 rounds
Winchester 124-gr. SXT +P: 46 rounds
Winchester 127-gr. SXT +P+: 66 rounds

My Gen-3 Glock 17 currently has 23,616 rounds through it. Of those, 346 has been +P or +P+:

Black Hills 115-gr. JHP +P (Red Box): 31 rounds
Black Hills 115-gr. Tac-XP +P (Red Box): 17 rounds
Federal 115-gr. JHP +P+ (9BPLE): 30 rounds
Remington 115-gr. JHP +P: 27 rounds
Winchester 127-gr. SXT +P+: 241 rounds

Admittedly, this would all be more impressive if my +P/+P+ ammo expenditure with both guns could be measured in the thousands of rounds instead of the hundreds, still you can see I don’t exactly live in terror of putting such ammo through my guns. In fact, my current carry load is the Winchester 127-gr. SXT +P+. And with well over 500 rounds of so-called “hot” 9mm in total, I have never had a single broken part through either gun. (Well, except one broken trigger spring and one broken firing pin, but (a) neither of those had anything to do with pressure or recoil, (b) this is a topic for another blog post.)

In the linked video we are warned about increased gun wear with hot 9mm. This brings me to a phenomenon I have noticed many times over the years, but have never really been able to explain: the people who never shoot enough to even begin to wear out their guns tend to be the ones most worried about wearing out their guns. Hi-ho, as Kurt Vonnegut used to say. Here’s what I have to say: at $30-$50 a box, plus shipping, if you can afford to put enough 9mm +P+ through your gun to wear it out, you can also afford to buy another gun.

I will also have to part company with our video maven when he warns viewers about the added recoil of 9mm +P+. Honestly, compared to standard pressure 9mm, I can barely tell the difference. This is one of the very nice things about the 9mm autopistol: even the hottest ammo you can stuff into the magazine, we’re talking low-end .357 Magnum ballistics, is going to be, in the overall scheme of things, easily controllable.

“Your handgun could go boom!”

“Great danger…”

“Recoil, you’re gonna have it. It’s a stout load.”

Please.