9mm Para Guide - International Ammunition Association

1 Introduction to Collecting the 9mm Parabellum (Luger) CartridgeLewis the November 1958 American Rifleman, Charles Yust had a three page article on the 9mm Parabellumcartridge which illustrated 27 headstamps and listed 110 headstamp codes, many of which never appearedon a 9mm Parabellum cartridge. I was fascinated by the variety of headstamps and loads and began accu-mulating 9mm Para cartridges at the tender age of 17, and have documented over 9000 different , to my knowledge has a collection approaching 9000 9mm cartridges. A very good collection thatdoesn t include date variations would be about 1000 specimens, and a truly outstanding collection wouldnumber over 2500.

2 Note that there are over 1500 different headstamps documented. If a collection includesdates, then it could be expected to be two or three times this of the 9mm Parabellum CartridgeThe 9mm Parabellum cartridge was originally developed by George Luger, at the German company D WM (DWM). In early 1902, George Luger, through the Vickers Limited offered a 9mm version of his pistolto the Small Arms Committee. In mid-1903, three Luger prototype pistols in 9mm were delivered to the USArmy for testing at Springfield Arsenal. These are the first pistols known to be chambered for the 9mmParabellum cartridge. An additional 50 pistols in 9mm, along with 25,000 rounds of Ammunition , wereprovided the US Army for testing in April 1904.

3 The first evidence of German military interest in a 9mmversion of the Luger was in March 1904. The caliber was used extensively, initially inpistols, and then in machine pistols (submachine guns) produced by Germany in World WarI. A reduced power version of the cartridge was introduced in Italy in 1910 for the 9mmGlisenti pistol and later used in machine pistols. Figure 1 illustrates a sectioned 9mm Glisentishowing the wad on top of the powder to fill the case. During this time frame, 9mm pistolswere adopted by a number of other countries including Holland and Bulgeria. After WorldWar I, the caliber spread rapidly with the widespread development of the machine pistol,most of which were chambered for this caliber.

4 Pistols and machine pistols chambered for9mm Parabellum were also introduced in a number of countries including Belgium, Bulgeria,Czechoslovakia, Finland, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland before World War II. Today,the 9mm Parabellum cartridge has been manufactured by, or for more than 70 differentcountries, with very significant production by 27 countries. It has truly become the world s standard pistoland machine pistol cartridge. It remains the standard pistol caliber for NATO and for the military in mostother countries in the over 100 years of use, the 9mm Parabellumcartridges have been manufacturered with a wide varietyof loads.

5 The vase majority of these are full-metal jacket(FMJ) ball loads with solid bullets. In addition to thesestandard ball loads a wide variety of loads have beenproduced to include tracers, blanks,dummies and proofloads, as well as exotic loads for special police usage,duplex & triplex loads, squeeze bore loads, shot loadsand tubular bullets to list just a few. Some bullets aremarked on the base, particularly pre-WW I German bullets and some British bullets made before WW markings illustrated in Figure 2 are all German. Note that 278F is the DWM designation for thetruncated cone bullet. Below is an overview of some of the loads encountered in 9mm 1 Fig.

6 2 Ball: The earliest loads have FMJ truncatedcone bullets weighing 124grains. These werereplaced in Germany with 124grain FMJ bulletswith a round ogive in 1915-1916 (Figure 3)though truncated cone bullets were used oncommercial loads in the United States into the1930s. Later, round nose FMJ 115 grain bullets,usually has a concave base were introduced by anumber of countries including Britain (Figure 4).During the early stages of World War II, Ger-many developed two new bullets in an attempt toconserve lead. the first of these bullets wasdesignated the 08mE (for mit Eisenkern) or withiron core . As shown in the illustration the normallead core is replaced by an iron core with leadaround the base of the iron core.

7 This bullet wasinitially identified by the black bullet jacket, but in1944, it became the standard German ball loadand the blacken bulletjacket was dropped. Thesecond of these bulletswas made by compress-ing iron powder at hightemperature into a solidmaterial known asSintered Iron or SinteredEisen. This was desig-nated as the 08SE bullet and is identified by it s dark gray color. The SE bulletwas introduced into general service in 1943. Until recently, the Swiss ball loadused a bullet with a deep groove to facilitate a case crimp to hold the bullet inplace. Figure 6 illustrates this bullet and a WW II Swill ball load with an aluminum World War II the Germans also produced a special load with a 150grFMJ bullet with a subsonic muzzle velocity for use silencers.

8 These loads areidentified by either agreen lacquered steelcase or by an X on theheadstamp (Figure 7).Similiar heavy bulletloads for use withsilencers were producedby the British after WorldWar II with bulletweights up to 170gr andare often identified byvarious color dots on thecase head. A number of other countries subsequently developed heavy bulletsubsonic loads for use with 7 Fig. 8: Bullets left to right: German 124gr 08,German 150gr, British 150gr, British 170gr,German post-WW II : 124gr bullet on left,115gr bullet on rightFig. 5: 08mE bullets with two types of cores on left,solid iron 08SE bullet and on right is a Czech versionof the German 08mE bullet with nickel 3 Fig.

9 6In addition to the full metal jacket ballcartridges, 9mm Parabellum has beenproduced with a wide variety of hollowpoint and and soft point loads. DWMproduced hollow-point truncated bulletloads before World War I for use by it scolonial troops in Africa. Commercialand police hollowpoint and soft pointloads have been in regular productionby many countries, but particularly bythe United States. There is even aunique hollowpoint, softpoint bullet witha sawtooth tip called a Pingrabber used in the north-eastern US for the sport of shooting bowling : The German Navyidentified a requirement for atracer/signal load in 9mmParabellum prior to WorldWar I, and there are illustra-tions of such a load in theDWM records, but there isno evidence of production,and no specimens areknown.

10 Other than theDWM records, there is noevidence that tracers were produced until the 1930s. APolte drawing dated October 1926 describes a tracerbullet, and similar bullets have been discovered on DWMtest ranges that were used prior to World War II. A redtip tracer bullet was produced by Geco in the mid-1930sfor Gen Franco s forces during the Spanish Civil War. Theonly other tracer known to have been produced prior tothe 1940s was produced experimentally by Kynoch forthe 1939 British Army night-fighting trials with the FinnishSoumi machine pistol. During World War II variousnations tested tracers, but high-rate production of tracersonly began after the end of World War II and France ledthe widespread introduction of 9mm Parabellum : Inert dummy (or drill cartridges) have been produced from the earliest days of the 9mmParabellum.