Limnophile said:
I read an article (sorry I didn't save the link) about the US Army Pistol Team shooting highly modified M9s in bullseye competitions. The modifications appear to take great skilled labor, but usually yield a pistol that shoots sub-1.5-inch, 10-shot groups at 50 yd. Isn't that a bit better than what a typical M1911A1 modification can achieve? One of the modifications involves removing a bunch of mass from the hammer to prevent the force of the hammer drop from driving the muzzle downward.
I was under the impression that the Army Pistol Team was still shooting modified M1911A1s. That they are using M9s seems to attest to they're quality.
I've seen a number articles over the years, some photo heavy, about the Marksmanship Unit Pistol Team's guns -- and the gunsmiths who built them. (They shoot anything from .22s to custom shotguns...)
The Army put a LOT of custom work into those guns -- and I suspect the same effort put into any reasonably well-designed gun would give very good results. The Marksmanship Unit has been using Berettas for a long time -- beginning not too long after Berettas became the standard handgun for most Army personnel. The inserted dialogue below shows that it took the AMU's gunsmith over a full year working on nothing else to get the guns about where they should be. Think about that: it would have been bad ju-ju
image-wise for the Army to use anything else, i.e., "we think the M9 is great for our soldiers in combat, but we use X when we're competing internationally..."
There have also been a number of articles in various gun mags over the years about the Army gunsmiths -- some of whom have retired and who now create custom guns, Berettas among them, for the civilian market.
Here's a link to an interesting discussion about the AMUnit's Berettas and what was done to make them so darned accurate. Much of it is top-notch gunsmithing, and that's probably a big factor in the gun's performance. As to the Beretta's fundamental accuracy: The P226 was also in the competition, and had it been accepted, I would expect something at least as good as the P-226 X-Five in 9mm to have come out of the AMU's gun shop. The AMU's gunsmiths could probably make a Hi-Point (which can be surprisingly accurate) look like a world-class gun, too. It would probably still be ugly, though.
More than the gun, I think it's the shooters and the gunsmiths that really make the difference when it comes to the AMU's stellar performance.
Here's a link to a discussion on another forum that is the source for the citation, below. It is the source of the quoted material, below. It addresses the gunsmith's role in the unit's performance.
http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?4029299-extremely-accurate-pistols-let-s-see-em!&p=51483215&viewfull=1
Though Master Sergeant David E. Sams’ modifications to the Service M9 were developed for exclusive use by the AMU, it is interesting nonetheless to see what can be done to the Beretta to make it shoot.
Let’s skip the main course for now and get to the dessert: A tricked-out AMU M9 shoots 0.875-inch groups at 50 yards with factory match ammo. That’s right. Just over 1.5 MOA from a handgun. Even the best 1911s shooting tweaked handloads can’t do better, and most .45s can’t approach that level of accuracy.
What’s the secret, and why hasn’t anyone else been able to work out the Beretta’s bugs to this level?
“You’ve got to give full credit to the Marksmanship Unit,” the 39-year-old Sams said. “The unit commander called me into his office and told me to make the M9 fit for competition. About a year later, it was ready. But I didn’t have to work on anything else, and I could order or build whatever it took to get the gun right. I can’t think of a commercial gunsmith who could dedicate a full year to a single project. They’ve got to eat.”
Its a good discussion with a lot of details in the responses. The key question asked but not directly answered is "why hasn't anyone else been able to work out the Beretta's bugs to this level?" Good question: why haven't others also done so?
Sams, the AMU gunsmith above, apparently had a no-limits budget and no time constraints. Even the best (for profit) custom gunsmiths don't have that much freedom to improve a gun -- it can take them YEARS of testing and innovation to get there from here, and as Sams notes above, they've got to pay the bills in the meantime.
It looks as though Bill Wilson (of Wilson Combat) is giving some thought to the Berettas. Note, too, that Bruce Gray has already addressed the P226 (and other P-series guns, including the P320.)
David Sams, the gunsmith mentioned above, is now retired and offers his services to the public. Here's a link:
http://www.samscustomgunworksusa.com/
