Shooting a 9mm Nato out of a 38 Super Pistol

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PACraftsman

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Help ??? I was reading some threads late over the weekend and found some people stating that you could shoot a 9mm Nato round out of a stock 38 Super Pistol. They likened the compatibility to a 38 special/357 magnum or 44 special/44 magnum relationship.

Is this true? Will a 38 super pistol run on 9mm ???
 
No. Both 9mm NATO and 38 Super have rimless cases and headspace on the mouth of the case not the rim. The 38 special and 357 Magnum headspace on the rim. Therefore, the the shorter 9mm NATO would sit in too deep in the bullet chamber. Upon firing, the case would literally accelerate and slam into the slide. Besides, the 9mm and 38 Super have different rim dimensions which would affect extraction.

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IF(and that's a good sized if) you hook the extractor over the 9mm case manually and then chamber the round, the extractor might hold the case snug enough against the firing pin strike to fire it. The empty might even the ejected but this scenario won't continue to cycle w/o hand feeding rounds under the extractor.
Keep in mind the almost universal stamping on the barrel "use only ammunition specifically designed for this firearm".
 
tdocz said:
No. Both 9mm NATO and 38 Super have rimless cases and headspace on the mouth of the case not the rim.
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This is incorrect. The 9mm NATO is rimless, but it has a tapered case. The .38 Super has a small rim (it is sometimes referred to as "semi-rimmed"). Old .38 Super pistols headspaced on the rim, but newer ones do headspace on the case mouth.

The .38 Super case is not tapered. A 9mm NATA case is .391" at the base and tapers to .380" at the mouth. A .38 Super case is .384" for the full length. A 9mm NATA round shouldn't be able to chamber in a .38 Super barrel.
 
No. Both 9mm NATO and 38 Super have rimless cases and headspace on the mouth of the case not the rim. The 38 special and 357 Magnum headspace on the rim. Therefore, the the shorter 9mm NATO would sit in too deep in the bullet chamber. Upon firing, the case would literally accelerate and slam into the slide. Besides, the 9mm and 38 Super have different rim dimensions which would affect extraction.
Click to expand...

Completely incorrect statement on so many levels.
 
Based on specs listed in my loading manuals it appears there are enough differences that it shouldn't work. But if the chamber tolerances on a 38 Super are loose enough some individual guns might actually work with both.

Lots of guys successfully shoot 40S&W from 10mm guns. I've tried it enough to say it works. But I'd only use in in a dire emergency where I had a 10mm pistol and only 40 S&W ammo.
 
I suspect that if it did fire it would do so by "chambering" from the extractor hook, not good.
I've done it myself, but only by accident. (Not 9MM/38 Super though, .380 in 9mm I think, the fired cases looked a bit funny.)

By actual measurement I get rim diameter 38 Super .4035" and 9mm ,3875", case length 38 Super .888" and 9mm .7375", so it's .1505" shorter, and it's known in some circles that most extractors won't take a steady diet of that kind of abuse.
 
.38 Super, 9mm Parabellum, and .380 ACP all use (essentially) the same diameter bullets, but the cases (and chambers) are all different. I have played around with the notion of a 1911 in .380 ACP -- an idea I've seen discussed on the forum at http://forum.m1911.org/ . I found that trying to shoot .380 ACP from a 9mm barrel (headspacing on the extractor, of course) just didn't work. The 9mm chamber was so much larger that too much energy was lost to blow-by. The bullets left the muzzle, but the slide wouldn't cycle.

The .38 Super chamber is smaller, so I tried that next -- again headspacing on the extractor. Same result. It came closer to cycling, but the slide wouldn't cycle until I cut down the recoil spring to something like 8 pounds. Brass was still deformed after firing, but not so badly it couldn't be resized.

In the end, I used a 9mm barrel and loaded 9mm brass using 95-grain bullets and a light charge to generate .380 ACP velocities. That allowed me to decide what recoil spring would work, but there's just no source for a .380 ACP 1911 barrel so, like the guy on M1911.org, I gave up.

It does show that you can shoot using the extractor to "headspace" the cartridge. It's not unsafe, but it's hard on the extractor and it's not a recommended practice. But you can't shoot a round that's too fat to go into the chamber, and the tapered 9mm cartridge shouldn't fit all the way into a .38 Super chamber.
 
I wouldn't try it unless the Zombies were real bad.

I developed a 9mm Makarov conversion for 9mm P 1911oid.
Like Aquila, I set it up with light 9mm P loads to be sure it would function.
I dropped the project when the batch of heavy bullet Mak I was prepared for dried up.
 
In addition to the issues Aguila pointed out there would also be feed problems unless you got a dedicated 9mm magazine for the gun (due to the shorter length of the 9mm round).

Without too much trouble you can get a 9mm barrel for the gun and proper mags and set up a switch barrel gun.

tipoc
 
When it comes to guns, never say never is a good philosophy to follow.
One day I was at our club range practicing with a .38 super 70 series Colt steel Commander.
There was another fellow with the same type gun there.
After we were shooting awhile, I asked if he reloaded and he said no, take all the cases.
As I was picking them up, I noticed he was actually shooting 9mm, not .38 super in his.
He said he'd been doing it for a long time as .38 super ammo was hard to find and too expensive.
So, I tried it a mag worth.
It shot just fine, too.
 
It would be foolish to say that it can't be done at all. But it is an invitation to issues and problems with reliability.

Fact is most semis fire because the extractor holds the round in place enough for the firing pin to ignite the primer.

A 9mm mag would help but...

Why?

tipoc
 
It most certainly can be done. The rounds must be fed from a magazine, so the extractor holds them in place.

Some guns, especially 1911-types will even fire 9mm that is dropped into the chamber by hand. The firing pin will travel far enough to ignite 9mm that is deep in the Super chamber. This creates excessive headspace (very excessive!)
Don't ever do this!
 
Is this a zombie apocalypse deal, where you have one gun, a Super, and one box of cartridges, 9mm? In that case, go for it! You have no choice.
Under any other circumstances, it doesn't make any sense.
Buy cartridges that fit the gun.
That does remind me of the time I walked into a sporting goods store and asked the guy at the gun counter for a box of .38 Super.
He went to the ammo shelves and returned with a box of .38 Special, saying, "It fits in all .38s, that's why it's special".
 
He was actually shooting 9mm with zero headspace. The 9mm shouldn't fit in a .38's chamber anyway. That .391" 9mm case body vs the .384" case body of the Super should prevent chambering.
 
Well, after all this discussion I had to find out for myself.

I took some Hornady 9mm ammo and did a "plunk" test. In a Colt .38 Super, the 9mm round dropped maybe 2/3 of the way into the chamber. From that point, thumb pressure pushed it in to the zero headspace position, but I don't think it would feed well. Possibly -- I didn't try it. (I don't like messing with live ammo in live guns on the workbench.)

I then grabbed a no-name .38 Super barrel out of my box of parts. With that barrel, the 9mm round did drop right in, well beyond the zero headspace point (which is where it would be held by the extractor).

So I guess it can be done -- unless it can't. It would seem to depend on the tolerances of the particular pistol and the particular ammunition.
 
IMHO it would be simpler to get a 9MMP barrel. I read an article in Guns and Ammo some years ago, the author found that to fire 9MMP out of a 38 super all he need was a new barrel and magazine.
 
IMHO people have gotten a little too enamored of that Astra 600 that could fire a variety of a cartridges and they tend to forget the differences between semiautos and revolvers. Say $100 for a second barre, $25 for a magazine and 5 minutes work to change barrels-?
 
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