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lancaster;

all good info!

True enough, and we of course now see the direction of modern PDW rounds such as the FN and HK.

My reference to the 200 was sinly because the first bullet made for the .45 Auto was of 200 grain wieght, the technology and experience of making simple steel core bullets existed at the time {WW2} and the Army had a desire to improve the penetration of the .45 ACP. Later developments certainly improved performance of rounds against hard targets, but Uncle Sam had an easy fix to some degree at his fingertips even back during the Big War, but never tried it.

As a side note, the steel jacketed lead core rounds were, later, required as standard in testing Hadfield helmet plate.

An interesting story follows;

At one point in 1944, testing of Hadfield manganese helmet/armor plates revealed continuous failures of the plate against the standard loads being used which were .45 ACP bullets handloaded to various velocities. Regulators rejected the plate lots then after research found that the testing had been done with newly acquired quantities of .45 bullets that were from production using steel jackets. These bullets had just enough increased penetrative performance to cause failure of the steel plates. Once this was found out, new specifications were established and steel jacketed bullets were ordered specifically to be used for all testing purposes.

Just why we used our own pistol caliber for testing purposes has always been a wee mystery to me, tho easy availability and cheap cost was likely the reason. Seems more sensible to use the 9x19 of course, tho the testing would have had to be done at longer ranges to keep the bullets outside the plate!

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