The SIG M17/M18 Controversy.

A Soldier fires an M17 handgun at targets during the Victory Week Pistol Competition, or Regional Combat Pistol Championship, June 4. The top 10% of firers at the event earned a bronze Excellence in Competition marksmanship badge. (Photo Credit: Nathan Clinebelle)

The M17 and M18 pistols, manufactured by SIG, which are versions of their P320 handgun, are really taking the heat.

They have been for awhile, but this local incident really ramped things up:

Air Force Division Grounds M18 Handguns After Airman Dies On Wyoming Base

Let's first say, anyway you look at this, this is a terrible tragedy (but see below).

But is anything really wrong with the pistol.  SIG says there isn't.

Sig Sauer pushes back on criticisms over safety of M17 and M18 pistols

Let's start with something first.  

SIG, or expanded Schweizerische Industrie Gesellschaft, is one of the premier firearms manufacturers in the world.  In this context its party of a trade union with the German firm of J. P. Sauer und Sohn GmbH in order to work around Swiss laws that would largely prohibit the export of military weapons.  SIG did export some prior to the industrial union, with the excellent Stg 57 in export variants, being a prime example, but in recent years SIG has seriously moved into the export arms market in a way that it had not before, following the well blazed trail of Mauser and Fabrique Nationale, both of which at one time occupied the stage of supplier of small arms to the world at different points.

The US was never part of that market until Robert Strange McNamara vandalized Springfield Armory and foisted the AR15 upon the military against its will.  That had the impact of making the US a commercial small arms purchaser in a way that it had not been since the American Revolution, and we've paid for it every since.  It's completely true that the US had purchased commercial arms prior to that, with it notably going to commercial sidearms after Colt's perfection of cap and ball revolvers, and it interestingly relied upon commercial firms for machineguns, but when Springfield Armory was around, it always had an excellent in house backup.  After that, the US became entirely reliant upon civilian suppliers.

A lesson there, interestingly enough, is that to some degree being a commercial supplier of small arms to the US military has been historically a really bad deal for commercial firms.  Being the manufacturer of the M1917 rifle during World War One nearly killed Remington right after the war, and relying on sales of AR15 models to the service has actually been sort of a bad economic bet for Colt.  The lesson probably is that really relying on military sales to the US is risky.

The old model that Colt used, which was basically "here's what we have, it's really good, buy if you want it" is probably the best one.

Advertisement for Colt double action revolver.

And that's particularly the case as there hasn't been a single US handgun the US military has purchased since the M1873 was replaced by the M1892 which hasn't drawn criticism.

The M1892 is a nice double action revolver, but its .38 cartridge, ideal for police use, was anemic for combat, something that the Philippine Insurrection rapidly demonstrated.  M1873s were brought back into service (more on that in a minute) and .45 Colt New Army's were purchased as M1982s were pulled.  That was a stopgap measure until the Army could adopt an "automatic" pistol, which it did after leisurely testing in the form of the M1911.

The M1911 is a contender for greatest military handgun of all time, so its surprising that at first there were plenty of Army officers who hated it.  They regarded it outright dangers as it was too easy to fire and it was found that excited cavalrymen would accidentally shoot their horses in the head during charges.  Criticism of its short trigger pull lead to a new version of the pistol, the M1911A1, coming out during hit 1920s, simply to make it a bit harder to shoot, but as late as World War Two old cavalrymen were clinging to double action revolvers, which had no safeties at all, but which featured a long heavy trigger pull.

By that time the M1911 was beloved and for good reason.

The M1911 took the services all the way into the late 80s.  In 1985, the Baretta M9 was chosen to replace it, when it really didn't need to be replaced.  Indeed, the Army had to be forced to make a decision, which it was resisting, by Congress threatening to turn the project over to the Air Force, which had been responsible for the adoption of the AR 15.  That caught Colt flat footed as even t hough they'd been the supplier of most military handguns to the military for over a century, they weren't really expecting the Army to move forward with the entire project.

There were three reasons in reality to find a new handgun.  One was that no new M1911s had been purchased since the Second World War, so they were all getting internally rebuilt.  New pistols needed to be ordered. The second one was tha ti was felt that the .45 ACP round was too stout for women, who now were in roles where they needed handguns. That was moronic, as women can shoot any handgun a man can.  The third was that the US was foisting the 5.56 on our NATO allies and by adopting a 9mm pistol, we were throwing htem a bone, as every other NATO member save for NOrway used a 9mm pistol.

Which is something we shoudl have paused to think about right there.

The US, until after World War Two, had never been a supplier of small arms to other nations in any signficiant degree. Even after World War Two we were't a supplier of new arms, but our suprlus arms.  IT wasn't until after teh Vietnam War that this changed.  The big suppliers of military arms to the Western World were Germany and Belgium.  The Browning designed Belgian handgun, the High Power, was to some degree the handgun of the free world.  It had a proven track record.

The Baretta was a reengineerd P-38.  The P-38, like the High Power, and the M1911, is a contender for greatest military handgun of all time.  Given that, the M9 is a very good handgun.

US troops at first hated it.

Marines with M9s.

They hated it because they didn't want it, and soon attention was focused on breakages in the slides of the early Italian manufactured pistols.  Baretta stated there was nothing wrong with the gun, and in fact, there wasn't.

It never really fully replaced the M1911, as if you really need a pistol, the M1911 wins hands down every time.  But as 9mms go, it was a really good one.

Well, then came the Glock.

Glocks are frankly nothing special and a lot of real pistol aficionados do not like them.  But they used a striker instead of an external hammer.  There are some advantages to that, but for the most part, the advantages are more theoretical than real.  Frankly, anyone carrying a striker pistol would be just as well off with a hammer fired one and never notice the difference if they actually had to use it.

Anyhow, the service determined that it needed a striker fired pistol because everyone else was getting one.  Not too surprisingly, some in the service dithered on the project as it wasn't really needed, but them some senior officers who didn't know what the crap they were talking about threatened to directly procure Glocks, which would have been a horrible idea.

Tests were held and the P320 chosen.

Disclaimer here, I have one.

I have one, oddly enough, due to a Ducks Unlimited event.  I didn't go out and look for one.  

Having said that, it shoots extremely nicely.  I can see why people like/liked them.  In a heads up contest between the M9 and the M17/18, I think the SIG wins every time.

And now we have this issue.

Is it one?

I don't really know.  I hope that its figured out.  SIG, which also won the Army contest for new rifle (M7) and machine gun (M250), is taking piles of ill informed heat right now.

Let's take a look at the problem, some potential causes, and some fixes.

First, let's start with this.

Is there really a problem?

Sounds fantastical to even ask that, but the chatter about the SIG fits into a long US service tradition of claiming that the prior firearm was perfect and the new one plagued with flaws.  Sometimes its even true, or perhaps a little true. Sometimes, it's bunk.

The history of Army handguns certain fits that, however.  The Army was really long in replacing the M1873 and soldiers came to immediately hate its replacement. Was the M1892 bad?  Well, not as a design, it was far more advanced than the M1873, but the cartridge really was a bad choice.  The criticism was warranted.

What about the criticism of the M1911, which actually lead to it being redesigned a bit?  Not hardly.  The M1911 was a great pistol from day one and its defects, so to speak, were ones of perception on the part of those who were used to old heavy trigger double actions.

And the M9. Well, I'll admit that I was one of its critics.  But the M9 is a really good handgun.  The frame cracking was a freakish event and not something that proved to be an overall problem.  The eral problem is that its a 9mm, but that doesn't have anything to do with the design itself.

And, if we expand out and look at the history of US rifles we'll find the same thing.  When the M1 Garand was adopted there were some legitimate problems wtih its gas system, which lead to that being rapidly resdesigned.  Still, that didn't keep pleny of critics of faulting the rifle as inferior to the M1903 and soldiers actually were very conscerned that stoppages they experienced in stateside training, which apparently were due to the ammunition being used for a time, meant the rifle was defective.  Combat would rapidly prove that to be false, but it received that criticm at first.

The M14 received criticism for having some supposed problem with its bolt and action, which critics of the rifle will reference even today.  One civilian produced variant supposedly featured reengingeering to address the prblem, whatever it is.  It's difficult to find out hwat hte supposed problem was, and in actual use, ti seems to have been completely unnoticed.  Some M14s, for that matter, featured M1 Garand lock bar rear sights which drives some competitive rifleman absolutely nuts. Anyhow, the rifle didn't have faults, but it received criticism for having them.

The M16 of course, did have real faults, and still does, all of which are attributable to its direct impingment gas system.  However, the Army made the faults worse by suggesting the rifle never needed to be cleaned, wich was absurd, and by using fouling powder in early cartridge production.  AR15 fans and the military seem to have gotten largely over this, but at first the rifle was really hated, and I'll admit that I didn't like it.

The point is that there might not be anything wrong with the M17 at all.  What we could be seeing is an element of operator error.

Or, in some cases, worse:

Airman arrested for death that prompted Air Force-wide safety review of Sig M18

I have a thread on the M18 story, but I've been waiting for this:

Airman arrested for death that prompted Air Force-wide safety review of Sig M18

Something about the entire "it discharged all on its owned from its holster" story sounded like a fable.

I started this post before the news above broke, but I kept expecting something like this.  Frankly, murder or manslaughter wasn't what I was expecting, but some sort of operator error, or I'll confess suicide.  

But here's the deal, once something gets a bit of a bad wrap in American society, particularly litigious American society, it's hard to unring the bell on the story.  

And the story here, dare we say it, involves a lot of service users. . . . 

Now ,why would that be significant?

Well, frankly, because service users are amongst those who are the least likely to be paying attention to what they're doing and screw up.  Being in the Armed Forces or a police department doesn't make you a gun fan.  It doesn't even really make you all that knowledgeable on weapons, quite frankly.

SIG might be right. There might be no problem here at all.

And if there is one, it might be an introduced one.  That is, users messing with their sidearm accidentally or intentionally.  Some police forces actually issue sidearms just to keep their policemen from doing that with firearms they own.

But let's assume there is a problem. What would it be?

The M17 features a really complicated striker design and the pistol was designed not to have a safety. Those two things alone may mean that the design has been somewhat compromised by complication and the addition of a safety it wasn't designed to have.  That might, somehow, be defeated the need for a trigger "command".  It's important to note that if the pistols are firing on their own, they're defeating the safety, but then the safety only prevents the trigger from being pulled.

That is, I'd note, a much less effective safety design than that on the M1911, but we'll get back to that.

Anyhow, the safety isn't going to stop block the striker.  It doesn't work, say, like the safety on a M1903 or G98, which does.  It just keeps the trigger from being accidentally pulled.

Another possibility is that something about the holsters is playing a weird role  It seems unlikely, but its not completely impossible.

If I were a SIG engineer, and I'm not an engineer at all, I'd look at trying to develop a safety that hold the striker, if possible, and it might not be.

Okay, let's assume that it's all just hopeless, there's something wrong with the SIG and it can't be fixed.  I'm not saying that's the case, but what if there is.  Clearly a different handgun is in order.

Some have suggested just going back to the M9, and that's not a bad idea. The problem might be that after decades of use most of the M9s are in rough shape.  I doubt that, but it's possible.  

Well, so what.  Just sort through the ones in the inventory and weed out those in bad shape.  Issue the ones that aren't, and adopt the newest variant of the M9, which is nearly universally regarded as a very fine weapon.

The only reason not to do that is it has a hammer.

M'eh.

The other possibility. . . oh my. . .dare we say it. . . is to bring back the M1911.

Marine Corps MEU-SOC, the M1911 that proceeded the M45.

There's no reason not to, and in fact the Marine Corps did for awhile.  There's nothing the M17/18 and M9 can do that the M1911 doesn't do better.

Blog MIrror: The American Springfield Krag–Jørgensen Rifle

 

The American Springfield Krag–Jørgensen Rifle

Blog Mirror: This Day in History: Annie Moore, first at Ellis Island

 

This Day in History: Annie Moore, first at Ellis Island

Friday, January 9, 1942. Umm. . .about that salute. . . . Appropriated and Inappropriate Symbols.

On this day in 1942 West Virginia mandated a salute to the flag as a regular part of school activities.

German children?  Nope, US children in May 1942 giving the flag the "Bellamy Salute" that was advocated by Christian Socialist Francis Bellamy.  At the time, the association with Fascism and Nazism had not yet fully sunk in.

The measure was struck down by the US Supreme Court as unconstitutional the following year.

Until that summer, the salute would have been in the form advocated by Christian Socialist Francis Bellamy, who was also the author of the Pledge of Allegiance.  Bellamy had died a decade prior, but the pledge and the salute were gaining popularity since the onset of the war.  Concern over its Nazi like appearance caused adoption of the palm over the heart form of the salute now used by civilians in this gesture, a measure urged by the Veteran's of Foreign Wars and the American Legion.

Saluting by civilians is, frankly, in my view an odd deal.  Simply standing and taking off your hat makes more sense to me. But like a lot of things, things, this has really spread, and morphed, in our society.

Bellamy began advocating for it as early as 1892, when he wrote:

At a signal from the Principal the pupils, in ordered ranks, hands to the side, face the Flag. Another signal is given; every pupil gives the flag the military salute – right hand lifted, palm downward, to align with the forehead and close to it. Standing thus, all repeat together, slowly, "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands; one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all." At the words, "to my Flag," the right hand is extended gracefully, palm upward, toward the Flag, and remains in this gesture till the end of the affirmation; whereupon all hands immediately drop to the side. 

The Youth's Companion, 65 (1892): 446.

Bellamy of course meant no fascist connotations by it, and fascism wasn't even a thing at the time.  It spread slowly but picked up speed as a school thing following World War One.

In the same period of time, however, fascism and Nazism adopted the same salute.  Distinctions are sometimes made between it and the Bellamy salute, but in reality the only difference is that the fascist weren't attempting to copy Bellamy.  At any rate, it spread like wildfire in the 20s and 30s amongst fascistic movements, making a change in the US necessary.

This wasn't the only thing to suffer such a fate.  As noted on our companion blog, Painted Bricks:

One you definately do not see anymore, brickwork, Thermopolis Wyoming

Here's one that you would not see done again, and you might also expect to have been changed since 1945. Swastika motif in brickwork.

This is not as sinister as it might seem. Swastikas showed up as ornamental designs in quite a few things prior to World War Two, and they bore no association at all with the Nazi Party. In the west, they were associated with Indians, and were regarded as an Indian good luck symbol. Chances are that the architect of this Thermopolis, Wyoming building had that in mind, as Thermopolis is not far from the Wind River Reservation.

Indeed, at the time we're speaking of, the 45th Infantry Division, a unit made up of National Guardsmen heavily featuring Native American Oklahoman's, was only two years out from the redesign of its unit patch adopted during World War One, which looked like this:

And it gets even odder yet.  Lord Baden Powell waxed about it in What Scouts  Can Do--More Yarns, in 1921, in which he stated.

On the stole of an ancient bishop of Winchester, Edyndon, who died in 1366, is the Swastika or Scouts' Thanks Badge. It was at that time called the " Fylfot," and was said to represent Obedience or Submission, the different arms of the cross being in reality legs in the attitude of kneeling.

But as you know from the account of the Swastika Thanks Badge which I have given you in Scouting for Boys, this symbol was used in almost every part of the world in ancient days, and therefore has various meanings given to it.

It has been found engraved on weapons belonging to the Norsemen. It was also engraved on the spindles used by the ancient Greeks in their- weaving at Troy.

In India rice is spread on the ground in the form of the Swastika at the baptism of a baby boy to bring him luck.

The Indians in North America use it as an ornament, and it has been found engraved on ancient pottery in Peru.

How it got from one country to another, separated as they are by oceans, it is difficult to guess, but some people who say they know all about these things, affirm that there was once a great continent where now there is the Atlantic Ocean, but it went under the sea in an earthquake.

This continent was called Atlantis, and joined up Europe with America.

It was supposed to have four vast rivers running from a central mountain in different directions—North, East, South, and West—and the Swastika is merely a map of Atlantis showing those four rivers rising from the same center.

The Thanks Badge

I want specially to remind Scouts to keep their eyes open and never fail to spot anyone wearing this badge. It is their duty then to go up to such person, make the Scout sign, and ask if they can be of any service to the wearer.Anyway, whatever its origin was the Swastika now stands for the Badge of Fellowship among Scouts all over the world, and when anyone has done a kindness to a Scout it is their privilege to present him—or her—with this token of their gratitude, which makes him a sort of member of the Brotherhood, and entitles him to the help of any other Scout at any time and at any place.

I have heard of several instances where Scouts have done this, and it has greatly increased the value of the Thanks Badge to the persons who were wearing it when they found that Scouts recognized it and were anxious to do a Good Turn to them.

All that is more than a little cringe worthy now, but prior to the rise of the Nazis, the symbol had a wide range of meanings and in fact was quite common in the US, derived from Native American usage.  Of course, that can take you into the conversation about European Americans appropriating Native American symbols and identities, but that's another topic (albeit one we've discussed before).

By 1939, when the 49th Infantry Division went to its new symbol. . .

it was already the case that the Nazis had claimed this one forever, although perhaps a final non fasicst use carried on, for quite awhile, by the Finns.

Finnish Me109s during the Continuation War.  Some below the radar use of the swastika goes on in Finland today, due to its wartime use, even though a turn away from it started in 1945 when the Finns ended up reluctantly declaring war on the Germans.

In Slovenia, partisans engaged the Germans in what would become the Battle of  Dražgoše.

Admiral Yamamoto made a statement to Taketora Ogata in which he stated:

A military man can scarcely pride himself on having 'smitten a sleeping enemy'; it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten. I would rather you made your appraisal after seeing what the enemy does, since it is certain that, angered and outraged, he will soon launch a determined counterattack.

This is likely the origin of the claim that on December 7, he stated that he feared that all the attack had done was to "awaken a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve".

Joe Louis regained the heavyweight boxing title by knocking out Buddy Baer in round one of a match at Madison Square Garden.

Back to saluting, I'm very glad, as I'm sure everyone is, that the Bellamy salute was dropped and I'm okay with the hand on the heart salute, although personally I think simply standing and uncovering the head would be enough, but since the First Gulf War, and dating back to the Reagan Administration really, saluting in the military style by civilians has really spread and I really don't like it.

This really started with President Reagan giving a snappy salute to the Marine Corps guards and other servicemen he routinely encountered. At the time, that was technically illegal, although probably unenforceable, as it was reserved for servicemen.  Reagan had served as a reserve cavalry officer before the war and during the war in the entertainment branch of the U.S. Army, which I do not wish to discount, but he was a civilian and should not have done that. Since then, however, every President has, encouraging the creeping militarization of our society.

At some point in the 90s or 00s, the law in this was officially changed to allow veterans to use the salute, and some really do.  I could, as I’m a veteran.  I don't, as I'm a civilian.  There's no need for it.