A Tribute to the Beretta 92

[Petrol & Powder]

The U.S. military has adopted the SIG 320 (M17 & M18) platforms which means the Beretta 92 series (M9 and its variants) will be phased out.
The M9 was adopted in 1985. The replacement of the 1911A1 was met with a lot of resistance and even some intentional sabotage but that's all history now. Good or bad, like it or hate it; The U.S.A. finally went with NATO and pretty much the rest of the world and embraced the 9mm Lugar cartridge. Now, 34 years later, the Beretta is being retired and we are moving on again.

For those of you that were around and paying attention in the 1980's - it was an AMAZING time! There was a LOT going on. The Cold War was in full swing, the economy was a roller coaster with some incredible highs and a few lows, we were finally coming out of the post Vietnam era, The "wonder-nine" pistol fad was in full force, American law enforcement was transitioning from DA revolvers to semi-auto pistols, Europe was dealing with terrorists and America was dealing with crime. In terms of firearms trends - it was a very interesting time !

Ultimately, the Beretta 92 was adopted as America's new military sidearm and it was also gaining acceptance with American law enforcement. Looking back at the Beretta now, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, it was a very unusual combination of old world and modern design.

The Beretta 92 series was the result of a LOT of incremental development over decades. I think it's safe to say that the Beretta Model 1951 is the grand daddy of the model 92. By the early 1980's the Beretta 92 was a pretty mature design that had gone through a lot of permutations.

The frame was an intricate aluminum forging with a substantial amount of machining. The open top slide was classic Beretta but it was also the final product of forging, complex machining and lots of finishing. Beautiful but expensive. The pistol contains a large number of forged and machined parts, tiny springs and pins and requires a fair amount of skilled labor to assemble. While many pistols utilized the Browning tilting barrel short recoil system, Beretta used the Walther locking block system. Every time I look at the details of a Beretta 92 I'm awed by the sophistication of the engineering. The gun was/is complex but it functions wonderfully !
The Beretta 92 really represents the LAST of the Old World pistol designs to be embraced by the military, law enforcement and the public.

So my hat is off to the Old World pistol that served us well !

[jaguarxk120]

Not only is the 92 great, but Beretta took development one step further.

The Model 93 machine pistol, select fire- semi auto, three shot burst, or full auto.
All that in the same frame size as the 92.
.

The 92 has seen service where conditions are very sever and
still function.

[Dan Cash]

The M9/92 is a direct descendant of the Walther P38.

[MrWolf]

Beretta 92f was the first pistol I ever bought back in around 83-84 or so. Still have her.

[Petrol & Powder]

The M9/92 is a direct descendant of the Walther P38.

Well at least the barrel locking system is; and it's not a bad system.

[ShooterAZ]

Just keep it away from Jet Li... LOL.

[Love Life]

The Beretta 92 is a good gun. The M9 has been my service pistol since 2004, and I really love the platform. Accurate, easy to shoot, reliable, and holds a bunch of ammo. Most people who complain about the accuracy are usually crappy shooters.

I’ve personally witnessed one failed locking block in the last 15 years. It’s a pistol I believe every gun enthusiast should own an example of.

[jmort]

Yes indeed
Never understood the haters

[Petrol & Powder]

Yes indeed
Never understood the haters

The hatred came from several camps.
There were the people that just didn't want to let go of the 1911. You know those guys, they walked to school "back in the day", barefoot, in the snow, uphill - both ways . These are the guys that thought the 1911 was the best pistol ever made and grudgingly accepted the 1911A1 as a tolerable substitute for John Browning's Masterpiece.

Then there were the people that were convinced the 9mm could be defeated by two sheets of typing paper or just one sheet if the paper was wet.

Then there were the folks that didn't want a foreign pistol and when you told them the Beretta was made in Accokeek, they would say, "See what I mean "

Then you had the folks that believed an aluminum frame and DA trigger was somehow affiliated with Satan......

And some haters were in more than one camp.

[Love Life]

Don’t forget that after 1 magazine of +p the slide will crack in half and stab you in the face while insulting your mother and making eyes at your wife. Never mind that they are slated for a 30,000 rd service life shooting 9mm nato which isn’t exactly mouse fart ammo.

[Bigslug]

FAT grip in an era of more small women joining the service and law enforcement. . .

Safety that moves in the wrong direction that you can easily re-engage by accident when you are trying to clear a malfunction or reload thus shutting down the pistol. . .

No front lockup at the muzzle. . .

Open-top sand-ingress port. . .

DA/SA trigger as a measure of keeping the untrained from shooting themselves. . .which makes it harder for those same troops to hit anything (the whole point of the exercise) without lots of training to master. . .which once you have, you no longer need the idiotic Walther-based trigger system to be safe from yourself. . . (Invention of DA/SA automatic pistol was another Nazi crime against humanity that should have been brought up at Nuremberg.)

A detail strip process rifle with parts both many and microscopic. . .

Had a cheaper, sturdy, DOMESTIC option available in the form of the Ruger P-85. . .

Didn't the acquisition process involve the U.S. gaining a cruise missile launch pad in Italy that we could then point across the Mediterranean at Villain of the Week, Moamar Khadaffi?

As I alluded to in the Sig thread, U.S. small arms procurement has a 200+ year history of retardation, and the 92F was merely the latest lobotomized chapter. The 1911 selection process and 1911-A1 revision was about the only thing U.S. Ordnance ever got right from the start. There were reasons for replacing it - some good, some dubious - but it's probably fair for anyone to look askance and say "You're replacing THIS. . .with THAT???"

[Petrol & Powder]

Don’t forget that after 1 magazine of +p the slide will crack in half and stab you in the face while insulting your mother and making eyes at your wife. Never mind that they are slated for a 30,000 rd service life shooting 9mm nato which isn’t exactly mouse fart ammo.

Yep, during the trials some of the old guard intentionally put some REALLY hot ammo in the Beretta and after a lot of those overpressure rounds they finally got a slide to break. Then they jumped up and down and yelled, "See, we told you it was no good". Never mind that the failures were traced back to some very hot ammo and when the hard questions were asked, (like where did that ammo come from?) several people pled ignorance.

[Der Gebirgsjager]

There were the people that just didn't want to let go of the 1911. You know those guys, they walked to school "back in the day", barefoot, in the snow, uphill - both ways . These are the guys that thought the 1911 was the best pistol ever made and grudgingly accepted the 1911A1 as a tolerable substitute for John Browning's Masterpiece.

Well...actually it was about 2/3 of a mile downhill, then 1/3 of a mile uphill to the bus stop, and we did walk it in the snow until it was about a foot deep, then the bus wouldn't come. So then it was mostly uphill going home also. But...we did have shoes!

[Petrol & Powder]

Bigslug, I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic but this is a Beretta 92 Tribute thread.
The Beretta 92 bashing thread is elsewhere.

And By the way, the safety moves in exactly the right direction -one way to engage the safety and the other way to disengage it
The open top slide is a sand egress port
The DA trigger allows the gun to be fired by pulling the trigger, what a novel idea - just like a DA revolver.
The cheaper Domestic option the Ruger P-85, wasn't ready in time for the pistol trials. It should have been labeled the P-87 because it wasn't until 1987 when Ruger finally got it out of the factory.

[M-Tecs]

The 92 slide failure was a very real issue with standard M882 ball when it was first issued. After the issue first came up we had to track round count and replace slides a 3K. Old slides were returned. Not sure if they did anything else but changing the heat treat/material spec. was part if not all of the solution.

In 1993, Beretta introduced the Brigadier style slide for the 92 series. This slide is reinforced at the locking lugs for greater durability, creating a trademark “hump” in the slide’s contour when viewed from the side. The heavier slide also reduces felt recoil. The front sight was also dovetailed. My 92 Brigadier has never let me down. I have shot my 50 different GI 92's. To me the most impressive feature was how well the fixed sight aligned with POI.

After the heat treat change slide cracking became a non-issue on the 92's

[Petrol & Powder]

I've seen early 1980's vintage 92SB pistols (pre 92 F models) go thousands of rounds with nary a hiccup. The slides were not weak.

Beretta eventually put a hammer pin in the pistol with an enlarged head on the left side to "catch' the rear of the slide if the slide broke but I think that was to just make people stop whining.
The slides that failed during testing were exposed to high pressure ammo, including some submachine gun ammo that was over NATO spec.

[tazman]

I have owned Beretta 92 pistols and think they are fine guns. The only thing I didn't like was the safety. I want all my guns to operate in a similar manner so I went with the Taurus version.
The PT 92 is made on Beretta factory equipment purchased by Taurus when Beretta stopped manufacturing in Brazil in 1980. It is essentially a Beretta 92 with a frame safety.
Now, every pistol I own that has a thumb safety works in the same manner. Probably not important to most people but is to me.
I like the Beretta design a lot. The more I shoot it, the better it gets for me. I use Beretta barrels in my Taurus pistols because the shoot cast much better for me.
The bore is a bit generous. The one I have measures .357. That is ok since it will feed anything I can fit in the magazine and shoots most diameters well.
I have had one locking lug crack. It was a Beretta lug that came with the barrel. They are easy to replace and cheap. The round count on that pistol was high so I don't consider that a problem.

[M-Tecs]

I am not aware of any major weapons system adoption that did not have some teething issues. I sure it was the same with the 1911.

GAO report here https://www.gao.gov/assets/220/210461.pdf pages 10,14, 15 and 16 are interesting.

"The first laboratory slide failure, which occurred on February 8, 1988, involved an Army M9 firing NAKI standard U.S.-produced M882 ammunition. This weapon was one of three M9 handguns being tested for problems related to the barrel. As part of the test, all three weapons had .been inspected after 6,000 rounds using a scanning election microscope (SEM) or magnetic particle inspection (MPI) process, and there were no indications of slide cracks. When the M9 slide failure occurred at 6,007 rounds, the broken slide and the slides on the other two test weapons were removed for metallurgical evaluation. The evaluation showed that one of the other slides also had fatigue cracks. This evaluation marked the beginning of an Army slide failure test program to determine why the failures had occurred."

http://sightm1911.com/lib/history/true_story_m9.htm

Condensed version here.

"The Problems Arise:
The M9 pistol program ran into trouble when in September of 1987 the slide of a civilian model Beretta 92SB pistol fractured at the junction where the locking block mates into the slide. The broken half of the slide flew back at the shooter (A member of the Navy Special Warfare Group) injuring him. (NSIAD-88-213) In January and February of 1988 respectively, 2 more military model M9 handguns exhibited the same problem, injuring 2 more shooters from the Navy Special Warfare Group.
All three shooters suffered facial lacerations. One suffered a broken tooth and the other two required stitches. (NSIAD-88-213)
The Army was doing unrelated barrel testing on current production civilian model 92SB pistols and military model M9 pistols and ran into the same slide separation issue. They fired 3 M9 pistols 10,000 times and inspected the weapons with the MPI process for evidence of slide cracks. They discovered that one of the weapons had a cracked slide. The Army then decided to fire all of the weapons until the slides failed. Failure occurred at round number 23,310 on one weapon, 30,083 on another, and 30,545 on the last weapon. (NSIAD-88-213)
Examination of the NSWG slides and the Army slides showed a low metal toughness as the cause of the problems with slide separation. The Army then began to investigate the production process of the slides. (NSIAD-88-213) At the time the frames of the M9 pistols were produced in the US, while the slides were produced in Italy. There are reportedly documents from the Picatinny Arsenal that report a metallurgical study blaming the use of Tellurium in the manufacturing process for the low metal toughness of the Italian slides, but I have been unable to independently verify this information.
After April of 1988, however, all slides for the M9/92 pistols were produced in the US. (NSIAD-88-213) As a part of the contract requirements, the Beretta Corporation had to build a plant inside the United States to produce the M9. It naturally took some time for the US plant (located in Accokeek MD.) to get into full production swing, so the Italian plant made the slides for a time.
Several GAO reports and testimony from GAO staff before Congressional Sub-Committees (NSIAD-88-213, NSIAD-88-46, NSIAD-89-59 are a few…) report the total number of slide failures at 14. Three occurred in the field with the NSWG and the other 11 occurred in the test lab. Only 3 injuries resulted from the slide separation problem. The Beretta Corporation changed the design of the M9 pistol so that even if a slide fractured, the broken half could not come back and hit the shooter causing injury.
Of the 14 slide separations reported, only 4 took place at round counts under 10,000. (NSIAD-88-213) No further slide fractures were reported after the change to the US manufactured slides.
The Beretta Corporation initially blamed the slide failures on the use of ammunition. They questioned both the use of non-NATO ammunition and the use of M882 ammunition. They suspected that both types of ammunition caused excessive pressure buildup inside the weapon causing barrel ringing issues during the initial testing of the M9 weapon and the slide separations experienced by the military. The Army determined that both barrel ringing and slide separation were caused by low metal hardness and not by any specific pressure level in the ammunition used. (NSIAD-89-59)
I have obtained documentation from a reliable source that demonstrates that the M882 ammunition was not excessive in its chamber pressures. Thus the explanation of metallurgical problems on a limited number of M9 pistols remains the only defensible conclusion."

[beechbum444]

So ah.....when will the cmp be getting them in stock....

[Texas by God]

So ah.....when will the cmp be getting them in stock....

If they do; when they do; I want one.

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