The 9mm Luger cartridge came late to the epoch of the 1911 pistol. Colt didn't really get serious about it until a few years after WWII, when the U.S. military first considered a 9mm pistol compatible with the ammunition of its European allies. Colt experimented with aluminum frames and the 19x9 cartridge in full-size and compact 1911 s, the latter becoming the famous Commander. When the Pentagon decided to stay with the all-steel .45, the company recouped its T&E costs by offering the Commander, which was initially chambered for 9mm Luger and .38 Super as well as .45 ACE Off and on during the latter half of the 20th Century, the full-size Government Model was offered in 9mm too, but it never approached the popularity of the .38 Super in that pistol, let alone the utter dominance of the .45 Automatic Colt Pistol cartridge.
That's easy to understand. I grew up in what my colleague John Taffin calls "the golden age of handgunning." During that time, if you wanted a centerfire Colt pistol, unless you had specific need of the .38 Super's ballistics, you by God wanted a .45. If you wanted a 9mm, you'd get a Browning Hi-Power, or maybe the S&W Model 39 double action. Colt's Government Model was the most powerful autoloader then available, and ordering it in 9mm Massad seemed counterproductive, sort of like asking for a Thunderbird with a four-cylinder engine.
The 9mm Government Model concept got another brief boost in the early 1980s, when the U.S. Government said "this time we mean it" about the NATO pistol compatibility thing. A small but vocal contingent felt it would be much cheaper to simply convert the nation's stocks of 1911A1 pistols to the smaller cartridge. Colt actually made a 9mm Government Model conversion unit for a while. But then the military chose the Beretta 92F to be the standard issue sidearm, newly dubbed the M9, and the 1911 9mm sank back beneath the surface.
These days, we're seeing a small renaissance of the 9mm pistol in the 1911 format. One reason is the popularity of IDPA shooting. Another is the increasing visibility of the female handgunner. A third is the aging demography of the American handgunner. In all three venues, the 9mm 1911 is drawing interest for the same reason: extremely mild recoil.
With a slide whose mass and weight was geared to the powerful .45 round, the 1911 only works with 9x19 amino with a very light recoil spring. That makes it much easier for older shooters, or those with small hands or slender wrists, to operate its slide. Being a distinctly heavier pistol than, say, a Browning Hi-Power, the 1911 transmits only a gentle bump to the shooter when it spits a 9mm Parabellum round. Describing the recoil of a centerfire pistol with the phrase "It kicks like a .22" is one of the most tired and hackneyed comments in gun-writing, but in this case, it comes awfully close to the sensation of firing a 1911 with a standard pressure 9mm load.
IDPA, the International Defensive Pistol Association, has four gun categories. Stock Service Revolver (SSR) for sixguns, Stock Service Pistol (SSP) for double action semiautomatics and Glocks and Custom Defense Pistol (CDP), which is dominated by the 1911 in its usual chambering--.45 ACP--though 10mm and .400 Cor-Bon are allowed if seldom seen. Enhanced Service Pistol (ESP) is for the easiest guns to shoot--single-action autos at the mild 9mm power level.
If you seek one of the specialty awards (high female, senior, law enforcement, etc.) you're competing against shooters in all four of the gun categories. ESP is by far the most shooter-friendly. This fact is recognized in IDPA's own standards for shooter classification. On their demanding 90-shot Classifier course, an SSR shooter can make Master if his revolver score breaks 100 seconds. It's tighter, about 98 seconds, to do the same with a police-type service auto in SSR With a powerful cocked and locked single action, the CDP master cut is at around 91 seconds. With an easy-kicking single action 9mm, however, the pistol is considered so much easier to shoot that the Master time is in the 89-second range.
While the downloaded .38 Super (often in pistols that are de-commissioned IPSC match guns) is commonly seen in ESP class, the 9mm 1911 becomes more popular every year in that environment. I can attest that it works. The pistol I used to make Master in IDPA ESP was a Colt 1991A1 9mm tuned by Al Greco. Multiple time IDPA ESP champion Scott Warren was using a customized Springfield Armory 1911A1 9mm when last I saw him in competition, and he kicks butt with it.
Gila Hayes, one of the nation's best-known female firearms instructors and a shooting champion in her own right, has been shooting the Springfield 9mm a lot lately. A full-size 5" 1911A1 Springfield Armory is her teaching and match gun, while for concealed carry she packs its baby sister, the lightweight compact Ultra Carry in the same caliber. Another top instructor, Frank Cornwall, keeps a pair of Springfield Ultra Carry 9mms on hand for his female students. He tells me their performances almost invariably improve when he issues them one of these easy-shooting loaners.
For us older guys, arthritis can take the fun out of big-bore shooting when it afflicts the hands, wrists and elbows. The milder recoil of the 9mm can keep us in the game longer.
Another advantage is the availability of dirt-cheap 9mm factory ammo. I saw it in Venezuela before I saw it here. Twenty years ago, going there to teach for the first time, I found the .45 ACP 1911 was the cherished favorite for defense work, but ammo was extremely expensive and hard to find. On the other hand, 9mm Parabellum ammo from the government's CAVIM arsenal was available in quantity to Venezuelan citizens at very low prices. (Unlike some South American countries that ban military caliber pistols, Venezuela allows them because they don't consider handguns military weapons. Military rifle calibers, however, were in fact banned.) I've seen that happen all over again in my own country, because today, even with a war on, 9mm generic practice amino is available at proportionally lower prices than ever. Look at the volume prices advertised for foreign-made brands like Wolf or Sellier & Bellot. Check out the cost of a case of Blazer 9mm. In a state without sales tax, 100 rounds of Winchester USA white box 9mm can be purchased in a "big box" store for less than eleven dollars. Like the Venezuelans 20 years ago, Americans are simply finding the 9mm a bargain to shoot. The saving can, as it did in Venezuela, make it cost effective to use a .45 for home defense or concealed carry, and use an identical pistol in 9mm for intensive training and/or competition.
Full-Size Springfield
Springfield Armory offers the full-size all-steel gun with Novak low mount fixed sights for $875 and, with what it calls simply "adjustable target sights," for $923. I ordered one in stainless with the target sights, which are marked Springfield Armory and look remarkably like the redoubtable Bo-Mar. The sight is a copy, though a functional one and Springfield Armory uses genuine BoMars only on the upscale guns from their factory custom shop. This pistol is marked "MODEL 1911-A1/CAL 9 mm" on the left side of the slide.
I had the luxury of four of these pistols to test, instead of the usual single sample. During the testing, I taught a couple of classes at Firearms Academy of Seattle, and Gila Hayes, mentioned above, was kind enough to let me do some shooting with hers. In attendance at one of the advanced classes was another firearms instructor, Elliot Gilchrist of Minneapolis. Standing a strapping 6', 5", Elliott doesn't need a 9mm 1911 as an "orthopedic pistol" by any means. However, he likes having one around for students who can benefit from its easy handling, and he finds that he can shoot it a little bit faster than his favorite .45. I had a chance to shoot yet another at a Springfield Armory seminar in San Diego, and of course, I had the test pistol.
My test gun's trigger, out of the box, was within the high end of the specification promised of five to six pounds, and the release was crisp with only the slightest backlash. Gila and Elliot found the same with theirs when they were new, and both had had the pull weight brought down to about 4 1/2 pounds, which is still "street safe" and distinctly more manageable. Gila, who stands about 5'5" and has proportional hands, had a short trigger installed for a much easier trigger reach.
The wide levers of the ambidextrous thumb safety had room for seven coarse grooves. Some competitive shooters like those wide gas pedal levers on target pistols, but they can get in the way during concealed carry. Both Elliot and Gila trimmed theirs down to more manageable dimensions, which did not interfere with their handling characteristics and indeed probably improved them.
