![]() This particular finish is done to military specification so the contract didn’t take into account the effect the Middle Eastern sand would have on the components. I’m not going to place any blame on Checkmate at this point as I’ve had a few of their M9 magazines myself and never had issue but it seems that the parkerized finish collects fine sand particles and can result in stuck mags or stuck followers. While some of these may be the result of the overall condition of the issued M9, most of these problems can be traced back to the issue magazines from Checkmate Industries. Recently there have been reports of magazine issues down range in Iraq and Afghanistan. I didn’t particularly like the first round double action trigger pull but replacing the main spring with the 92D (double action only) piece helped clean it up considerably. As much as I say I don’t particularly life the Berettas, I have to admit that I’ve put thousands of rounds through them, with the exception of some bad ammunition, had never had any problems with reliability. Not that ANY officer would not take care of their primary firearm. More often than not this has been traced back to a lack of cleaning and improper lubrication. Some officers have had failure to feed and failure to eject problems. ![]() This isn’t to say that there haven’t been some issues the Berettas do require some basic maintenance and don’t particularly like cheap non-Beretta magazines. No reports of this type of failure have been reported in any of the Maryland production guns. After finally admitting there was an issue, Beretta redesigned the locking block so that in the event of a failure, the slide would be unable to fly off the rails. It was determined that there was a metallurgy issue with the Italian made slides. They continued to fire all three to failure with the cracked pistol firing 23,310 rounds before the slide let go and the other two reached 30,083 and 30,545 rounds. Of the three civilian market M92SB pistols the Army had for testing, one was showing cracks. By all official accounts the rounds in question were standard M882 pistol ammunition firing a 124 grain bullet at 1113 feet per second. The Navy notified all branches of the military as well as Beretta and the Army began their own tests. There have been “reports” of the Navy using sub-machine gun rounds that caused these failures. The injuries were lacerations to the face and one broken tooth (nobody died). I know that many feel that S&W got shafted during the trials (and I agree) but that discussion could take and entire article all by its lonesome so I chose not to go into it here.ĭuring the first phase of issue there were three reports of locking block failures by Navy Special Warfare Group operators with one civilian production pistol and two first production run 92s. Only the Sig Sauer and the Beretta passed all the qualifications. That being said, the Beretta 92 was subjected to an enormous beating during the military trials including firing 35,000 rounds. The ergonomics never suited me and I took umbrage to the replacement of the 1911 (especially since I enlisted in the NAVY in March 1985). I have to say up front that I’ve never been a fan of the Beretta 92/M9. This was a major reason for the high capacity 9 mm becoming so popular in law enforcement. The FS designation indicates an enlarged hammer pin that was the response to failures supposedly resulting from firing sub-machinegun rounds, more on this later.ĭue to the sheer numbers that the military was ordering and the fact that these new pistols were being manufactured in Accokeek, Maryland it was a foregone conclusion that this pistol would be adopted by police departments (especially in Maryland). It is fed by a 15 round staggered detachable box magazine. The "F" and "FS" (for Federal) models have a safety lever that also functions as a de-cocking lever. The Beretta Model 92 is a 9mm semi-automatic pistol that has a double-action first trigger pull, followed by a single-action trigger pull for subsequent rounds. Let us just say that the 9mm Beretta won out over the Sig P226 due to cost issues and replaced the 1911 because civilians said it should. That subject would be full of conjecture and, in some cases, anger. ![]() I will not delve into the politics of such a decision. On this day the United States Army adopted the Beretta 92F as their sidearm choice, designating it the M9. ![]() January 14 th, 1985 is a noteworthy day for the United States military. ![]()
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