Received this in an email today...

“I went to the shooting range to fire a couple of mags with my G17.

And the last magazine went Boom, Boom Boom, Boom BOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!! accompanied by a huge fireball. I thought someone would punch me in the face at full tilt (and I know how this feels like) and the pistol was ripped out of my hand.

Haha! At first I thought I shot myself. Everything felt numb for a second. But when I realized that I did not loose consciousness I recognized warm liquid running down my face. I went back to my friends and asked them where it came from. It was from around the eyes and some other spots.

Some minor spall hit the bone at the edge of the left and right eye. I was the luckiest guy ever because I didn´t wear Eyepro. This situation gave me a broad hint and I still can´t believe, how lucky I was not to loose my sight or get some severe injuries.

At first I assumed that the reason of the self-destruction was a squib load. Due to the fact that I couldn´t disassemble the pistol anymore, I went to the Glock Factory with it. They were able to put it apart and told me that they think that the Kaboom was caused by overpressure of the cartridge because they didn´t find evidence for a squib load. Hard to believe for a 9mm. But I talked to the ammo manufacturer afterwards and he told me that they were able to create a load with enough pressure to make this happen. Anyways.

The pistol could not be opened again because the rest of the cartridge jammed in it. The ejector was bended outwards unnaturally. The majority of the explosion went out through the magazine slot. The mag release button was ripped into two pieces and the opposite of the button was blown out and pushed my hand off the pistol. The rest of the blast was directed between the slide and the grip. This is, where I got the shrapnel from.

As every Glock owner probably knows, the chamber of a Glock is built in a way, that it doesn´t support the whole round. About the last millimeter or so is unsupported as a kind of a predetermined breaking point for an over-pressure caused by the ammo. A common 9 mm round produces about 2500 bar/36259,5 psi. When a round has more than 5000 bar/72519 psi it explodes in the area of the unsupported place and most of the blast goes out through the magazine (slot). At least that is the explanation the technicians at Deutsch Wagram gave me.

There are also other opinions that the cause of this gap is due to the angle of the feed ramp... (unintentionally) .

They estimated that the pressure of my round was up to 6000 bar/87022,8 psi. Not bad. And I think it was also luck that there were no more bullets in the magazine when the explosion occurred.

My Glock was unusable obviously. There was a hair-crack in the chamber, 2 hair-cracks in the slide and one broken out part at the slide.

The round was a Hirtenberger factory load 9mm (nickel plated case, bronze projectile). It turned out that this lot should have been destroyed and never hit the market. But it obviously did. Afterwards I got word that more accidents occurred with this ammo.”













Conclusion: ALWAYS WEAR EYE-PROTECTION !!!

Thanks for sharing. Safety always pays!

ouch..now I surely hope our Glock users go right away and check their ammo supplies to make darn sure they dont have any of those rounds!!!!

A little research will show that he was using surplus ammo meant for smg's. The other lesson here is know what you are shooting. The maker isn't responsible for misuse or resales by original buyers. I would not be standing next to this dolt on the firing line.

Mac,
It would seem to me that the ammo should have been marked if it was above the SAAMI standards. Maybe it was and he didn't think about looking.

If it isn't marked or the gun is not marked then it is a defect in my mind. My revolver can shoot any ammo made for it and the Colt 45ACP that I had could handle any ammo that chambered. Is this ammo that much above "standard" loadings?

From my research the ammo was designed for blowback SMG's like the British sten gun. These have heavy breech blocks and the rounds were designed to operate the actions under adverse conditions. The bronze bullet and nickle case were the first clues but here is an extract from an ATF warning from a number of years back. Hertenburger also makes 9mm +p loads. Firing a large number of these in a Glock with its unsupported head design is also asking for trouble in my opinion. The writer indicates he had fired a "couple" of mags and this was the last round. Nineteen fast fired rounds of +p and that barrell was getting pretty hot and the gun was taking quite a hammering. Make that +p+ rounds and I am surprised it didn't go sooner. I noted also we weren't shown a headstamp or the box the rounds came from. I suspect this was not an oversight. I cringe at some of the stuff people put in rifles and pistols. Some surplus military ammo for some soviet and chinese surplus weapons is truly bad yet people will shoot it like 22lr in semi guns and blame the gun when the actions jam or an extractor tears out of a rim.

Washington--The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) has beenadvised by Hirtenberger AG, Hirtenberg, Austria, that certain 9X19 mmcaliber ammunition produced by Hirtenberger is unsafe for use in anyhandgun. The ammunition, designated L7A1 and produced ln the years 1990 through1992, was produced for the British Ministry of Defense specifically foruse in submachineguns under adverse conditions. The ammunition was loaded to produce pressures far in excess of that intended for use in handguns. The manufacturer advises that up to 12 million rounds of this ammunitionhas recently been sold on the world surplus market. The ammunition can beidentified by the following head stamp located on the bottom of thecartridge case12 O'clock position: HP3 O'clock position: 90, 91, or 926 O'clock position: L7Al9 O'clock position: the marking of a cross within a circle

It at first sounds like a Glock problem and turns out it's an idiot problem, stories like this (sort of bait and switch) seem to be prevailing on the internet. You never know what to trust so you don't trust anything. Almost as bad as viruses.

MacD wrote:

A little research will show that he was using surplus ammo meant for smg's. The other lesson here is know what you are shooting. The maker isn't responsible for misuse or resales by original buyers. I would not be standing next to this dolt on the firing line.

Yep. I once owned a "first wave" import Glock 17 and inherited a lot of surplus 9mm ammo with it. Most was Israeli and Egyptian manufacture. Since I don't read either language and there were no English sub-titles, I ended up firing two rounds of the Egyptian surplus that I later learned was intended for SMGs. The first one blew the magazine out of the gun and stung my hand pretty well. The case was ruptured at the unsupported area of the chamber but did eject. Thinking that it was just a bad round, I triggered another with similar results. (Okay, slow learner.) It finally soaked in that maybe this ammo wasn't the best match for my gun. There was no damage to the weapon, which speaks highly of the sturdy nature of the Glock.

It does pay to check things out before disaster strikes.