![]() 45 auto, but Smith hardly skipped a beat, opting to release the M39 into the civilian market in 1955, thus ushering in both the first U.S.-designed double action semiautomatic pistol of any kind and S&W’s First Generation of autopistols.įast-forward to 1967, and, as Massad Ayoob noted in a 2014 American Handgunner article, “There was a time when the Illinois State Police encouraged its troopers to use their issue weapons as much as possible. Lo and behold, the Army decided for the time being to abandon its search for a replacement for its venerable M1911. With that in mind, S&W began its development of the Model 39 in 1949 and sent it to the Army service pistol trials in 1954. Army Ordnance Corps that they decided to issue a proposal for an American equivalent of the P-38. However, during WWII, the Walther P-38 left a sufficiently positive impression on the U.S. Prior to the Cold War, the 9mm Parabellum cartridge had been an almost exclusively European venture. ![]() If you wish to nitpick, the S&W M39 wasn’t a true “Wonder Nine,” as it had a mere 8-round magazine, but the caliber and DA trigger still met the criteria. That was the year that the Smith & Wesson (S&W) Model 39 was adopted by the forward-thinking Illinois State Police (ISP). However, to find the first historical example of a DA 9mm autopistol being adopted by Stateside cops, you actually need to go all the way back to … 1967. high-capacity double-stack 9mm semiautomatic pistols with traditional double-action (DA) trigger lockwork, they’re naturally inclined to think of the 1980s, as this was indeed the decade that such handguns began to proliferate in domestic American police holsters to replace the longstanding. Jeff Cooper derisively called them, the “crunchenticker” - i.e. When handgun hobbyists think of the rise of the so-called “ Wonder Nines,” - or as the late Lt.
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