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Was it Colt?

NighthawkNighthawk Member Posts: 12,022 ✭✭✭
edited May 2002 in Ask the Experts
Was it norma and Colt that pioneered the 10mm? Or was it Norma and someone else? I knew that answer but my mind is slipping.


THANKS!!

Rugster
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Comments

  • axlerfanaxlerfan Member Posts: 713 ✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    im thinking that perhaps it was the bren 10 that was originally designed for the 10mm...i could be mistaken
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  • budmottbudmott Member Posts: 155 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Bren Ten [handgun], Norma [made the bullets/cartridges] from
    a Jeff Cooper idea. Anyway that's what I heard.
    bud

    If it weren't for lawyers, I wouldn't need a lawyer.
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  • BlokeyBlokey Member Posts: 284 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Not to go too far off on a tangent but...

    The "Br" in Bren stood for Brno. If you've ever seen a Bren Ten, it's a CZ75 based copy.
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  • JudgeColtJudgeColt Member Posts: 1,790 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    The idea of the 10mm came from a Guns & Ammo project in the 1960s where a Browning High Power was converted to .40 caliber using a rifle cartridge case of some kind (don't remember the parent case) cut down.

    Cooper, before he became known for his .45 advocacy, experimented with what he called (I think) a Super 9mm, which I think was really a souped up .38 Super-type cartridge. He was trying for .357 power in a pistol cartridge as I recall. (This is 30-40 years ago and I cannot remember what I had for breakfast, let alone these details. I have not gone to my archives to verify, so someone please correct me if my memory has failed me.) Of course, being a big bullet fan, Cooper was probably thinking of some way to speed up a bigger bullet than the 9mm bullet. Physics being what it is, speeding up a .45 bullet to the speeds desired was not possible, but cutting a little weight off the bullet and reducing the bore a bit to .40 would allow the speeds desired with a bullet that is still a lot bigger than the 9mm.

    When the CZ75 came out in 1975, he praised it as egronomically outstanding, and started his saying that the only good thing about the 9x19 cartridge was the wonderful pistols made for it. At some point, the idea of combining the egronomics of the CZ75 with the .40 G&A came to him, and the Bren Ten was born. Norma developed the cartridge and Dornaus & Dixon Enterprises made the pistol. Like many startup gun companies, D & D was undercapitalized, took deposits, did not deliver, etc.. Finally, guns were delivered, but with no magazines. The Sonny Crocket character on Miami Vice carried a Bren Ten, which helped keep the deposits flowing, but guns were few. I think there were law suits, etc. before D & D folded.

    The 10mm would have died at that time, except that Colt decided to chamber the Government Model for it. That saved the cartridge until the .40 S&W essentially killed it again. The 10mm continues on life support for a few fans of its power.
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