Well, I don't believe anyone here was saying that.Originally Posted by TiroFijo
OTOH, I rather doubt the designers said "Hey… let's taper these cases, so 100+ years from now guys can argue about it on the internet."
IOW, there was a good reason to make the cases tapered instead of straight-walled…
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Well, no other tan JMB designed the 38 ACP in 1900 (two years before the 9x19 para) as a straight walled cartridge... so perhaps the good reasons escaped him, and again when designing the 45 ACP just a few years later (1904 IIRC).
Even though tapered cases were the norm in the good old days, by the turn of the century the taper decreased in most rifle cartridges. And while pistol rounds were initially modelled as scaled down rifle rounds, I think most designers quickly understood that taper was less important for lower pressure pistol rounds.
Like I said before, the 9x19 is simply a 7.65x21 case necked up to 9 mm (the euro equivalent of the 38 caliber, a well established diameter for handgun rounds), and with the overall length to fit into the existing Luger pistol. If the resulting round had less taper, that quickly showed not to be a problem. Even thougn I think Luger's intention probably was to have some taper in the case, it is for us to wonder what would have happened if it resulted into a straight round.
I'll bet that JMB having started working with old west style guns first, guns and having quite a bit of experience with revolver cartridges, that this might have colored his experiences, he seemed to like semi-rims on his pistol rounds as well.
The Euro guys seemed to have just scaled down a rifle round to arrive at the various 7.6x pistol rounds, and most of the metallic cartridge rifle rounds of the day were tapered quite a bit.
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