It is one of the great sadnesses of my life that I was not around in time in order to stop the mass adoptation of some little European cartridge as the standard defensive round of the American public — the 9×19 Parabellum.
Sure, I carry that cartridge myself most of the time, but something about sticking it to the Krauts twice using big-bore .45s and then turning around and adopting the technology they used to lose with just doesn’t sit right with me. It would be like if the GIs parked their flathead-powered roadsters, handled business, and then came and immediately threw them in the crusher and started driving around in Volkswagens. Some things just ain’t it.
What’s worse is that the Americans developed a perfectly viable alternative to this European cartridge all on their own — the .38 Super, or in the parlance of its time, the Super .38.
Without getting into a protracted history lesson, the .38 Super was born from the earlier .38 Auto, and first chambered in Colt’s 1911s in the pre-WWII era; it was specifically designed for this firearm. It found fairly widespread use among both lawmen and gangsters at the time, and perhaps most infamously played a role in Bonnie and Clyde’s final gunfight in the hands of Texas Ranger Frank Hamer. Its popularity waned in the post-war era until IPSC shooters revived it somewhat because of the advantages it presents versus competing with a similar major cartridge such as the .45 Auto.
.38 Super Ballistics
Perhaps the best way to compare these Axis and Allied powers is with the ubiquitous 124/125 grain bullets that can be fired out of both cartridges. Almost every 9mm loading with 124s you’ll find is subsonic (which is under 1,125 feet per second, in case you’ve forgotten. It happens.) between 900 and 1100 feet per second, with . Of course, if you drop down to the lighter 115gr bullets for plinking you will be supersonic, and you can also load my preference of 147grs at 1,000fps.
With the same bullet in the .38 Super, you are looking at 1,000-1,200fps according to the Hornady manual. Lyman 48th has a loading beyond 1,300fps, and the Vihtavuori manual claims over 1,500fps with a 124gr bullet and a 5.5″ barrel. With numbers like this the cartridge stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the .357 Sig and Magnums.
In real-world applications with defensive loads in both chamberings, it seems unlikely that an assailant would really be able to tell much of a difference between
As a .357 Sig shooter as well, it appears to me that the .38 Super did what the Sig set out to do about seventy years beforehand. Why has this all-American handcannon largely been relegated to the dustbins of history?
Because of the old Strother Martin’s Razor — failure to communicate. The gun makers and the ammunition developers not marching in lockstep. The hardware not supporting the software, if you will. Another case of a great cartridge that never received the support it was due. The original 6.8 Western.
Because you can’t go out to Guns.com and buy a double-stack .38 same-day that doesn’t look like a comical race gun, no matter how much you or I would like. STI (now Staccato) offered a double-stack 2011 chambered as such, but those uncommon, to say the least. Chip McCormick offered a frame kit for a double-stack .38. Many of the custom smiths will still build you one (including Guncrafter), but obviously it is real slim pickin’s for practical .38s compared to their European counterparts.
So the Super .38 might be best enjoyed in Browning’s original single-stack creation — still the pinnacle of fighting handguns in the most practiced hands.
A single-stack .355-caliber handgun might not make the most sense as a practical carry arm in 2025 on paper, or on the computer . Then again, if you aren’t living in any of the war-torn American inner cities, maybe it makes more sense than it would appear at first glance. The unequivocally-finest sidearm of the 20th Century, chambered in a high-powered and modern caliber with more capacity than the big .45s.
Three yards, three seconds, and three shots? She’ll do the job just fine. Just ask Frank Hamer.
