Many attempts have been made to "improve" upon the ballistics offered by the original .45 ACP. The .400 Cor-Bon was the first of the proprietary cartridges discussed here to have factory ammo available. It is still one of the most useful of these cartridges.

I am a compulsive improver. I freely admit that I have never been able to accept the status quo in regard to most any tool in general and firearms in particular.

I can't recall ever owning a firearm I didn't eventually make some improvements on. Seldom have I been deterred by fears of diminishing the firearm's value or feelings of my own ineptness. With each new firearm there was always the proper period of respect, a few days to admire the polish of the blue or the shimmering swirls of the walnut, then I boldly ventured where the meek dare not tread. To the workbench! I learned a lot in the process and felt a sense of pride in most of my improvements, but in my early years I confess I did improve one or two firearms right into the spare-parts bin, not to mention various household appliances and a '67 Chevy.

My improvement compulsion has not been confined to the mechanics of firearms. I have also sought to improve on ballistics. Take the .45 ACP, for example. In its original configuration it has survived and prospered for 97 years with no help from me, yet, like many others, I have tried to improve it. I first climbed aboard the souped-up-.45 bandwagon in 1987 by cutting down .45 Winchester Magnum cases to .45 ACP dimensions and stoking the cases with heavy doses of medium-burning powders.

The bandwagon was already quite crowded at the time. Other improvers had been wildcatting the .45 for decades, and many were toying with stronger cases and higher velocities. Writer Dean Grennel was working along the same lines I was in the mid- to late '80s, only he was using .451 Detonics cases and achieving more spectacular results.

It was, after all, the short-lived firearms manufacturer, Detonics, that showed us what kind of performance could be wrung from a .45 caliber 1911 by strengthening the case. The .451 Detonics was basically a .45 Win Mag case shortened to fit in a 1911 magazine, yet long enough that it would not chamber in a .45 ACP barrel. It was a logical step. The .45 Win Mag operates at 41,300 CUP, and the case has proven to be strong enough to handle these pressures in guns where the case head hangs unsupported over the feed ramp, as is common with the 1911 design.

This doesn't mean there are not risks involved with high-pressure cartridges. The .45 Auto operates at very mild pressure and thus has a large margin of safety. The rounds we are about to discuss use up some of that safety margin. Any handgun cartridge that operates at 30,000-plus psi, as most of our modern autoloading cartridges do, is more likely to have dangerous pressure spikes from bullet setback, improper loading and other ailments. No need to panic. It is just something you should be aware of.

There was quite a stir in the gun press when the .45 Win Mag was introduced in 1979, but it is interesting to note that the cartridge was already 20 years old at that time. It is dimensionally and ballistically identical to a cartridge introduced in Canada in 1959 called the .45 NAACO. The .45 NAACO was intended as a military cartridge, and a robust autoloading handgun was developed to fire it. The cartridge was short-lived, however, and was dead and forgotten when Winchester resurrected it as the .45 Win Mag. As to my own experiments in the late '80s, I was a rank amateur compared to improvers like Grennel and timid in my expectations. I set my cutoff point comparatively low: a 185-grain hollowpoint at 1,150 fps.

Barrel makers have profited from the influx of new cartridges. Shown here is an aftermarket barrel for the .40 Super installed in a 1911.

Don't laugh; that was sizzling by factory standards back then. This was before we had +P .45 factory loads. A look at a loading manual of the time would show darn few, if any, loads breaking the 1,000-fps mark, even with the lightest bullets available at the time. I wrote about my experiments and sent the manuscript off to one of the major gun magazines. The response I received a few weeks later was notable, for me at least, in that it was my first rejection letter. The editor was nice and wrote a lengthy reply as to why he could not share my genius with the world. He did say he liked the article, but the loads were just too hot to publish.

We have come a long way.

The .45 Super
Dean Grennel's efforts to increase the performance of the .45 ACP were brought to the public's attention in a 1988 Gun World article by Tom Ferguson. The .45 Super was originally based on .451 Detonics cases trimmed to .45 ACP length. Grennel reasoned that a case of the same external dimensions as the .45 ACP made more sense than Detonics' elongated one, as standard loads could be used in the gun without sacrificing the accuracy advantage of correct headspacing. If .45 Super loads were shot in .45s not set up for the hotter round, they would likely pound the gun into an early demise, but they would not blow it up.

Custom pistolsmith Ace Hindman worked with Ferguson and Grennel and designed a 1911 that would handle the added recoil of the Super cartridge. This entailed not only a heavier recoil spring but also modifications to the firing pin to alleviate primer flow.

.45 Super Factory Ballistics 185 grain at 1,300 fps 200 grain at 1,200 fps 230 grain at 1,100 fps

Ace Custom continues to produce .45 Super handguns under the guidance of Ace's son, Garey Hindman. Garey trademarked the .45 Super name in 1994, and the cartridge evolved from being a wildcat to commercially loaded status due to an agreement between Ace Custom and Triton Ammo. This agreement came to an end, and production of the cartridge by Triton ceased early in 2000. Factory ammo for the .45 Super is available from Texas Ammunition, a company co-founded by Garey Hindman.

It is worth mentioning that neither the .45 Super nor any of the proprietary rounds covered in this article would be available in factory-loaded form were it not for the Starline brass company in Texas. Before Starline started making custom brass available in relatively small quantities, introducing a new cartridge was an enormously expensive undertaking. The big ammo companies like Federal and Winchester will not fire up the equipment for a piddling 100,000-case order.

The .450 SMC
In the later part of 2000, Triton announced a new cartridge based on the .45 ACP case head. The .450 SMC is basically a .45 Super with a small primer pocket. A smaller primer pocket means more brass in the web area, but I am not sure if the added strength is really needed here. There may also be some ballistic advantages, and small rifle primers are not as prone to primer flow in these cartridges. But I suspect one reason for the small primer is to make the round visibly different from the .45 Super.

450 SMC Factory Ballistics 165 grain at 1,450 230 grain at 1,150

Of course, Triton could have just marketed the .45 Super under a different name, as Garey Hindman has no lock on the design itself, only the .45 Super name. Still, having a visibly different case more clearly separates the .450 SMC from the .45 Super.

External dimensions of the .450 SMC are the same as the .45 Super and .45 ACP. Factory ballistics are quoted by Triton to be slightly higher than the .45 Super.