Beretta Pistols Through the Ages
Hot Topless Italians
The family lineage is obvious at a glance.
The action of the Beretta M9 (bottom) is not necessarily
better or worse than that of the Browning Hi-Power;
it is simply different.
I’m a mechanical engineer, and I do so love machines. I find the disparate approaches that really smart folks took to accomplish similar goals simply fascinating. In no place is this curious finding put on more glorious display than in the field of firearms.
Most of the world’s autoloading service pistols operate off of the time-proven short recoil system pioneered by the legendary John Moses Browning in his eponymous Browning Hi-Power. In the case of the Hi-Power, the chamber end of the barrel mates with a slot milled into the slide. Recoil forces push the barrel back, the barrel disengages from the slide, and extraction and ejection result.
Compact, reliable, versatile and lightweight, that thing is apparently perfect. Your favorite SIG, GLOCK, HK, Shadow Systems, SCCY and Canik pistols may look different, but they all run off the same basic design. There are, however, a few outliers.
The HK VP70 and Hi-Point C9 are both 9mm pistols that operate via direct blowback. In each case, there is no rigid lockup between the barrel and slide. A powerful recoil spring counteracts the relatively stout mechanical energy produced by the round as it fires, holding the action shut until pressures drop to a safe level for cycling. However, this is an inelegant solution.
The Model 1951 was a slim, locked-breech design chambered
for the 9mm Para. The top button on the M1951 is a crossbolt safety.
The bottom is the magazine release.
Origin Story
“9mm Beretta. Fifteen in the mag, one up the pipe. Wide ejection port … no feed jams.”
That edgy bit of dialogue was uttered by Danny Glover’s Detective Roger Murtaugh as he pawed over his new partner’s Beretta 92F in the timelessly awesome movie Lethal Weapon. That movie and that scene sold me a spanking new Beretta 92F back in the heady days of the wondernines. I had vainly hoped that owning the same gun that Mel Gibson and Bruce Willis had wielded on the big screen might somehow make me cool out in the real world. That, predictably, did not work. However, Lethal Weapon was my first serious introduction to Beretta handguns.
Standing in marked contrast to all those weapons previously mentioned, the storied Italian firm of Beretta took a slightly different tack. From the very beginning, Beretta pistols have employed an open-slide architecture that is fairly unique in the world of combat handguns. These guns and the company that makes them are refreshingly original.
Founded in 1526, Beretta is the oldest gun company in the world. In fact, Beretta is one of the oldest companies of any sort. They have supplied weapons for every major European war since 1650.
Beretta’s first military contract was to supply 185 arquebus barrels to the Republic of Venice. For this, they were paid 296 ducats, whatever that is. The company has been owned by the same family for half a millennium.
According to Ian Fleming’s novels, the Beretta Model 418,
chambered in .25 ACP, was actually James Bond’s service
pistol before he traded up to the Walther PPK.
The Model 1934 in .380ACP (top) was an evolutionary development
of the previous 418. Both were straight blowback pistols.
Taking The Top Off
The modern Beretta story began with the Model 1915. Designed by legendary gun designer Tullio Marengoni, the M1915 was chambered in 9mm Glisenti and replaced the previous Model 1910 in Italian military service. A fairly uninspired straight blowback design, the M1915 pioneered the open-slide architecture that was to define subsequent Beretta pistols for more than a century.
The biggest difference between the M1915 and subsequent Beretta designs was the sighting system. In the M1915, the fixed rear sight rides atop the slide. However, the front sight sprouts from the barrel. The slide is cut to accommodate that. Most later designs mounted both the front and rear sights on the slide assembly itself.
The subsequent Model 418, M1923, M1934 and M1935 were all straight blowback guns in a variety of European calibers, including .25 ACP, .32 ACP, 9x17mm Corto (.380 ACP) and 9mm Glisenti. More than 2 million were produced. The M1934 and M1935, in particular, saw widespread service during WWII. Throughout it all, these guns retained that curious open-topped Marengoni slide design.
The Beretta M1915 pioneered the cutaway slide design
that was to characterize a generation of Beretta pistols.
Photo: Rock Island Auctions
Getting Complicated
In 1949, Beretta launched the M1951. Chambered for either the 9mm Parabellum or 7.65x21mm, the M1951 was called either the Helwan or the Brigadier, depending on whether it was made in Egypt or Italy. However, these cartridges were a bit too spunky for a simple blowback action in such a trim chassis, so Beretta engineers looked to their previous German allies for inspiration.
Most every other autoloading service pistol on the planet employed Browning’s short recoil system wherein the barrel locked directly to the slide. However, the Beretta M1951 used the same tilting-wedge, recoil-driven system pioneered in the Walther P38. In this case, a pivoting wedge underneath the barrel locks the barrel and slide together at the moment of firing. Recoil forces then push this assembly back slightly to cam the locking wedge clear and allow the slide to extract and eject the cartridge.
This system is not necessarily better or worse than the Browning design. It is simply different. It also allows the gun to utilize that same curious skeletonized open-top slide architecture of the previous blowback guns.
The M1951 in 9mm Para feeds from a single-stack, 8-round detachable box magazine and features a nice single-action trigger that trips an external hammer. Curiously, the magazine release is a button buried in the left grip. The other checkered button is a pushbutton crossbolt safety.
The end result is thin, concealable and effective. However, you do have to manually cock the hammer before firing. The subsequent Beretta Model 70-series came in .22 LR, .32 ACP and .380 ACP and was a direct blowback weapon that also utilized a single-action ignition system.
Most 20th-century Beretta autoloading pistols share
this curious open-topped slide architecture.
The locking system of the Beretta M9 (top) was
copied from that of the German wartime Walther P38.
The State Of The Art
In 1976, Beretta launched its Series 80 pistols, the most common of which was the Cheetah. These guns came in the same three calibers as the 70 series and were also unlocked blowback. However, they debuted a nice single-action/double-action trigger system modeled after that of the P38. Certain of the guns also used a double-stack, single-feed magazine holding either 12 or 13 rounds.
The Beretta Cheetah is an adorable little carry gun. Mine runs .380 ACP and carries a dozen rounds onboard. However, the unlocked blowback design makes it unexpectedly unpleasant to shoot. Like the Walther PPK and Mauser HSc in the same chambering, these unlocked .380 ACP guns are surprisingly vigorous.
The Beretta M9 served as the U.S. military’s
standard service pistol for decades.
Browning’s short recoil operating system is simple, elegant and rugged.
The Beretta locking system uses a pivoting wedge
to secure the slide to the barrel.
The Definitive Beretta
In 1976, Beretta also first offered the 9mm Para Model 92. This full-figured handgun incorporated the single-action/double-action trigger, a double-stack, single-feed 15-round magazine, and their characteristic cropped-top slide design. The safety is a pivoting lever built into the slide that automatically drops the hammer safely over a loaded chamber. A slightly modified version was christened the M9 and served as the U.S. military’s standard service pistol from 1985 until 2017. I packed one myself back when I wore the uniform and felt cool doing it. There have been 3.5 million produced in total.
For more than a century now, all these Beretta pistols have sported the same basic open-slide architecture. No offense to Detective Murtaugh, but after a lifetime of study, I can’t really say if that adds much to the guns’ reliability or not. If anything, it seems like it might allow more funk to worm its way into the action. Regardless, little will get your blood pumping faster than a little quality time with one of these hot topless Italians.
