style="font-size:15px;"> Switzerland is a nation of shooters. It is well known that the Swiss militia constitutes the entire able-bodied male population of the nation (Swiss women may join voluntarily, though it is not required) and that all are issued what may be the finest assault rifle in the world, SIG’s Stg.90.
The Sturmgewehr 90 is a superb, state-of-the-art assault weapon. However, the Swiss public takes marksmanship as one of their national sports, and most of that marksmanship is done with military weapons of various ages. Virtually every Swiss village I passed through had a 300-meter rifle range, and the ranges stay in constant, heavy use. In rifle matches, the ancient Schmidt-Rubin 7.5 mm straight-pull bolt-action rifle is still used to compete against the ultra-modern SIG Stg. 90.
I say all this to lead up to a point. The Swiss have a lot of pistol matches, too. As you might expect they fare well in ISU (International Shooting Union) Olympic-style target sports, and also have a well-established contingent of practical shooters who belong to IPSC (the International Practical Shooting Confederation). However, a good deal of their handgun competition also involves national standard military weapons. Over the course of the 20th Century, Swiss military-issue handguns have included such fabulously accurate weapons as the Luger pistol, the exquisite SIG-Neuhausen P210, and only since the latter quarter of that century the SIG P220 9mm.
The P220 tends to give consistently good accuracy with most .45 ACP ammunition. These groups were fired from 25 yards.
And there was one thing I couldn’t help but notice. The 9mm P220 keeps up with the famously accurate P210! This, clearly, is testimony to the P220 9mm’s match-grade accuracy, which is achieved without compromising total reliability, even with some very old pistols that have fired countless thousands of rounds over the decades.
The .38 Super P220 did not prove popular at all. In the United States, at least, it had always been a specialist’s cartridge. Handgun enthusiasts appreciated its flat trajectory. Handgun hunters appreciated its inherent power. Cops in the Depression years liked its deep penetration against criminals’ “bullet-proof vests” and automobiles of the period. But no one liked its mediocre accuracy.
The reason was that the .38 Super was not a true “rimless” auto pistol cartridge, but instead featured a semi-rimmed case. From its introduction in the late 1920s until the coming of the SIG-Sauer engineers, Colt and every other manufacturer cut the chambers of their .38 Supers to headspace on the rim. The chamber in SIG-Sauer P220 in .38 Super was cut to headspace at the case mouth, which allowed more consistent and solid chambering. Thus did the Browning BDA/SIG P220 become the first truly accurate factory-produced .38 Super pistol. The same headspacing was developed by gun barrel genius Irv Stone, the founder of Bar-Sto, and when put in 1911 target pistols resulted in the .38 Super cartridge’s renaissance in the shooting world, specifically in practical pistol competition.
It has been reported that the P220 has been produced in very small quantities in caliber .30 Luger. I cannot speak to its accuracy as I have never seen one, let alone tested one. I am not aware of any nation or agency that has adopted the P220 in that caliber. Thus, its accuracy remains an unknown quantity, at least to this author.
Idiosyncrasies
In earlier models, there were some specimens in .45 caliber which did not feed one particular cartridge in one particular situation. The round was the old “flying ashtray,” a short and very wide 200-grain hollow-point from CCI Speer, who called it at various times the Lawman load and the Inspector load. It was notorious for jamming 1911 .45 pistols. The SIG would normally feed it just fine, but with some of the seven-round magazines, if the pistol was reloaded from slide-lock, the short Speer 200-grain would take a little dip coming off the magazine’s follower and strike low enough on the feed ramp to cause a six o’clock jam.
Most simply got by with another brand of ammo. My own solution was to load my personal P220 with the eight of the flying ashtrays, one in the pipe and seven in the mag, and then load the spare magazines with some other type of JHP round. My P220 never failed to feed this infamous gun-jammer once it was loaded into the P220 and the first round was chambered.
Over the years, the problem has resolved itself with new designs. The current 200-grain CCI Speer .45 offering, the Gold Dot bullet, does not seem to have any problem feeding in late model SIGs. I think it’s a combination of the improved fourth-generation P220 .45 magazine, and better feeding characteristics of the Gold Dot 200-grain bullet compared to the conventional jacketed hollow-point which preceded it.
Chuck Taylor is a contemporary and observed the same thing. He wrote in his edition of The Gun Digest Book of Combat Handgunnery, “My P220 shoots very well indeed, with three-shot Ransom Rest 25-meter groups averaging slightly over 2 inches. I’ve also had no functioning problems whatsoever with the gun, although in some of the earlier versions, some problems were reported with several styles of JHP bullet. SIG Sauer, to their credit, immediately relieved the front of the magazine body to allow better bullet clearance, which solved the problem nicely.” (4)
P220 .45 Magazines
About those four generations of P220 .45 magazines. They go like this:
First generation: Seven-round BDA/European style. Will only work in P220s with butt-heel magazine release.
Second generation: Seven-round P220 American style. Will work in American, European, and BDA model .45s.
Third generation: The so-called “DPS Magazine.” A P220 American mag with the same flat-bottom floorplate as the first two generations, but modified in spring and follower to take an eighth round. These were created for the Texas Department of Public Safety when they adopted the P220 American .45, and reportedly, Texas DPS had great success with them. Personally, I have never trusted a magazine designed for seven rounds, which then had an eighth forced into it; we fool Mother Nature at our peril.
The eighth cartridge in a magazine originally designed for seven put the rounds so tightly in the stack inside the magazine that there was no flex in the spring. This meant that if the P220 was reloaded with the slide forward, either in administrative loading getting ready for duty or in a tactical reload with a live round already in the chamber, the shooter really had to slam the magazine in to make certain that it locked in place. After experimenting with the DPS magazine, I went back to the earlier ones. Police had already cautiously waited for decades to switch from revolvers to autos because of fears of reliability. Their mantra had been, “Six for sure beats 14 maybe.” My reasoning as to P220 magazines was similar: “Seven for sure beats eight maybe.”
Fourth generation: Eight-round current production. These are unquestionably the finest .45 caliber magazines ever made for the P220 pistol. They are crafted of stainless steel, always a bonus when a gun and its spare magazines are carried in hostile environments, which can be rain and snow attacking guns holstered outside the clothing, or heat and humidity and salty, corrosive human sweat when the pistol is carried concealed. Moreover, the Gen Four SIG P220 .45 magazines are extended very slightly at the bottom, into a hollow floorplate. This does two good things. First, the buffer pad on the floorplate makes magazine insertion easier and more positive, especially under stress. Second, the added space inside the floorplate allows the eighth round to be stored there without too rigid a spring stack or undue pressure on the magazine springs. These are what I now carry in my P220 .45.
A word on aftermarket magazines. I normally trust only the magazines the gunmaker sells with its firearms. For the P220 .45, I trust Sauer-made SIG magazines and I trust Mec-Gar magazines. This may be seen
