.30 Super Carry: My 7.65 French Long is Back! (feat. S&W Shield Plus)

Want a more in-depth review of the S&W Shield Plus in .30SC? Check out James Reeves’ video today on TFBTV:

When Federal announced their new .30 Super Carry cartridge, I was really excited to see the rebirth of the 7.65mm French Long caliber. That round was originally developed for the Pedersen Device in late WW1, and then adopted by the French military for its 1935 pistols and MAS38 submachine gun. It was 7.65x20mm, and it offered good penetration compared to 9x19mm Parabellum with light recoil.

Well, the new Federal cartridge is actually not deliberately based on that French heritage – the Federal folks I spoke with at SHOT show had never heard of it (rather to my disappointment). They independently developed a straight-wall .32 caliber long semiauto pistol cartridge because modern bullet construction allows it to have equivalent terminal performance to 9×19 with about a 20% increase in magazine capacity. The .30 Super Carry is a substantially higher pressure round than the old French cartridge (50,000 psi), so that is can obtain a good velocity (1250 fps with a 100-grain projectile) from the short barrel of a subcompact carry pistol.

I think the cartridge has interesting applications in two main areas. One is subcompact carry pistols, like the S&W Shield Plus that has been released in .30SC. With a 17-round (!) capacity, it removes (IMO) any need to carry a spare magazine. The other area is in PDWs and PCCs. Being able to have full-size magazines with 20% more ammunition than 9×19 models would be a nice advantage in a carbine sort of platform, and the high working pressure of the cartridge will also likely give it a nice bump in velocity out of a 10″-16″ barrel.

32 Comments

  1. IMO, carrying a spare mag isn’t just for the extra rounds but also to have a spare in case the primary mag malfunctions. If the mags are good quality and the rounds are to factory specs, and if the shooter has previously run several rounds through the mags with no issues, then there’s the risk of a mag malfunctioning is low. But the risk is there nonetheless.

  2. To me the .30 Super Carry is much more similar to the 8mm Roth Steyr, both for general dimensions and energy.

      • However the 7.63×21 Mannlicher, like the 7.65X20 Long, seems to have worse performances than the 8mm Roth Steyr. Both produce about 300J of energy, while the 8mm Roth Steyr is above 400J.

      • Seeing the ballistics of the 8mm RS and .30 SC, it almost seems the designers of the .30 SC got carried by the idea of the suprepressure. More than doubling the pressure, they obtained a meagre 20% raise in energy when both are fired from a 5″ barrel. A “8mm RS Magnum”, with a 1mm longer case (so 30mm overall lenght, still compatible with 9mm Para pistols) and a shorter 100gr bullet, enhancing the internal volume of tha case, and so the load, without increasing much the pressure, would have probably obtained similar results, remaining also compatible with blowback firearms.

        • “(…)remaining also compatible with blowback firearms.”
          Wait… so 8mm Roth-Steyr was historically used in pure blow-back automatic pistol?

          • “compatible”, not “used”.
            Several rounds had been used in a breechlock pistol at first, and on a blowback later, because the charateristics were compatible (9mm Glisenti IE).
            21500psi are fairly compatible with blowback operation without a massive slide. 45000psi, not that much.

  3. Question is why a subcompact 17 round pistol?
    Any imaginable situation for a civilian licensed carry holder who can not clear a situation with a PPK 7/8 rnd should not
    carry a gun. This is more dangerous for any bystanders….
    You not be safer with more rounds you will be better with training, training and more training. I am an olympic style sportshooter and I am trained to hit a 2″ 10 or a 3″ 9 at 27 yards. And I do this 98% of the time with a Colt 357 and 38+P.
    I can feel your reactions right now….So can you give me a link to an altercation where a civilian clear a situation with 15 or more rounds with let say a 50% or more hit rate within the last 20 years?

    • “If you want more dead muggers and fewer dead bystanders, try practicing your marksmanship at a freaking shooting range with your gun CHAINED TO THE FREAKING BENCH!”

      • I believe the chain would interfere with accurate shooting and possibly result in more dead bystanders.

    • Totally agree that anyone who carries a firearm, be they a cop, a non-cop or a military service member, should be well-trained in marksmanship. Unfortunately a firefight is not the same as Olympic competitive shooting or any competitive shooting where the target stands still and doesn’t shoot back. It’s well known that the percentage of hits to rounds fired in a firefight by the average cop is fairly low. Adrenaline is pumping, targets are moving and shooting, chaos prevails. So if carrying a pistol with greater capacity without increasing the size and weight of the pistol significantly, why not?

    • You want to go chasing a guy armed w/ a rifle into an elementary school w/ a Walther PPK? You do you, but leave the rest of us alone.

    • Humpf! Pistols are for wimps. I once saw Jackie Chan snatch a gun right out of some guys hands. If I’m ever mugged, I’ll just grab the guy’s gun and beat him with it. Now I can see some people with disabilities needing a single shot .22 Short. There’s no excuse for not being able to hit ’em right between the eyes. Why, my uncle Buford could hit an aspirin thrown in the air at 100 yards with his .22 …EVERY time!

    • As a well-known gun writer who was also a retired LAPD officer said, there is probably no such thing as a “one-shot stop”, no matter how many abstruse mathematical formulae are used to try to “create” the perfect balance of bullet weight/diameter/muzzle velocity/nose shape to achieve it.

      His opinion, based on experience, was that you shoot the miscreant as many times as is necessary to get him to lie down and cease doing whatever it was that caused you to conclude that you needed to shoot him to begin with.

      The same goes for any and all cohorts he may have. And today, the “sporting gentry” tend to run in packs for mutual morale reinforcement.

      Also, you cannot expect the “yutes” to give you a “time out” to reload a low-capacity sidearm.

      Therefore, your primary sidearm should ideally have as large a capacity as possible consistent with the ability to carry it in a holster or concealed.

      And the fastest “reload” is a second, loaded sidearm.

      In the book Shooting to Live, W.E. Fairbairn and Eric Sykes stated that the service pistol should ideally resemble a machine gun to the greatest extent feasible. They preferred Browning type self-loaders to any and all revolvers, and found the High Power in 9 x 19mm to be the closest thing to their ideal available at that time. The Argentine SPA would likely have met with their approval.

      Reality is not a James Bond movie. You don’t neutralize post-modern assailants with a single shot from a PPK.

      Also, remember that PPK stands for “Polizeipistole Kriminal”, meaning a sidearm for a police detective. In Germany, such a weapon would almost never be discharged in the field; rather, a detective would simply let a suspect see it, in the process of an arrest. The “respect for authority” supposedly did the rest.

      It doesn’t work that way anymore. It could be argued that in reality, it probably never did.

      cheers

      eon

      • There are documented cases of .50 caliber Browning MG torso hits not achieving “one-round kills”. The entire idea of a weapon somehow managing consistent “magic bullet” effects is delusional, TBH. It’s all about the placement and the target itself. You pump enough adrenaline into a human being, and your results are gonna be a lot different than if you shoot someone who’s effectively asleep at the switch.

        Call me a cynic, but I think a lot of the “caliber controversies” boil down to “let’s sell more magazines/get more hits” than anything else. You can get excellent results with a .22 Short, if you know what you’re doing and can place your shots effectively into the right target. On the other hand, if you’re having a really bad day, a 12 gauge slug may not be enough. I’ve seen the Chicago Police report on a guy high on PCP from back in the 1980s who had taken so many hits that he was effectively shot to pieces, and once they got him on the table in the ER and administered the tranquilizers to calm him down, he basically relaxed and bled out in seconds. Swear to God, reading that was enlightening and thought-provoking.

        That said, I prefer to have rather more frontal section on my pistol rounds than a .30 or .32 caliber provides. I can see the arguments for them, though… God knows, 7.62 Tokarev killed an awful lot of people, over the years.

        • 7.62 x 25mm, 9 x 19mm, and .45 ACP all have about the same kinetic energy, around 350 foot-pounds on average.

          So it would be reasonable to assume that all three would get about the same results on the receiving end.

          CONARC’s 1947 wound ballistics study, the forerunner to Project Salvo, found that yes, all three would incapacitate or kill an enemy soldier with a single hit in the vitals about 66% of the time.

          They also found that no round, even one as low-powered as the .25 ACP, would generate less than 50% “one-shot stops”.

          Conversely, even the most powerful rifle round in common use, the.30-06, was only good for about 90%.

          Translated into plain English, their findings meant that there’s always one guy who’s just too tough, too mean, or too stupid to die when you hit him once in his 10-ring.

          That’s why Project Salvo recommended that any new service rifle have at least a fifteen-round capacity like the M1 Carbine.

          And that any new service pistol have a higher magazine capacity than the M1911, regardless of caliber.

          The objective being not engaging multiple targets, but having enough rounds to make sure that whichever guy you hit will go down even if you have to wash, rinse, and repeat.

          It still makes sense today.

          cheers

          eon

    • One real advantage of 8mm Super compared to 9mm could be a double-feed position double-column magazine.

      That kind of magazine should be easier to fit in a handgun using 8mm Super instead of 9mm. Not only would that magazine be easier to load, it should also feed more reliably due to reduced feed lip friction.

  4. I would be interested to see how this will perform in a PCC. I have a single shot rifle that I built from an old Bubba destroyed Enfield No. 4 that I re-chambered in 32 H&R Magnum and it is a tack driver and excellent at killing small game and pests. With the barrel dimensions of the Enfield rifle being well suited to the .32, I may have to see about re-chambering another Bubba special for 30 super carry and machining an adapter to fit a 30 super carry magazine in the Enfield magazine well. I will have to start looking for a reamer……….

    • ” With the barrel dimensions of the Enfield rifle being well suited to the .32, I may have to see about re-chambering another Bubba special for 30 super carry and machining an adapter to fit a 30 super carry magazine in the Enfield magazine well. I will have to start looking for a reamer……….”
      Before you proceeded you might consider 7,62 x 25 model 1930 cartridge as used in TT automatic pistol or 7,63 x 25 Mauser if you have stable supply of these, in order to get Francis carbine-like weapon https://guns.fandom.com/wiki/Francis_carbine

      • The single shot I already built for 32 H&R Magnum will already chamber and fire 327, as the chamber sleeve I made for it is plenty long enough. The advantage of the 30 would be the use of the magazines, which really does not work with the revolver cartridges.

    • High pressure cartridge with only a meagre increase in performances over 100 years old ones with about the same external dimensions tells that, to contain the pressure, they increased the thickness of the brass, so reducing the internal volume of the case, and so reducing the effect of the increased pressure as well. The worse, the longer is the barrel.

  5. I have long been a fan of the 7.65mm Parabellum (.30 Luger). I have two guns in this caliber, a 1920 Commercial model Luger and a recently made Browning Hi-Power. Both these platforms can handle the pressures of the 9mm, just change the barrels and a minor modification of the magazines…so why go to all the trouble of creating an entirely new .30 round? The bottleneck case of the .30 Luger (already higher M.V. than standard 9mm) could be hopped up with little effort and a hollow-point high performance bullet added. I shake my head in wonder at your enthusiasm for this new Super Carry when similar results could be achieved much easier with the .30 Luger.

    • 7,65 x 21 mm is bottle-neck, whilst ;30 Super Carry is not, therefore would not provide enhanced capacity.

    • I can’t speak for Ian, but I can tell you that the advantage that 30 SC would have over 30 Luger or 7.62×25 is in reloading. With the strait walled case and carbide dies, you never have to trim the brass and you don’t have to use lube, both of which speed up reloading tremendously over a bottleneck case that will require trimming and lube, and then wiping lube back off when done. It does not matter if you don’t reload, but saves a ton of time if you do.

      • My imagination is already putting a 200-grain bullet from a .300 Blackout into this case.
        But I’m going to need a longer action and magazine well.

      • I agree that straight wall cases with carbide dies are easier to load than bottleneck cases. However, I think this subject is about self-defense, and I think most people who have a pistol ready for that possibility use factory loads, whether they reload or not (for practice).

  6. I was thinking the same as Ian in re competition, but so far the biggies (IDPA, USPSA, IPSC) want 9mm minimum.
    Cowboy allows 32, but with power factor of 60, this is overkill.
    ICORE also allows 32, so an 8 shot moonclip gun on an L frame rather than the current N the 38s and 9s require might be a niche market.
    A small one, I admit.

Leave a Reply to backbencher Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.


*