Fast forward to Borneo in 1966. We were issued the mighty Smith & Wesson 380 revolver with twelve rounds of 1940s ammunition. You could see the bullet if you fired it into wind, in the middle of a hangar you couldn’t hit anything because it wouldn’t reach and on the range I had one bullet stick in the barrel and another one expire trying to push it out.
When I went up country into the then jungle I was told how to use 9mm. ammunition. Using blade tape, a type of thick insulation tape, torn into thin strips one could wind this around the indent of the 9mm. cartridge so it would act like a rim to hold it in the chamber when the hammer hit it. The only drawback was that the extractor wouldn’t work so you had to poke the empties out with a screwdriver.
I scrounged a handful of rounds off the Ghurkas we were staying with and tried it out. Fantastic! The bore being more or less the same, the double charge, (a 9mm. has to reload an automatic as well), it fired with a good solid crack and I could put six rounds into an oil drum at twenty yards.
They didn’t have any more ammo to spare but they arranged for the unit in the next valley to give me some the next day. I arrived and a Ghurka came out carrying a big box. Crump! He had swung 5,000 rounds into the back of my helicopter. I taped up 100 rounds and gave the rest back. I didn’t think the barrel could cope with much more.