I did some gel shooting today and after I was finished I decided to shoot a round off that I had laying around. A Speer .45 ACP 200gr JHP. Yes the legendary Flying Ashtray. I only had one, unfortunately, so I could not do a proper test.

One round in Clear Ballistics gel out of a Sig 1911. Impact velocity of 984fps and it expanded to .75 inches! Just look at that big flat bullet. However that large expansion had a cost of only allowing it to penetrate to 11 inches.

I wish I had more so I could test it properly. I’m going to look around and see if I have more laying around.  

Right on.

Even 11" seems like a good showing for what's basically the end of a broomstick ok, hefty pool cue. 

Given that 9mm>45, I like to see what a 9mm "mini-ash tray" would do.

That would be bad medicine for a street thug trying to cause deadly harm to me or my family.
11 inches and 200Gr at that diameter would cause a little bit of a bleed out area and Mr bad guy just might lay down and cry.

The old flying ash-can round was the only bullet I have ever had fail to feed in my Colt 1911.  Ended up giving them all away 20+ years ago to a friend who had a .45 acp revolver.

Now that I own a model 1917 I kind of wish I had held onto them.

They used to load that bullet in Blazer aluminum case too

Yes. I used to shoot the Blazer aluminum cased 200gr HP Flying Ashtray round. And I carried the Cor Bon +p load with the same round. Back in my 1911 days in the '80's...

I have a box of these from when I used to carry a 1911 as well as some Super Vel's running around

Still have several of the value packs of these bullets (yes am that old), and use them for 45 ar and 45 lc rounds.  Tougher to load them in 45 acp without any setback, or just be careful not to repeatedly load them in semi. Before the advent of factory throated barrels, these were iffy feeders in some guns.  Good expansion though.

Can you try the old .38 FBI load? 158gr LSWCHP

Never had a feeding issue with them.

I still carry the Speer GD +P 200gr.

I plan on doing it someday but it may be awhile.

A member on another forum was kind enough to donate six bullets for testing. Obviously working up a load with only six bullets wasn’t an option so I went with 7.8gs of Longshot. According to Hodgdon’s I should get around 1000fps. I’m going to shoot them sometime next week and let everyone know how they did.

Cool thread.

I was cleaning out my garage this past week and came across a box of 500 of these I'd forgotten about.

A member from the Beretta forum was kind enough to donate his last six bullets so I could give it a proper testing. Not having enough to do a proper load development I decided to go with 7.8gr of LongShot. The manual said I should get a little over 1000fps. I ended up just a little short of that with an average of 926fps. In this test I used a HK USP .45 compact with a 3.78 inch barrel. I probably should have used my 1911 but I just wanted to use something different.

I didn't get velocity on the first round fired into bare gel but it penetrated to 9.75 inches and expanded to .78 inches. The second round had a velocity of 954fps and penetrated to 11 inches with expansion of .72 inches.

Only one of the bullets fired through the heavy clothing registered on the chrony and it had a velocity of 898fps. Unfortunately both of the bullets passed completely through two 16 inch blocks of Clear gel. One of them bounced off the backstop was found on the floor. The hollow point was completely clogged with clothing and no expansion.

I decided to fire the last two rounds in bare gel instead of trying it in the four layer of denim. So number three in bare gel had a velocity of 910fps and penetrated 10.25 inches with expansion of .76 inches. The last round penetrated 12 inches, expanded to .73 with a velocity of 944fps.

Would you be interested in a few rounds of the same bullet in factory loaded ammo ? I am pretty sure I have most of a box.

Thanks for the offer but I have enough stuff in the que right now and I don’t think there would be any real difference in what we have already seen.