If Winchester 115 white box is not available

[mrerick]

The ammunition and pistol together are a complex system.

Lugers were designed to work the ammunition that the government specified. That is, of course, no longer available.

The bullet shape has changed (truncated cone vs ball); the cartridge case has changed; the primer has changed and the powder itself has changed.

Wear and time has also changed the firing characteristics of our individual pistols.

If you remember back to the Vietnam era, when the US Army introduced a replacement for the M-14 rifle (the M-16) it initially failed and was thought to be an unreliable "bad rifle". It turns out that the ammunition specification was changed making the 5.56mm ammo supplied with the rifles incompatible with them.

From WikiPedia: The M16 and 5.56×45mm cartridge was tested and approved with the use of a DuPont IMR8208M stick powder, that was switched to Olin Mathieson WC846 ball powder which produced much more fouling, that quickly jammed the action of the M16 (unless the gun was cleaned well and often).

This, of course, ended up outside the testing and development specifications of the rifle, and the overall system didn't work properly in the field.

So... what is Winchester White Box 115gn ammo? That is a trade secret. The best guess you can make is that the ammo is made from commonly available Winchester components. That would most probably include W231 (HP-38) pistol powder; Winchester small pistol primers and a Winchester 115gn bullet all loaded to medium level powder load and SAAMI specification OAL.

It's likely that this loading formula somehow approximates the German military loads of WW-I and WW-II (which, of course, varied a great deal over the years).

Other brands of ammo are not "bad", rather they are just different. The most likely differences are in the OAL (which the Luger is sensitive to) and the powder burn rate. I expect that the Luger is sensitive to the cartridge firing pressure impulse in both intensity and in it length and shape.

HP-38 (or W-231 - exactly the same powder) is a relatively fast burning powder with a very short power pressure impulse.

https://www.hodgdon.com/PDF/Burn%20R...02015-2016.pdf

The different bullet designs present different gliding surfaces to the barrel which also varies the distribution of the pressure impulse to the Luger mechanism. This is a finely balanced system, and modern locked breech firearm designs are more tolerant to differences in cartridge performance.

My guess is that powder burn characteristics and OAL contribute the most to ammo unreliability in Lugers. Every Luger feels a little different, and they must individually be more or less tolerant to variations in ammo performance.

The advice to try different brands of ammo with individually sensitive pistols is the best advice. We probably need a "reporting" thread to keep a long term record of experiences with different ammo and different era Lugers.