The Star B Super: How Good Could a Budget Milsurp Be?

By Oleg Volk

Spanish pistol production of the first half of the 20th century is a bit like Turkish shotguns today: lots of clones, many original designs, and numerous undocumented changes within the same nominal model. One such handgun, the Star B Super, came my way from a friend’s estate. Since asking him questions would require a pass to heaven, I had to investigate the provenance of the pistol on my own.

My initial research turned up several contradictions. The proof mark “I” indicated 1936, which is unlikely for a model introduced in 1946. Judging by the front sight, it’s an early 1980s pistol. Rough wooden grips may have come from an earlier gun or were hand-made, but the rest of the major parts all have matching serial numbers, even one of the magazines. The slide is marked B, but the barrel is in 38 Largo of the A model. And yet the slide and frame serial numbers match… Model B Super was a long-time “want” item for me, but the problem of keeping it supplied with 9mm Largo ammunition kept me from buying one. A friend that carried one as an issued sidearm in South Africa reported that the Largo magazine didn’t feed 9mm Luger very reliably, so I didn’t think I was going to be able to supply the proper diet. But, with both a gun and ammunition for it available, I dove into testing.

With older guns, it pays to function check them first. All Star models were designed with a magazine disconnector, which is inoperable on this particular pistol. The mechanism is present and started to work after the right grip panel was removed and replaced. It seems the wood was pressing the disconnector into alignment with the sear. Since the original ammunition was corrosive, the barrel was predictably imperfect, but the chamber cleaned up to a serviceable state. One of the nine-round magazines only held seven rounds, so I pulled it apart to discover the magazine spring caught on itself in the middle of the mag tube.

On the outside, the Star B Super looks like an M1911 with a spring-loaded external extractor. On the inside, it’s a bit different. The barrel is link-less. Takedown is with a rotating lever on the right of the frame. The safety blocks the hammer, rather than the sear. The backstrap is fixed and solid, without a grip safety. Instead, it has a magazine disconnector of questionable utility. The trigger pivots rather than slides. The recoil spring cap is captive. The rest is quite similar to a Model 1911 pistol. The barrel locks into the top of the slide and comes out of the front of the slide for disassembly. Safety lever, magazine release button, and the slide stop lever were all cribbed from the M1911. The mags are curious, with elongated witness holes and a small opening in the bottom to indicate over-loading with a small protrusion. The mag floorplate is retained with the tail end of the magazine spring.

The pistol came with ammunition: dark, unidentifiable military surplus in steel cases, 124-grain FMJ handloads (made by my late friend), CCI Blazer FMJ made sometime after 1994, and new production Steinel. It also had a threaded 9mm barrel of more recent manufacture.

Testing

9x23mm Largo, a.k.a. Bergmann-Bayard, predates 9mm Luger by a year. Firing the same weight bullet at similar velocity, it develops similar chamber pressure. Essentially, it’s a ballistic clone with a longer case. It’s only “large” compared to 9mm Corto, aka .308 ACP. As a result, it fell out of favor with Belgian military before World War II. After that, Spain remained the main user with more than thirty models of firearms, the best known of which are the Astra 400 blowback pistol, the bolt action Destroyer carbine, and the various flavors of Star pistol. Star and CETME also made several submachine guns in that caliber, but they are mostly unavailable and unknown in the U.S.

My range time proved interesting. Somebody drifted the rear sight way off to the right, perhaps to compensate for a bad flinch. A little time with a punch fixed that and I was able to get to business. The sights aren’t remarkable, but not horrible. The front sight has an indentation, but it isn’t illuminated in any way. Fortunately, the pistol points just about perfectly, so hitting a 12-inch gong at 15 yards and a silhouette at 25 yards was routine. The pivoting trigger is crisp and its 5.7-pound pull was no obstacle to accuracy. The barrel, which has seen better days is, at best, it shoots a hand-sized group at 10 yards, making it a 30-yard gun for reliable hits on silhouettes. The 9mm Luger barrel proved no more accurate, despite being in better shape than the original. While the pistol fed and cycled fine, the shorter Luger cartridges were quite susceptible to falling out of the magazine when outside of the firearm. With about 40 percent failure rate to fully return to battery, I would have blamed the weak return spring except for the Steinel ammunition cycling and chambering just fine. The issue is likely rough machining around the locking lugs.

I chronographed the handloads and the two factory loads. All were quite consistent, with about a 20 foot-per-second spread. Handloads averaged 1060 fps, CCI Blazer 1080 fps, Steinel 1100 fps. Factory spec was about 1150 fps, but I’m okay with lighter loads in an old gun with tired springs. Accuracy, limited by factors other than ammunition, was surprisingly similar. Reliability was not. Milsurp ammo failed to fire over 50 percent of the time­ — even after multiple primer strikes. I got plenty of non-diagnostic malfunction drills, as most of the shots that did fire either short-cycled or failed to extract or to eject. Blazer 9mm Largo ammunition fired and ejected just fine, but about half of the rounds had to be helped into battery with a tap on the back of the slide. Handloads loaded fine, but nearly half were too weak to fully cycle the action, or their shells were too rough to fully extract. It was an excellent opportunity to practice malfunction drills on the move, but not ideal for anything else. The Steinel, being both closest to spec in velocity and the most consistent in dimensions, cycled perfectly. No malfunctions in the one hundred rounds I shot. Recoil, even with the fastest load, was negligible. Considering the 36-ounce heft of this pistol, that’s no surprise. The discomfort was instead induced by the hammer bite. After the first 50 rounds, I gave up and put on a gym glove to protect the web of my hand.

Conclusion

After several days and about 300 rounds fired… it’s an interesting pistol. It’s fun to shoot at the range, but I wouldn’t rely on it for anything serious without an overhaul by a gunsmith. In its day, it was a better than average design that equalled the Browning Hi-Power for utility, trading magazine capacity for better ergonomics and trigger pull.