Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Handguns '86 miami shootout

someone mentioned this shootout with FBI agents in another thread so I looked it up. I was too young to have even remembered it happening. apparently it lead to alot of changes at the FBI and eventually likely led to the 40 S&W. however it looks to me like the problems the FBI had was more due to poor hits on the bad guys than a problem with the cartridge being used. I could see most of the blame being put on shooting revolvers over double stack 9mm's. double stack semi autos may have closed the gap of poor hits and another shot or 2 could have found their mark.

if the first hit that stopped right before the heart would have been a 40 S&W would even that have penetrated far enough?? is the 40 a better penetrater than the 9mm?? the 9mm that was fired went through the guys arm, into the chest from the side and stopped just short of the heart, but was still a fatal shot from hitting the lung. this doesn't sound like a problem with the 9mm. It was just a tuff shot angle for the 9mm to get the job done, or perhaps any pistol round for that matter. why were all the FBI guys shooting 38 spl in their 357's. what are your conclusions about what the FBI got right or wrong about the aftermath??

They haven't had another fiasco like that, so either they learned from it and changed their training regimen or it was an anomaly to begin with.

The whole thing was due to bad tactics.

IIRC, the FBI went to the 10mm.

The other problem is that the adage from "Fistful of Dollars" turned out to be correct.

�When a man with a Mini-14 meets a man with a S&W snub nose, the man with the S&W snub nose is a dead man.�

Plus, the FBI was dealing with two very tough, fatalistic individuals who had already cold bloodedly murdered several people around the South Florida area.

I was working in Miami at the time and remember the newspaper accounts of the bank robbers and killers before the final shootout.

One way they would get their weapons was to go to some out of the way place in the boonies where someone was target shooting, usually along some canal bank in pancake flat S. Florida. They would wait for the person to empty their firearm, then rob and kill him and take his guns and his vehicle.

IIRC, the big lead that broke the case was them failing to kill one of their victims. They forced him into the canal and shot him but he survived. His subsequent description was what finally allowed the FBI to identify the two killers.

�When a man with a Mini-14 meets a man with a S&W snub nose, the man with the S&W snub nose is a dead man.�

Exactly. Give the agents AR's and things get a lot tougher for the bad guys.....

In answer to the OP question, the 9mm 116 gr Silvertip bullet that killed Platt and rendered him a "dead man walking", quite literally performed at a level exceeding the FBI's subsequent and current performance minimum.

If you get a copy of Dr. French Anderson's book on the topic, "Forensic Analysis of the 1986 FBI Miami Firefight" (available thru Paladin Press and/or Calibre Press, last I looked) you can review Xrays that show the bullet core came to rest in the right hilum (the "root" of the lungs, where the pulmonary arteries and veins come together with the bronchi and connective tissue). This is a highly vulnerable area in the chest, in many respects more vulnerable than the heart itself.

Details from the autopsy report indicate that the bullet lacerated the pulmonary artery and/or vein. This resulted in massive internal bleeding into the right side of the chest which would have resulted in the subject's death within 3 or 4 minutes even if he'd not been shot again. It's impossible to speculate as to whether a .40 S&W or .45 ACP or any other service caliber handgun round could have done a better job, but in my opinion it's doubtful.

The other posters who've logged in so far have all made valid points, so I won't amplify except to say I agree. If know you're going to be in a gunfight, bring a rifle. And bring friends with rifles.

The 1986 FBI Miami firefight was the LE equivalent of a perfect storm. So many things went so badly wrong in such a short period of time that you couldn't make the story up and have people believe it. But it really happened, and the numerous lessons learned have had enormous impact on law enforcement equipment, tactics and training, and protocols not only in America, but throughout the world.

The agents who were killed and/or disabled in that fight were all heroes, in my estimation, doing the best they could have done with the equipment, tactics, and training they had; and the lessons they paid for with their blood have saved the lives of countless officers since.

so what was up with 38 spl being used when these guys had 357 mags in their hands??

so is everyone in agreement that going to the 10mm initially and later the 40 S&W was a knee jerk reaction to a problem that probably would not have been corrected if either of those cartridges had been used in the actual fire fight??

It was pretty standard practice to use 38 Special loads in 357 Mag chambers in the FBI and other agencies at that time.

And yes, it appears most students of the debacle and its aftermath agree that demonizing the 9mm and 38/357 was not the real lesson that needed to be learned. Fortunately, a lot of people have taken the better lessons of the firefight to heart, and as a result being that LEO's are much, much better armed and trained for gunfighting today than they were 30 years ago.

It wasn't "pretty standard practice". It was what was issued. FBI agents use what they are directed to and the .38 Spec. +P LHP was the issued round of the day for the Smith and Wesson model 13, which was the standard issue weapon. There were other approved weapons, such as the 9mm that one of the other agents was carrying. As I stated earlier, the .38 was easier for female agents to handle. In all fairness, the FBI Load, as the round was termed, was about the most effective conventional .38 Spec. load of the day. How well it did out of a 3" barrel, is questionable. Lots of people think Magnums out of anything less than a 4 incher, are severely handicapped and this load was meant to get up to lower magnum velocities.

This is also what you get when you use psych tests and interviews to weed out anybody who is even sympathetic to the gun culture. My best guess is that nowadays you have tests more geared to anti-gunners who like guns themselves and are more elitist in their gun attitudes than classical anti-gunners who want to eradicate the tools themselves. So you get better trained personnel who are very willing to use that training to confiscate guns from others rather than pacifists ordered to use guns to confiscate guns from others under the guise of all guns being eradicated.

Not exactly. I can't speak for others. The FBI is very sensitive to bad publicity and this thing generated tons of it. The FBI/Military thinking, for lack of better terms, of the day was Penetration. This somewhat opposed civilian police training which espoused velocity. So there already was a body of evidence to support the Bureau's decision to go with the 10. The stupid part is that IIRC, the 10 being utilized was deemed "too hot" for some agents and the 40 was created and loaded at roughly the same speeds. It's kinda like Baby Bear's porridge being "just right" when physics dictates that Mama Bear's was more likely to have been the right temperature, given the Goldilocks criteria.

The FBI gets into a friggin CF run and gun and acts like it is the only agency in the world that gets into those. It then analyzes it in excruciatingly painful detail and blames equipment failure for a lot of other shortcomings. Then people debate it over and over for 25 years. Most police departments don't waste those kinds of resources, and they tend to learn their lessons and move on a lot quicker than that.

They learned the hard way bullet placement means more than the round you are carrying . Any fire fight with a Mini-14 against a 38 SPL short barrel handgun, the man with the pistol is going to lose the majority of the time unless he shoots straight and makes a good shot from the git go.

They learned about firepower, but also primarily that the old LE standard of taking cover and returning fire against a highly offensive, military style, mobile opponent was a good way to get dead.

the state of mind of the shooters was more intense than the FBI and they had decide they wouldn't be taken alive and this made the difference on the outcome of the battle other than the FBI was outgunned .

Sorry to get yer knickers in a knot, CY. It was "pretty standard practice" in a lot of agencies to allow officers/agents to qualify with and carry on duty either 38 Special or 357 Magnum. If I was mistaken, I'll check my sources when I get home tonight and confirm. I seem to recall fairly clearly that while 38 Special +P loads were issued to FBI agents at that time, 357 Magnum loads were issued as well. As I said, I'll confirm and report back.

Nailed it. The mental state PLUS an ability to actually shoot is what made them so dangerous.....it is very thankfully a rare combination...

"...got under your skin"? heheh You gave the impression that their issuance was arbitrary. When you've got a round termed "the FBI load" it's usually carried by the named agency a little more than "pretty standard practice".

CY likes this.

Here is the miltary background on the two shooters, Platt and Matix.


Michael Lee Platt: 6'0" - 173 lbs.
U.S. Army (#526087944) from 27 June 1972-1 May 1979
Honorable Discharge; E-6
Airborne Ranger trained at Fort Campbell: 9/73-5/75
Also served in M.P. Unit there with Matix. Service notation includes "High Combat Proficiency."
MOS: 11B10, 11B20, 11B30

William Russell Matix: 6'1" - 147 lbs.
Marine Corps (#2578943) from 7 October 1969-7 July 1972. Honorable Discharge; E-5
U.S. Army (#2578943) from 10 August 1973-9 August 1976. Honorable Discharge; E-5
MOS: Military Police, 101st Airborne Division, Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

L.W.

They was some salty old boys, anyway you cut it, eh Leanwolf?

My take on this and the FBI in general is that they hire ivory tower college folks who haven't a clue about who they're stalking. They then try to get super-scientific with computer printouts and suchlike, when they could just hire the people they so disdain in the first place and save a lot of time. Hiring people who know the quarry they are stalking and whose proficiency with weapons is inherent rather than solely by training, would go a longer ways toward eliminating future occurrences than would gadgetry and more college boys.