Francis - As I pointed out in a prior post, no one really knows the original derivation of "the Whole Nine Yards". We do know though that a belt of .50 MG ammunition is not 9 yards long. Not that Wikipedia is the ultimate resource, but they point out (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_whole_nine_yards) that the phrase didn't become popular until the 50's - after WW II.