Post WW2 Duty Revolvers, what could have been?

[john c]

Related to the .45 Colt duty revolver thread, I've always wondered what would have happened to the duty revolver if S&W came out with:

-an 8 shot .357 N frame in, say, 1950. More realistically, the 8 shot 38/44 Outdoorsman, morphing into an 8 shot .357 in the '60s.

-an L-frame .41 magnum/special with a 210 gr bullet at 1000 fps in 1964, instead of the model 57/58

-a 7 shot L frame .357 at the same time.

I recently picked up at 627 8-shot version, and having 8 rounds of .357 on tap makes it equal or superior to 1911. Especially with early 125 gr JHP bullets, versus .45 ball.

[Hizzie]

Related to the .45 Colt duty revolver thread, I've always wondered what would have happened to the duty revolver if S&W came out with:

-an L-frame .41 magnum/special with a 210 gr bullet at 1000 fps in 1964, instead of the model 57/58

This was very specifically asked for. Smith made it an N frame anyway and Remington didn’t cooperate regarding the “41 police” loading. They effectively signaled the decline of the revolver. An L framed 41 Police would’ve held a foot hold much longer still being reasonable in grip size and weight with a cartridge that handled business and was still controllable by the new wave of more diverse recruits.

[okie john]

Not sure that any of that would have made much of a difference. I feel like the move to semi-autos and bigger magazines came in response to how the bad guys gunned up for the cocaine wars, not because semi-autos were necessarily better than revolvers.


Okie John

[HCM]

Not sure that any of that would have made much of a difference. I feel like the move to semi-autos and bigger magazines came in response to how the bad guys gunned up for the cocaine wars, not because semi-autos were necessarily better than revolvers.


Okie John

This ^^?

As Hizzie noted, the proponents of the “41 special” police round asked for a mid sized revolver for it but it was ignored. The issues with Remingtons police load and the fact that it was an N frame killed the 41.

For those not aware here is the cliff notes version of how the L frame came about.

N frames stood up to regular use with .357 ammo but at that time, the 1960s your other option was K frame .357s which tended to be carried by officers and agencies which mostly shot .38 Special ammo but carried magnums.

That lead to issues in real world shootings, which in turn lead to case law regarding realistic LE training like Canton V Harris and Popow v City of Margate. In response to this case law, those K frame agencies started training and qualifying with magnum ammo. The result was broken guns, stretched frames, cracked forcing cones etc.

Agencies then began asking S&W for a gun smaller than an N frame that could survive a steady diet of .357 like the Ruger six series guns with the implication that they would switch to Ruger if S&W did not deliver.

I want to say the L frame came out in 1981 but I could be off by a year or two. It was a big deal at the time. Unlike the constant stream of new guns we see today, at that time S&W had not released a new frame size since the J frame in 1950.

[RevolverRob]

Given that folks could have any of those things, I think the reality is the mid-sized, mid-caliber handgun remains the choice for a reason.

The 6-shot .357 Magnum remains a duty gun even up to today, so it seems to work. Literally this morning as I walked through Midway Airport, I saw a Chicago PD Officer wearing a 4” Smith 686 with Safariland Comp IIIs on his belt (the only make Comp IIIs in six-shot varieties). Still there after all these years.

[Totem Polar]

I’ve often thought that a 7-shot, 4" K-frame model 13/65 chambered in today’s .327 Fed mag loading would have taken the 70s/80s by storm. Can y’all imagine, say, the NY-1 wheelies chambered in .327 Fed, with 7 rounds? Epic duty gun for the revolver era.

[john c]

Not sure that any of that would have made much of a difference. I feel like the move to semi-autos and bigger magazines came in response to how the bad guys gunned up for the cocaine wars, not because semi-autos were necessarily better than revolvers.


Okie John

I respectfully disagree. Of course, autos would have eventually won over, but this is due to the increased effectiveness of JHP ammo. This advance was really quite recent. Up until the late 1990s, 9mm JHP wasn't that great. It worked most of the time, and you had 15 or 17 rounds on tap, which beat 6 rounds.

But prior to 1980, the alternatives were poor. You basically had 8 rounds in a 1911, or 14 rounds in a BHP. The JHPs of the time were poor, if they even worked in your gun. By 1983 you could get a 2nd gen S&W (which were not that great, I've read) or maybe a Beretta 92SB. The Sig P226 came later, and it's my understanding that the P220 at this point still had a heal release. It really was the mid '80s that the game really changed, with 3rd gen Smiths, Beretta 92Fs, Sig P226, and Glocks that worked well, and would function with JHP ammo out of the box.

So up until 1985, at the earliest, an 8 shot N frame model 28 would have dominated. It also would have negated the advantages that a few officers found in carrying the 1911, namely 7+1 vs 6 rounds.

It's a shame that S&W only found it's creativity with respect to revolvers long after the era was over. It's probably the availability of CNC machining that makes it possible for the explosion of types and models we see today.

[BillSWPA]

1985 was also the first time I ever read a test report of a semiauto in a gun magazine that indicated that there had been no malfunctions of any kind. That article described a Ruger P-85. Every article I recall reading prior to that time always described at least a couple of failures to feed out of every 100 rounds fired.

Prior to 1985, the statement that revolvers are more reliable than semiautos appears to have had much more validity than it does today.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[okie john]

I respectfully disagree. Of course, autos would have eventually won over, but this is due to the increased effectiveness of JHP ammo. This advance was really quite recent. Up until the late 1990s, 9mm JHP wasn't that great. It worked most of the time, and you had 15 or 17 rounds on tap, which beat 6 rounds.

But prior to 1980, the alternatives were poor. You basically had 8 rounds in a 1911, or 14 rounds in a BHP. The JHPs of the time were poor, if they even worked in your gun. By 1983 you could get a 2nd gen S&W (which were not that great, I've read) or maybe a Beretta 92SB. The Sig P226 came later, and it's my understanding that the P220 at this point still had a heal release. It really was the mid '80s that the game really changed, with 3rd gen Smiths, Beretta 92Fs, Sig P226, and Glocks that worked well, and would function with JHP ammo out of the box.

So up until 1985, at the earliest, an 8 shot N frame model 28 would have dominated. It also would have negated the advantages that a few officers found in carrying the 1911, namely 7+1 vs 6 rounds.

It's a shame that S&W only found it's creativity with respect to revolvers long after the era was over. It's probably the availability of CNC machining that makes it possible for the explosion of types and models we see today.

Good points. There were a lot of factors, including the ones that you and I mentioned.

On the gear front, I’d add the trials that led the US military to adopt the Beretta M-9 because they set the bar so high for performance. That showed the shooting world that it was possible to build a reliable heavy-duty semi-auto pistol, it showed LE agencies that such a pistol could meet a lot of their needs, and it showed gun makers that building such a pistol could make them a lot of money.

On the ammo front, I’d add the FBI’s data-driven response to the 1986 Miami shootout because it gave us a solid, repeatable methodology for testing and evaluating ammunition that has resulted in today’s superb range of carry ammo options.

On the shooting front, I’d add Jeff Cooper’s development of the Modern Technique because it gave us IPSC and the other practical shooting sports and still drive improvement in technique today.

But until all of these things happened, I think that the folks who bought guns for LE agencies back in those days were stuck on the idea of five- and six-shot revolvers.


Okie John

[03RN]

1985 was also the first time I ever read a test report of a semiauto in a gun magazine that indicated that there had been no malfunctions of any kind. That article described a Ruger P-85. Every article I recall reading prior to that time always described at least a couple of failures to feed out of every 100 rounds fired.

Prior to 1985, the statement that revolvers are more reliable than semiautos appears to have had much more validity than it does today.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I was born in 84 so this is just a question. Coming from revolvers how many people lubed their autos enough back then? I still hear people say that oil and grease attracts dirt and dust.