Target Sports

SPORTS STARS: THE .38 S&W;SPECIAL and .357 MAGNUM

Created on 14th May 2009

LAURIE HOLLAND on two cartridges greatly influenced by the introduction of the car - and prohibition

These related cartridges formed one of the great success stories of the 20th century and are still going strong, even though the American law enforcement role they long dominated has now gone to others. Smith & Wesson launched its .38 Special cartridge in 1902 for the then-new .38 S&W Hand Ejector revolver, the original ‘K-frame' that was initially chambered for the lower-power .38 S&W and Colt .38 Long. The ‘Special' was a development of the Colt cartridge, its rimmed straight-wall case lengthened to 1.155", black powder charge increased from 18 to 21gn and bullet weight from 150 to 158gn. The ‘.38' designation harked back to obsolete models and the actual bullet diameter was 0.357". Nitro powder was adopted in 1903 with unchanged performance at around 770fps MV, but only needed part of the case capacity - a feature that later acquired significance.

America was famous for heavy sixguns in 1903, but for every one around there were scores of small calibre centrefire and low-power rimfire pistols, mostly small, cheap pocket models. The .38 Special sat between the two with sufficient power for most, while the ‘Hand Ejector' (later ‘Military & Police'/Model 10) was manageable size- and weight-wise. Recoil was moderate, so relatively little training and practice were needed for acceptable proficiency among the police, but many stuck with anaemic .32s for budgetary reasons. Accuracy was excellent, building sales in the growing market for target shooting among the urban middle classes. S&W .38 revolvers were exported worldwide for sale to pistol shooting aficionados including Reichsführer Hermann Goering, who had one on his person when detained by Allied soldiers in May 1945.

The Prohibition era

While the .38 Special was an adequate law enforcement cartridge in 1902, things changed post-WWI due to two factors - criminals using ‘automobiles', and the 1919 Volstead Act, better known as (alcohol) ‘Prohibition'. The former provided protection from low-power pistol bullets and the standard .38 Special round-nose bullet was a poor vehicle penetrator. The latter gave a huge boost to violent organised crime, including funds to buy state-of-the-art weapons and even early body armour. Demands for improved police cartridge ballistics rose rapidly; S&W's response was the 38/44 ‘Heavy-duty' and ‘Outdoorsman', large .44 Special ‘N-frame' pistols redesigned for the .38 and handling what we would now call ‘+P+' loads. Meanwhile, Elmer Keith experimented with his 173gn semi-wadcutter design, achieving over 1,100fps in a 38/44 ‘Outdoorsman' - a bullet shape that proved effective on cars and criminals.

Magnum

Philip B Sharpe, Major DB Wesson and Winchester engineers did most of the development work to turn the .38 Special into the high-performance .357 Magnum of 1935. Sharpe took Keith's 173gn SWC, shortened it, reduced the weight to 156gn, made minor changes to the shape and did the donkey work in producing factory-acceptable loads (he also produced a hollow-point version that was even lighter). Hercules 2400 introduced in 1933 for Winchester's .22 Hornet proved an ideal propellant, raising MVs by more than 100fps over DuPont numbers. As in Keith's experiments the .38 Special case was used, but it was accepted it would need lengthening while keeping the 38's COAL unchanged, so the new .357 couldn't be chambered in earlier revolvers. (The .38 was rated at 16,500 CUP maximum pressure, while the .357 was standardised on 35,000.) The ‘Magnum' used a 1.290" case-length and 1.590" COL (.38 Spcl: 1.550"). The accident that gave the .38 far more case capacity than needed let it hold enough 2,400 to give a 158gn SWC-claimed 1,400fps. These early factory loads were ‘hot', and notorious for quickly leading barrels.

Post-war

Sales of the .357 were limited during the Great Depression of the 1930s and production stopped entirely during WWII while S&W manufactured hundreds of thousands of ‘Lend-Lease' military & police ‘Victory' models in ‘.380 Revolver' for the British Empire and .38 Special for US forces and others. Once postwar prosperity kicked in, .357 S&W Model 27 sales took off. Ruger and Colt adopted the cartridge, as did every revolver maker in due course. It was the standard US law enforcement cartridge for nearly 40 years, and saw police use here too, though rarely elsewhere in Europe. Its effectiveness was increased with jacketed expanding bullets, while largely unsuccessful attempts were later made to keep the older .38 Special cartridge competitive by introducing higher pressure and velocity jacketed ‘+ P' loads.

Civilian .38/.357 target use has spread nearly worldwide, thanks to the ability to use .38 cartridges in .357 weapons and the development of super-accurate 148gn hollow-base wadcutter loads. The duo weren't limited to wheelguns, with S&W developing the Model 52 semi-auto target pistol for .38 Special wadcutter target loads, Coonan and Desert Arms semi-autos for full-house .357 Magnum loads. However, the primary non-revolver use in leverguns: initially rebarrelled .25-20 and .32-20 Winchester 1892s, later the great little Marlin 1894C carbine and subsequent variations, plus various models from Browning, Winchester and Rossi. While the police have abandoned both cartridges and civilians overwhelmingly buy .357s, there is one use for the original version that has survived 100 years - thousands of security personnel in American banks, insurance company offices and public buildings still carry the old ‘38'.

SPORTS STARS: THE .38 S&W;SPECIAL and .357 MAGNUM

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SPORTS STARS: THE .38 S&W;SPECIAL and .357 MAGNUM

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