SPORTS STARS: A GREAT IDEA AT THE TIME: THE .41 ACTION EXPRESS

Created on 26th May 2009

YOU WOULD think that those who procure arms for military and police users would learn from experience, but they often repeat previous mistakes. Take the .38 Special. American police officers found it ineffective against prohibition-era gangsters, and earlier still Texas Rangers had shunned it knowing it wouldn't put desperate, dangerous opponents down quickly. British soldiers found that large calibre revolvers were lifesavers in Africa and Asia, and the 1905 US Army Thompson-LaGarde tests came to the same conclusions. This was re-validated in 1980s FBI research. Large calibre bullets and deep penetration are therefore must-haves for terminal effectiveness in pistol cartridges.

After decades of experience and many dead police officers, the .38 Special eventually developed into an effective combination: the 125gn JHP .357 Magnum service revolver load at 1,400 fps. This velocity usually gave enough bullet expansion to counteract the original and relatively small .357" diameter. But what happened in the 1970s and 80s? Police chiefs, NATO planners et al were persuaded that the high-capacity 9mm Para semi-auto was the ideal service handgun, despite it firing lightweight jacketed .38 Special round-nosed bullets! Law enforcement officers liked the compact and good-handling semi-auto pistols but found their unique selling point, the 15 or 16 shot capacity, was of little value when opponents kept shooting back.

Action Arms

In an unrelated development American defence contractor Action Manufacturing created an offshoot called Action Arms to redesign the Uzi sub-machinegun into a semi-auto carbine (later pistol) and market it to civilian shooters. Harry Stern, Action Manufacturing's founder, was a supporter of Israel and had many contacts in that country. The subsidiary consequently expanded into importing IMI (Israeli Military Industries) weapons, including Uzis and ‘Galil' rifles. The necessary US government compliance work to import these weapons brought Action Arms into contact with BATF agent Evan Whilding, who later left government service to join the young company and was quickly promoted to the position of Vice-President.

With his contacts in police and federal agencies Whilding was well aware of the 9mm performance problem. While users clamoured for more effective expanding bullets he adopted a different approach: a larger calibre cartridge that could be easily adapted to 9mm pistols. The result was the .41 Action Express, or .41AE. He reasoned that he could duplicate .41 Remington Magnum ‘police load' performance in a compact cartridge with the 9mmP COL. The prototype was developed by shortening .41 Magnum cases by just over four-tenths of an inch to 0.866" and lathe-turning their rims off. The really clever part was in machining yet more metal off the parent case's head to reduce its diameter to below that of the 0.433" body, to duplicate the 9mmP's 0.394" case-head and still smaller extractor-groove size. This ‘rebated' case-form matched a 9mm pistol's breech-face and extractor dimensions so that converting one only required a new barrel, magazine and differently rated recoil spring.

Arms and Ammo

Whilding's prototypes worked well, and IMI came on board to develop pistols and ammunition. The cartridge design specifications were accepted by SAAMI in 1988. IMI was the sole factory ammo producer, ‘Samson' cartridges being provided in two loadings: a 200gn FMJ truncated cone with large meplat at just over 900fps and a 170gn JSP expanding bullet version at a higher MV. The COL, at 1.17" was only 0.01" longer than that of the 9mm, but strangely Samson cartridges had 0.408" diameter bullets, not the nominal 0.410". IMI also produced .41 UZI carbines and the Jericho 941 pistol, the numerical designation of which came from its being supplied as a two-calibre kit (9mmP and .41AE, with two barrels, recoil springs and sets of magazines). Tanfoglio adapted its TZ-75/TA-90 pistols, and aftermarket second barrel/magazine kits were made for 9mm Colt 1911, Glock 22 and Browning Hi-Power models.

As well as being aimed at the law enforcement market, the .41AE appealed to civilians who wanted an effective self-defence gun with less heft and recoil than Colt 1911 types, with the bonus of lots of cheap practice/target shooting in its 9mm form. With a greater magazine capacity (12 the norm) than the .45's, but making ‘major factor', it was potentially attractive to Practical Pistol competitors too.

Rampant Forty

Despite all their advantages, good reviews in the US shooting press and satisfied owners/users (including the UK's Clive Stevens, who wrote up .41AE handloading and performance in the December 1990 issue of Target Sports predecessor Target Gun), the cartridge and its pistols never sold well in the key US market and are now classed as obsolete. The lack of domestic suppliers must have been a drag on US sales - and do you really think police departments spent yet more money on converting 9mm pistols, thereby admitting they'd got things wrong before? You bet they didn't! Ironically, the final nail in the .41AE's coffin was the FBI becoming a fan of the 40-calibre (0.400" diameter bullets). After a 1986 Miami shoot-out debacle that left two agents dead and several injured the agency adopted a downloaded version of Norma's poky 10mm Auto. Smith & Wesson and Winchester looked at this load and said they could produce its ballistics from a cut-down 10mm case. Enter the .40S&W, with near identical dimensions and performance to the .41AE but lacking the handy switch-calibre facility. While the .40S&W is a big seller, only a few pistol enthusiasts now remember the .41AE, never mind shoot it.

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