.38 S&w

D

Death from Afar

New member
I have been offered a nice WW2 unissued .38S&W. The british service designation is .38/200. Does anyone still load this cartrige? Remington had it listed a few years back, but it seems to have been discontinued. Thanks lads.
 
I've bought a couple of boxes in the past few years. I sure hope they are still making it. Not that I'd pick it over a .38 special but If I ran into the deal you seem to have found, I'd be perfectly happy with the cartridge.
 
Thanks lads. Its only for historical interest- the pistol was issued to Officers and Aircrews of the Canterbury Mounted Rifles in WW2, so it has nice historical interest more than anything. Seems to be unissued mind you- its VERY tidy for middle war manufacture.
 
IIRC those 38/200 cartridges were issued and they were lead round nose 200 grainers. When the Germans found out they squealed that it was illegal under the Geneva Convention to have lead (and therefor supposedly expanding bullets). The British withdrew the ammo and issued hardball of some type.
 
It wasn't the Germans who squealed. The British apparently changed the design from a 200-gr. lead bullet to a 170ish grain jacketed bullet sometime prior to World War II out of concern that the rounds would violate the Hague Accords.
 
The Mk. II cartridge had a 178 grain jacketed bullet.

Death:
The revolver is a S&W Military & Police, which became the Model 10 (11 in .38 S&W) in the 1950s.
Several hundred thousand were supplied to Commonwealth nations under the Lend-Lease Act during the war. These are chambered for .38 S&W. I have three revolvers chambered for this round, so load my own.
One in my collection is an M&P New Zealand issue with N/broad arrow/Z and rack number stamped high on the backstrap near the recoil shoulder.
There is a nice photo of two New Zealand machine gunners in the Monte Casino Sector, both of whom are carrying M&Ps (Australian War Memorial)
JT
 
Thanks JT- If there are any other stampings on it, I will talk to a mate of mine who is the curator of the army museam- he might be able to tell you what uint it was issued too. The one I have lined up was I think a tankers pistol. I am quite looking forward to picking it up- it is nice to have a shootable pice of history.
 
Death:
If your museum has records of small arms issuance, it will certainly be unusual, since most countries do not retain such records. I would be most interested if they do have these records.
I will now try my luck at posting a photo.
WWIIAlllied2liteColorSizedCrop.jpg



JT

Hoorah, it worked.

BTW: I made an assumption that by .38 S&W you meant not only the cartridge, but also the manufacturer. Or are you buying a British No. 2 Mk I like the revolver on the left of the photo?
 
No, its an Enfield Mk2 * ( I think is the desigmation) - its the model that was issued after about 1942 without the hammer spur to prevent nasty accidents inside spitfires and tanks.

If the records are there, it would depend on when the pistol was issued. If it was issued 1939-1940, it may have gone to 1 or 2 NZEF which originally served in Greece and Crete. In those days, they would have kept pretty good records. If it was later war issue it was a bit looser. I will let you know the next time I am near the records, and see what digging I can do....
 
Unless it has recently been discontinued, the .38 S&W is manufactured in Europe as well, I have used Hirtenberger and Geco. I think maybe Fiocchi has loaded it too. The standard load seems to be with a 146 grain bullet though, both for European and American ammo, if you want the original 200 or 178 grain load you probably have to handload. Starline makes brass for it.
 
146-gr. WAS the original load, as developed by Smith & Wesson in the 1870s.

It wasn't until Colt was forced to face the inevitable, that the .38 Short Colt just wasn't selling as compared to the .38 S&W, that it got the 200-gr. bullet. Colt also gave it a new name -- the Colt Super Police.
 
Insofar as the modern inside lubricated cartridge goes Mike's correct.

The case design, however, is even older, originating as the outside lubricated (heel bulleted) 380 Revolver in the U.K. in the late 1860's, and essentially copied here in the U.S. as the 38 Short Colt a couple years before the S&W cartridge was introduced.

Bob
 
The .38 Special is a COMPLETELY different round, which was actually a modification of the .38 Long Colt.


The .38 S&W case is actually different from either the .38 Short Colt OR the .380 Revolver. The .38 S&W has a significantly larger outside case diameter at the neck.

One can easily claim that the .38 Short Colt actually derived not from the British .380 Revolver cartridge, but from the even older .38 Short Rimfire round.

Both the .38 SRF and the .38 SColt used an outside lubricated bullet of .375+- diameter with an outside case neck dimension of about the same.

The British would have been familiar with the .38 SRF given that Colt still had his factory in London at the time and that there were British military observers here in the US examining the new advances in military technology that had come about from the Civil War.

It's not a stretch at all to imagine the British saying "Blimy, this RF cartridge would be a great thing to match up with Col. Boxer's new priming system," while the Americans were doing the same thing, only with Hiram Berdan's priming system.
 
Interesting observation Mike. While the SAAMI specified O.D. of the 38 S&W case is indeed larger than that of other centerfire cartridges derived from the original 380 (the 380-200 is actually specified far closer to the 38 S&W than it is to the old 380 revolver), in actual manufacturing practice this diameter is almost always found to be subatantially smaller than the permitted maximum.

A sample box from a current Remington lot of 38 S&W, #M26A B3102, averages close to 0.379" diameter. Suydam, in his U.S. Cartridges and their Handguns, illustrates another Remington case of having a diameter of 0.373" from just ahead of the rim to just behind the crimp.

There are a lot of reasons why a manufacturer might do this...

Bob
 
38 S&W load

I have a smith and wesson top break that i shoot ocasionaly.I use a cut down 38 spcl case and load 2 G of bullseye under a 148 g wadcutter.It seems to be a good load but:DONT TAKE MY WORD FOR IT!! :)
 
Quantrill I thought that the Germans complained about the 200 grainers because the round was unbalanced and tumbled after impact, which was the reason it was developed and put into service over the lighter rounds which had little "stopping power". In fact I recall (no I was not there personally!) that the troops in the trenches really like the round, but the complaints were :D not because it was unjacked lead?
 
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