Handgun Urban Legends/Myths/Rumors

I have never seen a cartridge H/S ".45 Army" from any commercial manufacturer. All commercial ammunition was H/S ".45 S&W" or ".45 C. Govt." Military ammunition bore the Frankford Arsenal H/S/ and the date.



Headstamps of the above cartridges:



Frankford Arsenal's earliest H/S for revolver cartridges was "R F" (Revovler Frankford) then simply "F" finall becoming "F A".

Here are early .45 caliber rounds from Frankford Arsenal:



And:



Bob Wright
 
Nope. The .45 S&W, .45 Army, and the .45 Govt were all the same cartridge.
Click to expand...
Uh, yep. Unless you think you're smarter than everyone who has ever written on the subject, who unilaterally state that the .45S&W had a larger rim than the .45Colt and that it presented a potential rim interference issue. Actually, you're the only one I've ever heard say that they were the same cartridge.

I've never heard ".45 Army" either.

Why would there be a need for the .45Gov't if the .45S&W was identical???

The Colt and Gov't cartridges have a rim diameter of .512".
.45_Smith_&_Wesson_(Schofield).gif



Furthermore, if they were the same cartridge, then why would it be dubbed the ".45Colt Gov't"???
http://www.leverguns.com/articles/taylor/45_short_colt.htm
45sc1.jpg
 
Colt prevailed on cartridge manufacturers to adopt the "Colt" name on several cartridges so they would not have to rollmark their guns with a "S&W" label.

So a Colt revovler chambered for the .45 S&W cartridge would be rollmarked ".45 Colt Gov't."

Same reason as the .38 S&W Special and .38 Colt Special. And .38 S&W and .38 Colt New Police.

All purely for advertising reasons.

Bob Wright
 
Colt didn't have to change anything about their guns to accommodate the cartridge and why would Winchester care what either company did?

Colt obviously had no issues with marking their guns with "Russian and S&W Special .44".
 
Bob Wright, thanks for all the info and pic's you have posted, relative to .44 and .45 rounds from the smokey old days. I squirrel away such in my own file, just to refer to later.

Bart Noir
 
Two myths that haven't been mentioned, each a completely different kind of "myth."

On TV & movies, every double action revolver with a swing-out cylinder that ever lived goes click-click-click when the cylinder is spun when opened and the chambers are visible. Typically, the character will open the cylinder, load the chambers and give 'em a spin like it's the "Wheel of Fortune" and the snazzy clicking sound fills the speakers. He'll often then flick the cylinder home with only a flick of the wrist with his single hand on the grip. (this is an awful way to treat any revolver)

The other myth isn't one from TV or movies, it's quite simply the "taken from the body of a dead German officer" or "dead Nazi officer" that is bestowed on EVERY/ANY handgun that's been in the family since Grandpa or Uncle Festus brought it back from Europe. More likely, it was found near a battle site, or taken in a poker game, or swapped for smokes, or taken from a looted building, or if actually taken from a deceased soldier... sure seems like it was mostly officers that died in battle that ended up having these bring-backs on their person.
 
empty guns/prop guns....

Id say another more recent Hollywood goof is how a character will hold a revolver in a drama or action scene that is clearly; unloaded. :rolleyes:

Even A-zoom or dud type rounds will look more realistic than nothing.

Another recent practice is to use fake weapons or prop guns that have no muzzle. A press image from the hit cop film; 21 Jump Street, had Jonah Hill aiming a Glock with no barrel, :confused:.
Film directors or producers don't have to be weapons experts or US Navy SEALs but they should see a gun with no muzzle on camera.
 
If we eliminate

switchblades, Saturday Night Specials and comic books, all violent crime will vanish.
We can see how well that worked out. :)
 
One of the things that blows my mind is that many films will have consultants for technique and realism of hardware. Those guys may get a bit of input, while the director or producers are going for something more splashy. When you see a movie that makes you say, "Wow! That's almost right!", you may be responding to the influence of guys like Craig Sawyer (often seen as a guest expert on Top Shot. Former SEAL sniper who is a Hollywood consultant and trainer).
 
OK, first, I have seen the term ".45 Army" used, even though AFAIK there was never a headstamp reading that. Again, AFAIK, it was intended to refer to the ".45 Gov't" or the cartridge usable in both the S&W Schofield and the Colt M1873 SAA. In deference to others, I will drop the ".45 Army" term and use ".45 Gov't" hereafter.

Guys, think about the chronology for a minute. The Army adopted the .45 Schofield, which was based on the S&W Model No. 3, in 1875. Up to that point, S&W had never made a .45 revolver, so there was no ammunition designated ".45 S&W". Only a few First Model Schofields were sold on the commercial market, so I seems unlikely that any ammunition company would make ammunition for them. Some 650 of the Second Model (1876) were sold commercially, so it is possible that ammunition was made. But only when the Schofields were sold off by the Army did commercial ammunition become available, at least in any quantity. That is the ammunition variously headstamped ".45 Colt", ".45 C. Gov't", and "45 S&W". I have not seen any of those cartridges that would not fit (6 rounds) in a Colt SAA.

The question is whether there was a ".45 S&W" that was different dimensionally from the ".45 Gov't". I repeat, I can find no evidence of such a cartridge. I am not talking about headstamps or box markings or someone's magazine article. I am talking about the cartridges themselves.

As I understand, the cartridge you call the .45 S&W is supposed to be different from the .45 FA production, .45 Gov't or .45 C. Gov't in having a larger rim that will not allow six rounds to be loaded into an SAA. If you have such cartridges, please give the measurements and the headstamp and, if possible, the date of manufacture.

I don't talk headstamps or box labels. I talk dimensions AND whether the actual cartridges will fit, six up, in a Colt SAA.

Jim
 
Then why, pray tell, would the .45S&W be listed EVERYWHERE as having a larger rim than either the .45Colt or .45Gov't??? Are we making this up??? No. It has been written about for a very, very long time.

You can look at any of those pictures of .45S&W cartridges and see that the rims are larger.

Why would S&W produce a firearm for which there was no ammunition available???

Why wouldn't the army just utilize the .45S&W with its large rim if it were not an issue???

Again, what evidence do you have that proves all others wrong?

Are you basically saying that "Cartridges of the World" is lying to us??? Which, I might add, lists the .45Gov't rim as even smaller than the .45Colt.
 
Let me take those points on the ".45 S&W" one at a time.

First, this thread is about gun/ammo myths, and the ".45 S&W" is one of them. The fact that its existence has been repeated, often by writers who were simply repeating the writings of others who were equally confused, does not make it real. (Millions of people believed in unicorns, too.)

I can't tell from pictures and in any case, rim diameters of those rounds runs from about .503" to about .523". I just measured an FA 4-87 round at .522", and a Benet primed round at .514". Six of the .522" cases will fit in an SAA, proving that FA was not stupid enough to make ammunition that would not fit the issue revolver.

S&W did not produce a revolver for which there was no ammunition. It produced a revolver only for the Army, and the Army made the ammunition for it; there was no need for anyone else to make ammunition until later.

My evidence is the cartridges, something everyone seems to overlook in favor of blindly repeating what has been written.

Is COTW lying? No, but it is wrong. It is a large work and it is surprising that there are so few mistakes, but that does not mean they are never wrong.

To summarize, there was NO .45 ammunition of the era that was "Schofield length" that had rims so large it could not be loaded 6-up in the Colt SAA.

If you have any, the test is surely simple - try it. If you don't have any of those rounds, and you don't have an SAA Colt, you should not make dogmatic statements based on what someone wrote.

Jim
 
Well, to add fuel to an already blazing fire, the .45 S&W rounds do have slightly larger rims than .45 Colt, but not enough difference to cause rim interference in a .45 Colt SAA.

The .45 Colt Gov't. M1909, never made comercially, does have a rim of sufficient diameter that it cannot be loaded in adjacent chambers of the Colt SAA. These were Frankford Arsenal only.

The .45 Gov't. M1906 likewise was produced only by Frankford Arsenal, and was made sloely for the Army test trials of 1906~1907 and was never an issued round. This round is best described as a thin rimmed .45 Auto Rim, more or less.

REM-UMC did make and H/S a round as .45 S&W, as to when this was first made, I have no clue. A photo of an early box indicates "30 grs. powder, 250 grs. bullet."

Bob Wright
 
Hi, Bob,

Correct on all counts. I think the myth began when some writers got the Model 1909 confused with the .45 Gov't, and thought the "three shooter" had something to do with the Schofield.

I have tried to be careful not to say that no ammo was headstamped or box-marked as .45 S&W because UMC certainly did use both that headstamp and box marking. But the rim diameter of that ammunition runs .516" -.520" and six can be loaded into the Colt revolver.

The Model 1906 cartridge has an FMJ bullet. I can only conclude that the narrowly focused gun/ammo collectors never made the connection with the Hague Convention of 1899 that banned expanding (lead) bullets. The U.S. never signed the convention, but the Model 1906 cartridge seems to me to be an effort to comply or at least study the issue. It also could have been made up out of a desire to "level the playing field" in tests of revolvers against auto pistols, the latter almost always having FMJ bullets to ensure proper feeding.

Jim
 
Lest the fire die down:

My cartridge collection is sort of inaccessible right now, but I consulted my notebook in which I've cataloged my cartridges. I've got ".45 S&W" head stamped rounds H/S "W.R.A. Co.", "REM-UMC", and "Peters."

Judging only by the bullet profile, I'm guessing they have the 230 gr. lead bullet, as its not so bulbous as the 250 gr. .45 Colt bullet.

Bob Wright
 
I have seen the REM-UMC h/s ".45 COLT" and the Peters ".45 C GOVT". Even though those rounds would work in the Colt, the markings must have been confusing and it is easy to see how the term ".45 Short Colt' may have originated as a way to refer to those cartridges, even if it was never an "official" designation.

The more I try to make sense of the 19th century cartridge picture, the more I am grateful to SAAMI for bringing standardization to the industry.

Jim
 
"It produced a revolver only for the Army, and the Army made the ammunition for it."

I've seen this hinted at, but I've never been able to find conclusive proof...

It was a standard practic at that time that when a company submitted a gun for consideration by the military, they also submitted ammunition with it if it was not a standard military caliber.

The .45 S&W was not, at the time S&W submitted their first batch of revolvers to the Government, a standard military caliber, so S&W was responsible for submitting ammunition.

These cartridges would have been loaded commercially to S&W specificiations.

The hinting part I note above is that as originally supplied by S&W, those cartridges DID have a rim that was too big to allow its use in the Colt Single Action Army, .530 or even larger.

This was done primarily, I guess, to ensure that the rim would work with S&W's auto ejector system.

Once the S&W revolver was adopted, Frankford Arsenal or Springfield Arsenal redesigned the .45 S&W case to reduce the rim diameter so that the round would work in BOTH guns.

Eventually, when the round was picked up for civilian production in the United States (apparently starting in the early 1880s), the military case dimensions were used.

Wikipedia (I know, I know) makes some reference to this, but says that the original rim dimension for the cartridge was .522; again, it's my understanding that the original cartridge, as designed and supplied by S&W, had a rim that was substantially larger than that.
 
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