The .45 "Long" Colt........

It's my understanding that the ".380 Revolver" started as the .380/200 (380 Mk I)...According to what I have read, the military loading changed in 1937 to the 178gr FNJ (380 Mk II), but the cartridge was still called the ".380 Revolver"...

http://www.bocn.co.uk/vbforum/threa...volver-Cartridge-380-quot-or-quot-38-200-quot

As far as I can find, the only external difference between the Mk I, and Mk II, is a very slightly smaller diameter rim...Internally they had a different primer pocket/case capacity, and the lighter bullet...The internal differences would of course require different load data...But they would still chamber and fire in a .38 S&W, etc...

Dunno...Interesting, nonetheless...
 
Salmon,

I'm pretty sure the .380 Revolver being referred to is NOT the .380-200, which was a British take on the .38 Smith & Wesson/.38 Colt New Police.

Webley developed a heeled-bullet design around 1868 for its revolvers, both short and long versions. It's listed on page 382 of the 11th edition of Cartridges of the World.

The long version, at least, was loaded in the United States until after World War I.


The .450 revolver cartridge that is listed in the books is probably the .450 Adams, which was adopted as the British military standard round in 1868 and served until the .476 Enfield (.455, actually) was adopted in 1880.

While not a very successful military cartridge, the .450 was very popular commercially because it could be fit into a small, light gun. S&W and Colt both chambered revolvers for it for sale here in the US and in Europe. Can't remember for certain, but H&R may have also offered it for sale at one point in time in their revolvers.

It was popular enough in the United States to be listed in most ammo catalogs until the companies began ramping up for World War II production.
 
"It doesn't follow that any of these British cartridges were widely available anywhere in the United States"

Don't kid yourself.

Webley revolvers sold fairly well in the United States before World War I.

In addition, with Francis Bannerman snatching up surplus globally and selling it in the United States, these cartridges and revolvers, while probably not very common, were more than popular enough to support 40 or more years of cartridge production in this country.

Check this out for a sectioned view and headstamp on a UMC-made .450 revolver cartridge.

http://www.iaaforum.org/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4058

And, lastly, remember who is to our North. The Canadians looked largely to the United Kingdom for their ideas on armaments, but they often looked to the United States for the ammunition for them.
 
I still call 'em "clips," too. That separates us from the young'uns. I don't know when it changed from "clip" to "magazine."
Click to expand...


They were clips while I was growing up. It seemed to have changed almost overnight and computers has only made it worse. They're still clips to me and I say .45 Colt....Go figure.:D
 
I'm pretty sure the .380 Revolver being referred to is NOT the .380-200, which was a British take on the .38 Smith & Wesson/.38 Colt New Police.
Click to expand...

As I said...Dunno...

The earliest reference I find to any Webley referred to as a .38 or .380, is the Mark iii 'Pocket' Which started in 1897...This is chambered in ".38 Revolver" which is our ".38 S&W"...

I know it is off topic, but As I do not own that book, could I bother you for the dimensions of the case length, mouth and rim widths of the cartridge you are looking at??
 
All of those different cartridges were listed separately, although that doesn't necessarily make them all different. Those were just from the listing of English cartridges.

During the surplus gun boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Webleys (Weblies?) became relatively common. They could be purchased for as little as $15.00 but $15 went a little further 50 years ago. Elmer Keith even made reference to the .455 Webley. He considered it good but I wouldn't say he exactly thought highly of it.

That listing of English cartridges I keep mentioning, by the way, lists pressures for most of the rifle cartridges in tons per square inch as well as the powder type and weight. Some were black powder loads.
 
Here's some more information on them:

http://www.ammo-one.com/380LongRifle.html

Fiocchi still loads it for European consumption.

There was a similar cartridge, the .320 revolver, from the same time frame.

.380 Revolver dimensions are:

Bullet - .375

Neck - .377

Base - .380

Rim - .426

Rim thickness - .046

Case Length - .70

Cartridge Length - 1.10


From some of the things I'm pulling up it appears that it was also a fairly popular cartridge for light single shot rifles, or Rook rifles, of the time.
 
Surplus Webley military revolvers in .380-200 and .455 became very popular after World War II.

I'm talking about well before World War II.

Webley began selling revolvers in the United States through agents sometime in the 1870s. The British Bulldog was popular enough here that the general pattern was copied by American manufacturers, including Iver Johnson.

The .44 Webley, pretty much the standard large-caliber round for these pistols, even the American-made ones, was loaded in the United States up through World War II.

This is an early box, but it's American, from about 1880 to 1900.

rad5F93227317.jpg


A lot of people seem to think that the entire history of revolvers in the United States is one of American designed, American made, and American used.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.


And wow, I just found this... Even neater, given that it's a box of blanks...

44WEB.jpg
 
Oh, and something needs to be said about the .44 Bulldog cartridge...

44BD.jpg


That was an American competitor to the .44 Webley. It used a shorter case of considerably less power (not that the .44 was a powerhouse in itself.

Apparently, though, the .44 Bulldog would fit nicely in the .44 Webley cylinder, but the opposite wasn't always the case.
 
And, as you can see from this image, UMC manufactured the .45 Webley cartridge. In Britain it was the military .450 Adams cartridge, adopted in 1860.

Webley was the main seller in the United States of guns in this caliber, so it became known here as the .45 Webley.

And no, it is definitely NOT the .455 Mk I or Mk II. Those rounds had cases that were significantly longer.

I know that Winchester also loaded .45 Webley.

img273.jpg_thumbnail0.jpg
 
At the risk of monopolizing this discussion to the point of being obnoxious, here are some .38 S&W/Colt NP/.380 Revovler:

100_65561.jpg


And, just for grins:

100_65581.jpg


And more:

100_64991.jpg


And, just for bunkum:

100_64981.jpg


Sorry if I'm getting laborous.

Bob Wright
 
Interesting. Note that the box of the Winchester .44 Webley says "solid head."
Click to expand...

Not quite what you might think. Many British cartridges used a battery cup primer (Think 12ga. shotgun shell) with the battery cup serving as a rivet to hold the rim in place. The rim was a separate diac from the case.

Bob Wright
 
"Not quite what you might think. Many British cartridges used a battery cup primer (Think 12ga. shotgun shell) with the battery cup serving as a rivet to hold the rim in place. The rim was a separate diac from the case."

Uhm... That wasn't really used in handgun cartridges, was it?

As far as I know, that was primarily done with the wound foil and paper cases (.577 Snider, .577-.450) in the early days before they figured out how to properly draw brass cases.

In the case of the .577 the "rim" was actually a flat iron washer. Normally there was a small brass cup at the case head that would support where the foil/paper attached to the head.

This .577-.450 shows that kind of case construction

Snider-Martini-Enfield_Cartridges.JPG



I have never, however, heard of that type of construction being applied to handgun cartridges in the United States nor have I ever heard of the term "solid head" being used to denote a on-piece case as opposed to the built-up composite case.
 
My thanks to all, and apologies for the thread drift

After an hour of searching, here is the only reference I can find to an earlier ".38 or.380 Revolver" cartridge:

The ".380 Revolver" round had been developed in the middle 19th Century for use in small concealable revolvers. It's a pretty anemic round (a 124 grain bullet at 625 fps, for a whopping muzzle energy of 110 foot-pounds) similar to the .38 Short Colt. In 1887 Smith & Wesson had developed the .38 S&W round for its line of top-break revolvers. Boasting a heavier bullet (160 grains) and more energy (250 f-p at the muzzle), it was better but still no world-shaker. Starting from these two datum points, the Webley firm, with an eye on the new requirements, developed a new round in the early 1920's for British Army trials. It fired a 200-grain lead bullet propelled by "Neonite" powder at a muzzle velocity sufficient to give it reasonable power.

It comes from this page during a discussion of the history of the Webley:

http://www.nrvoutdoors.com/ENFIELD SNUB/ENFIELD SNUB.htm

I find only that single reference for pre-1897, yet literally hundreds after that date that refer to the military loading of the .38 S&W as the '.380 Revolver'...

I find it hard to believe that the reloading manual that BlueTrain mentions from 1940ish is referring to a healed bullet obsolete cartridge from 1867, but I guess anything is possible...
 
The .45 Mauser is a new one on me. What was that chambered in?

I also note that the .44 Colt and the .44 Remington, which look suspiciously similiar, have almost no rim or flange, as the British used to say, at all.

I have also noted that a few cartridges, all for rifles that I've noticed, have a distinct bevel, resulting in a base that is not exactly flat but tapers slightly to a thinner rim. It isn't much but very noticeable. Of all the cartridges I just rummaged through, however, only the 7.64x54r is like that. I wonder why?
 
The .45 Mauser, from what I can find, was also known as the 11mm Mauser, as was used in at least one Mauser "zig-zag" revovler.

As to the Colt, and Remington, cartridges, they didn't need a rim for extraction, as they were rod ejectors. This prevented their use in S&W revovlers.

Beveled rims helped cam the cartridge as sliding (falling) breech blocks were closed on the rounds. Prevented the breech block from catching on the rim.

Bob Wright
 
O.K. Here's what I found for the .450:

My specimen is made by Eley, a commercial mfg. White and Munhall list the .450 Revovler service ammunition as the Mk.I having an iron base, the Mk. II as having a brass base.

The same source quotes a box label for the .45 Mauser as "For .45 Mauser Pistol"



Bob Wright
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top