Thompson-LeGarde Tests

Thompson-LaGarde.

Yup, welcome to the club iffin you first found out about this just now. We've been talking about it till we were blue in the face for decades (ok, ok. OVER A HUNDRED YEARS NOW!). Kinda beat to death already. :D
 
It happened over 100 years ago.

Little was known about the properties or actions of bullets once they struck the body.

Repeatable testing media that mimiced the average mean density of human flesh didn't exist.

Throwing a real monkey wrench into the equasion was the fact that the new smokeless powders were making far higher velocities possible. 200+ years of general understanding about how large, heavy, slow bullets reacted when hitting tissue were going out the window.

Thompson - LaGarde was at least an attempt to derive some sort of understanding using probably the best media they had available at the time.

No, it wasn't scientific. But ballistics was hardly a science back then. Mann's (I think it was Mann) book on exterior ballistics was coming out just around that time,
 
They seem pretty scientific to me, which is not the same as saying they were well done or exhaustive and furthermore, it seems they reached a reasonable conclusion based on what they had done. These days, if the same tests were carried out, something like a hundred head of cattle would probably be shot. And then two years later the test would be repeated because someone didn't like the results.

I hadn't been aware that 9mm was included.
 
First excerpts from these back when I was in high school

and the thing that struck me was how many of them, regardless of 9mm or .45, ended up with "steer killed with hammer."

Amazing that anybody could make a claim for caliber superiority from the tests I read.
 
I seem to remember hearing that cattle are regularly slaughtered in a variety of ways, from a .22 to the head to a sledgehammer, also to the head. But normally these are all standing there placidly (I imagine) and not charging. And I also remember reading somewhere in some article about handguns of the New York Police Department when Roosevelt was police commissioner. They went about making a few tests essentially doing the same thing, then choosing a .32 Colt revolver.

A hammer worked for Thor. Fairbairn, on the other hand, stated in his book that the more he learned about the subject (of bullet performance and stopping power), the less he was sure about anything.
 
"Killed with hammer." So what?

The Thomson-LeGarde handguns tests were NOT done to determine which round killed cattle. They were conducted to observe the effect on the target subject in order to deduce relative effectiveness of stopping power. The tests were as scientific as the time and technology allowed.

One should also consider the tests were conducted by men who had been in the business of shooting people. These were not men removed from the reality of fighting with firearms.

Another limitation of the tests and of the time was the absence of effective hollow point bullets. Most everything at the time was either RNL or FMJ.

If I'm recalling correctly, the T-L results endorsed big, heavy bullets as being more effective than smaller, lighter bullets. That's not a sweeping and overwhelming opinion.

I do not think the results of the T-L testing are the ultimate and complete answer to everything. However, to discount them entirely is probably not advised, either. In the hundred-some years since the tests were conducted we have seen many other tests based on everything from goats to water jugs to computer simulations. I don't see any conclusions strikingly more enlightened.

I'd still like to see a survey of shooting events categorized against a grid arrangement. But even that would only speak to a generalized percentage of results and NOT predict every specific future event.

In the meanwhile, I'll still carry sidearms with the biggest, heaviest bullets I can shoot well.
 
Amazing that anybody could make a claim for caliber superiority from the tests I read.
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They didn't make any claims based on shooting live animals--they essentially abandoned that approach when the results didn't support the answer they were looking for. They ended up picking a caliber based on their subjective evaluation of momentum transfer to hanging pieces of meat & bone. Basically they picked what they wanted and tried to make the test results support their choice.
If I'm recalling correctly, the T-L results endorsed big, heavy bullets as being more effective than smaller, lighter bullets. That's not a sweeping and overwhelming opinion.
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One problem (there were many) with the test is that they used the results to endorse big, heavy bullets as being more effective when the only rapid one shot kill they got on the live animal testing was using the .30 Luger.
 
I fail to understand how the T-L test can be considered scientific at all. For those who may not have seen it before, here's a bit more detailed account of the tests

http://www.sightm1911.com/lib/history/background.htm#test

There are too many uncontrolled variables including shot placement, bullet type and construction, and size and gender of the cattle for the tests to be considered scientific. Also, the "measurements" given in the cadaver tests were purely subjective, the tester simply assigned a number that seemed right for the amount of 'swing.' Finally, even if we ignore the uncontrolled variables and lack of objectivity, there is no way that the tests could conclude anything with such conflicting results.
 
Another limitation of the tests and of the time was the absence of effective hollow point bullets. Most everything at the time was either RNL or FMJ.
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Missed that the first time I responded. Take a look at the link in Webleymkv's post. You'll note that while the smaller calibers used non-expanding bullets, they used expanding bullets in the larger calibres for at least some of the testing.

They clearly stacked the deck to give the outcome they wanted and even that was insufficient to get the desired results from the testing. As Webleymkv points out, they ended up rating the calibers subjectively when they provided the final "results".

It's extremely unfortunate that they were called the Thompson-LaGarde TESTS instead of the Thompson-LaGarde OPINIONS.
 
"You'll note that while the smaller calibers used non-expanding bullets, they used expanding bullets in the larger calibres for at least some of the testing."

While I no longer have access to the original copy of the Thompson-LaGarde tests that I did when I worked with NRA, I find it to be highly unlikely that they used hollowpoint ammunition in the .45 Long Colt, and I really question whether they were able to lay their hands on any Webley Manstoppers at all.

At the time the tests were conducted the 1899 Hague Conventions were several years in the past. Britain's signature on those conventions had led to its dropping the Mk. III from production after less than 3 years.

There's also not a lot of evidence that these bullets expanded much when they were shot into people. The British experimented with several different designs, from bullets with a deep concave profile to what were essentially wadcutters.

While they apparently did gain a reputation for better stopping power, one needs to remember that they were being compared to bullets with a long sloping round nose.

As we know with the 158-gr. LRN .38 Special bullet, LRNs aren't particuarlly well known for their stopping power, and bullets with a semi or full wadcutter profile often have a better reputation.


"Another limitation of the tests and of the time was the absence of effective hollow point bullets. Most everything at the time was either RNL or FMJ."

These were tests being done by military officers for the military. I'm not sure if the United States had signed the Hague Accords at the time of the Thompson-LaGarde testing, but the US was represented there.
 
I find it to be highly unlikely that they used hollowpoint ammunition in the .45 Long Colt, and I really question whether they were able to lay their hands on any Webley Manstoppers at all.
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So you think the information in the link (based on the Leon Day, 1983 Gun Digest article) is made up? I have to admit that the information does seem to be a bit slanted against the tests, but still, it seems that it would be short-sighted to fabricate something like that given that the actual data is still available...
 
"So you think the information in the link (based on the Leon Day, 1983 Gun Digest article) is made up?"

I've sent you an in-depth response.

Made up? I think that's less likely than simply an error in either note taking, type setting, etc., during document preparation.
 
"And then in the 80's we had the Strasbourg Goat Shoot. Who thought that was scientific?"

Personally, I think the entire report was nothing more than a fabrication. No goats were harmed during the connivation of that lie.
 
Thanks, Mike,

Based on your in depth PM response I will stop citing information on the T-L test from the link in question. I will also start trying to get some information on the T-L testing from a reliable source.
 
I really think the Leon Day article (whomever Leon Day was, I have my suspicions as to who used that pen name, and no it wasn't Jeff Cooper) REALLY does everyone and everything a disservice.

The author injects ENORMOUS biases into it, biases that are in fact his own.

He makes many assertions as if they are facts without considering that he's viewing T-L's efforts with 100 years of historic hindsight.

He's also attributing to T & L actions that simply cannot be attributed to them because there's absolutely no evidence to support it outside of the T&L tests, and one simply can't arrive at credible postulations about individuals' beliefs based solely on what was a very small snapshot of their career and experiences and what I believe to be a very imperfect interpretation of those experiences.

Throughout his article Day essentially faults T&L for not conducting a ballistic testing experiment as it would have been conducted in 1983.

Problem is, that's like faulting Henry Ford for not designing the Ford Mustang in 1902.

The only thing that might be even remotely true in Day's claims is that T&L sort of knew what outcome they wanted.

But, as I've said before, they had the results of the .38 Long Colt's use during the Philippines Expedition/Insurrection to form a baseline for what didn't work in handgun stopping power.

Were they unduly influenced by the incidents in the Philippines? Very likely so.

But it's very interesting that their recommendations really matched closely with what was seen in the real world of shooting events right up to the dawn of modern, reliably expanding hollow point bullets, which really has only been with us since the middle 1990s.

It's also very interesting that the British essentially went backwards from the .455 Webley to the .380, which in a lot of ways mirrored the performance of the .38 Long Colt, and which accumulated a rather dubious performance record while in use during World War II.
 
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