WW II British tanker's assessment of the Sten and .38 Webley

The Lugar pushed out a 124g Hard Ball round at over 1000 fps. Right through the hardest clothing, hole in hole out! Best round of the 2ndWW, for pistols, sub guns.
I carry 16 rounds of 147g Ranger T, in my Gen 4 Glock 19.
But my spare G17 Mag. is carrying 17 rounds of NATO 124g hardball.
Nice and quick, better at car perforating!
 
OK, you want an explanation. Here's why we're saying what we're saying.

1. The level of training that the British gave their officers on use of handguns was incredibly minimal. You get more training in the use of handguns at a 1 hour NRA instructor's course.

2. The issue British revolver was double action only. It has a relatively heavy, long trigger pull and it takes considerable training and practice to become proficient with it.

3. The Luger is a single action handgun with a relatively light, crisp trigger pull.

4. The Luger is generally considered to be one of the most naturally pointing handguns ever designed, greatly aiding the shooter's ability to hit with it. I've seen absolute novices shooting a Luger do very well with it, and do very poorly with other handguns.

5. The Luger round is considerably more powerful than the British issue service round.


All that considered, give someone with minimal training a Luger and a Enfield revolver to shoot, and they're going to do a LOT better with the Luger.



"Maybe hundreds of soldiers that had to kill lots of people know better than an armchair quarterback."

So, in other words, you're doubling down on the armchair quarterbacking, because you're AC QBing the people you accuse of being AC QBs.

Gotcha.

Gotta remember something... More than a few of us on this board, and in this thread, have served in the military, have extensive firearms application and use backgrounds, and have fired shots in anger.

There are more than a few people in this thread who are commenting quite knowledgeably based on their personal experience.

I don't have military service to my credit, one of my great regrets in life, but I have considerable depth of practical experience with the firearms that are being talked about in this thread.

So, AC QB to AC QB, what's your background?
 
Being a Brit kid, not knowing much about guns, he probably knew a Luger. It was the standard bad guy movie gun of the late 30s and 40s.
He may have also heard stories from WW1 vets.
A lot of troops in the war wanted Luger, they hadn't heard of the P-38. They called it the wartime Luger, inferring it was a cheap copy.
 
The P-38 was the South African made under license pistol. I have shot them, cheaper to manufacturer than the Luger. But they are reliable, accurate.
 
The P 38 was made in Germany for the German Army, which was at war with South Africa.

Your comment isn't true for the WWII years.

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk
 
I know that Mike, my friend, a Soth African, told me of this situation, but I never made it clear (Old you know!) much after WW11. He carried one in Cape Town. That was made at home.

His comment on how to tell if someone was carrying in a Pub. They had a jacket on!
 
After your comment last night I did some more digging and was surprised to find out that the P-38 was used extensively in South Africa post WW II, apparently even becoming an official arm of SA police.

Not sure if they were all manufactured in Germany, or if the South African government manufactured their own variant.
 
The British placed almost no priority on training their officers in the use of handguns. Essentially it boiled down to being shown how to load, unload, and maintain the gun and range time that MIGHT get them up to 50 rounds fired total. If they were lucky. As war time pressures of ramping up an army really hit home, it's very likely that that amount of training was cut considerably. The military needed the officers more than it needed the officers to be proficient in handgun use.
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Nor should they. The time was better invested in learning to shoot the rifle, and the LMG, and the various SMGs when they eventually came along. An officer must know how to do all these, and to at least the same standard as his men. As well as all the other stuff he has to keep up with. Later on in the war many were carrying rifles and wearing a private soldiers equipment, and not messing around pistols which were of marginal value on a battlefield where everybody else has got something bigger.
 
Mike Irwin said:
"There is still resistance to the .38 S&W. Ask on the S&W board about your old .38 and somebody will surely say: "They still make ammo for it but it is expensive and hard to find."

And today, that's true. It CAN be expensive and hard to find because it's not nearly as popular as it once was.

The reason for that is that S&W brought out the J frame in .38 Special, displacing the .38 S&W as the small snub caliber.

The entire Wonder 9 stampede that started in the late 1970s also didn't help the cartridge one bit, either.

But in the 1950s and 1960s, the heyday of the surplus era, .38 S&W was available just about anywhere that sold ammunition and/or firearms.
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Also to keep in mind the .38 S&W was designed to be used, and has primarily been chambered in, top break revolvers. Once the top break design was usurped by stronger revolvers that could handle more powerful loads and be just as fast to reload due to the swing out cylinder, the .38 S&W was doomed for obsolescence.

The only reason the .38 S&W is still around today is that it's low powered enough it's not banned in other countries for civilians to own. Kind of similar to the .38 Super in Mexico, so ammo isn't impossible to find. Not easy or cheap, but not impossible.
 
The reason that the .38 S&W is still around today is the same reason the .32 S&W is still around today -- MILLIONS of revolvers were manufactured for it over 100 years, and many are still in use today.

S&W and others were still manufacturing .38 S&W's into the 1970s, and H&R may have been making them into the 1980s.
 
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