For a very brief period back in the early '70's, I used to carry the Winchester-Western 200 gr. Lubaloy coated "Super Police" loading in my M60 off-duty.
I did until one day while shooting in an old sandpit, I found that it was unable to penetrate the skin of an old car door fired at an angle.
All the bullets would do is make a elongated dent in the skin. At a 90 degree angle from 15 or so yards, they only penetrated the skin and dropped inside of the old door. I would imagine that nearly all of the bullet energy was spent!

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JimC

Interesting post. An earlier poster on this thread reports a different result with the same load in a 2" bbl.

Kaaskop49
Shield #5103

Different type of car door maybe?

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JimC

I cast several hundred RCBS 200 grain gas check Keith style bullets for use in a T-C Contender in 357 super mag (later renamed 357 Maximum). It was the most accurate T-C barrel I ever owned. The bullets were cast of 100% linotype so only weighed 192 grain. In my earlier, more politically incorrect days they worked great in a 357 mag. for dispatching sharks once you got them up beside the boat. You could shoot down thru 3-4" of water and they would still provide complete penetration of the shark's head.

How about human 'body work'?

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

Tighter gaps and bores could = higher velocity.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

Everything I had read in the past regarding the old 200gr police loads said they where a poor man stopper. A product that failed miserably in street shootings so often that it was withdrawn from the market as the superior 158gr LRN replaced it as the common police load in .38 spl. There is a reason it is no longer manufactured and sold and it isn't because it was a good product to begin with or has any merit as a defensive load.

Well I have a mold that throws a 200gr rn and hand loaded a few boxes of 38 S&W for my Webley. It shot way high. High enough that I took a few pot shots at some steel strung up at 100yards that I just took a normal sight picture. So the Webely will stabilize them for shur. I could get one or two out of six from an improvised rest on that plate. I was thinking to try some sized for the 38 sp and fire them in my favorite m10

"Everything I had read....???" You apparently haven't read enough. In fact, for many years, it was a reasonably effective military round for the Brits and was used extensively by India police and military. The 380-200 was adopted by the Brits/India because it was a caliber that could be easily adapted to the Webley revolver without utilizing a longer cylinder, i.e., with "only" a new (or sleeved) cylinder and barrel.

Is it the best? Of course not. Is it completely useless? Not that either.

I like to read, but I also like to do my own investigating. Lacking personal experience in Britain's various conflicts before and during WWII, I conducted my own tests. Full disclosure: these do not count as valid scientific studies. However, when I handloaded 200 gr. bullets * for my various 38 Special revolvers (and consequently loaded slightly more powder than in the 38 S&W), the bullets traveled an average of 9" into my test media**.

Because the 200 gr. bullet is 27% heavier than the ubiquitous 158 gr. bullet, even at leisurely speeds, the recoil is somwhat more robust, especially in my 'pencil' barrel Mdl 10, which would have been the standard firearm issued to most police back in the day (the added recoil was not so noticeable in my 4" Mdl 586). Depending upon the number of rounds required in annual qualifications, I could see some reluctance by civilian police vis-a-vis 158 gr. vs 200 gr. Alas, as we all know, the LRN 158 gr. 38 Special was also notable for its comparative ineffectiveness.

The point may be that the 360-200 (or 38-200 or 38 S&W 200) had a brief spotlight in history and its legacy is that it wasn't as good....or as bad....as some internet historians would have us believe.




*I ordered 2 different bullets from Western Bullets: Lyman 358430 and Saeco #351. The Lyman is a RN, the Saeco is kind of pointy. I see Western now stocks a couple of HP as well as FP....if I were in a ordering mood, I'd try a couple of those.

**my test media are various rotted Douglas fir stumps: hard exterior; soft, rotted interior. Just like.....I tell myself....a bad guy with a winter coat. Of course, winter coats....and rotted fir stumps....come in varying thicknesses...

I wonder how the .38 Special 200gr. round compares in velocity ,stopping power & muzzle energy to the .38/200 which is ,if memory serves, a .38 S&W w/ a 200gr. bullet or thereabouts. Correct?

Well, yes. Did you read the entire thread? My post (perhaps I wasn't clear enough) was about an attempt to replicate the 38/200 with my 38 Special. The only difference between the two cartridges is that the 38 S&W (aka .380 Mk II, 38 Colt New Police, 38 S&W Super Police, 9x20mmR) has shorter brass (.775" vs 1.155") and has slightly larger bullet diameter (.361" vs .357"). It's relatively easy to download the 38 Special to 38 S&W velocities.

I suppose you could boost the velocity of the 200 gr. bullet in both cartridges if you wished, as long as you fired both in strong-enough revolvers....and not the ubiquitous break-action revolvers that S&W produced mostly in the 19th century. But my experiment was an attempt to replicate the 38-200 load used in the 38 S&W Victory M&P.

About the .38-200......the Brits believed in a ballistic factor they called "dwell". This was the amount of time the bullet spent within the body of the target. Longer dwell time gave more time for the force of the bullet to be imparted to the target. The example generally used was to try to move a heavy object. A fast energetic blow didn't accomplish much, a steady push at lower effort would move the object.

The .455 Webley cartridge wasn't a screamer in terms of velocity but apparently dealt with various unarmored opponents reasonably well. When the Empire went looking for a somewhat less energetic pistol cartridge, they wanted to stick with the general format of the .455: heavy bullet for caliber (calibre if we're being Brit), fairly low velocity.

When I started in 1962 the factory 200 gr .38spl load is what we carried in our 2" .38 spl revolvers. IIRC Western Brand ammo with the copper coated bullets.

A very informative thread! It is stirring a desire to find some 200 grain bullets to play with in my .38's!

In Elmer Keith's book, "Six Guns", is listed velocities for all handgun ctgs made by Western circa 1955. The .38 S&W 200gr is listed at 630fps and 176 foot pounds from a 4" BBL and penetrated 5, 7/8" soft pine boards at 15 ft.

The .38 Special (in the list is the only one of the two called "Super Police") is listed at 745 fps and 247 foot pounds from a 6" BBL and penetrated 7.5 boards. I have 3 boxes of the Western .38 Super Police in the yellow box. On the back it lists the velocity as 730 fps and foot pounds as 235.

I commented here before how I shot , only 12 total, 6 from a
M-10 6" and 6 from a M-10 2" through a 1200 page Cabala's hard cover winter season catalog as well as several gallon water jugs , set both in front and behind the catalog. All bullets stopped in the second or so, jug behind the catalog. The projectiles are about 3/4 inch long. Very blunt and probably tumble. For a solid round I thought they did pretty good.

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A Snider squibbed n the Jungle

Added comment prompted by a later entry: In them thar days*, the general measure of suitability for defensive use/power was how many 1 inch pine boards that would be penetrated and how deep the bullet lodged in the final board-if it didn't bounch off.

IIRC, the board box held 1 inch boards separated by 1 inch spaces. I do believe you can see these in use on the boxotruth website.

* When advanced chronographs were ballistic pendulums that required quite a bit of calculation to calibrate/use. Generally only seen in ammunition factories or military armories/research facilities. If you've got exemplars of known actual velocity, they can still be of surprising accuracy. Calibrated dials that record pendulum travel eliminate a lot of the math.