I have always bought 200 gr .38 Special ammo whenever I rarely see it at gunshows. Winchester-Western are the most sought after as they have a reputation for tumbling when fired from a .38 2 inch snub. The tumbling effect when striking the target has great stopping power due to the tumbling. Bullet shape on Remington and W-W are different with the Remington looking like a normal RNL (158 gr) whereas the W-W has a truly rounded nose. My question is- does the Remington give the same tumbling effect as the W-W even though it has a different bullet shape?

I have shot long time ago, to boxes of the so called "Super Police" 200gr .38 Special from Remington-Peters factory load in a 2" snubby (Colt Detective Special) they did not stumble...... but the penetration at short distances was very very poor!!!.. indeed less than the standard 158gr load!!!,I think it was a "pure lead" configuration bullet (ogival long projectile) this coul be the cause of poor penetration!!!...
I dont know what to expect in a 4 , 5, 6 or 8 3/8 " revolver!!!..
Best Regards
Roberto Renaold

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Mike I have posted this before—the 200 grain WW Super Police load was what my dad carried in his Chiefs Special. That is a good question on the Remington. You would probably just have to test and see if they keyhole.

Here is a source that has recreated the load.

The Rebirth of the 200-grain 38 Special Super Police Cartridge

Here is an old thread that discuss this exact question with the Remington bullets:

200 gr "Super Police"

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I've used cast bullets up to 180 grains in .38 Special and wasn't impressed with accuracy or velocity. A 200 gr. bullet just seems too heavy for use in a cartridge case like the .38 Special. Some 200 grain bullets may tumble, but I doubt you could count on that happening consistently and you sacrifice considerable velocity over a bullet weight better suited for the .38 Special. Velocity differences often mean little, but when you get down in the 650-700 fps velocity range (with a snub nose gun), velocity may become critical. You may not want to shoot at any hard objects.

Skeeter did not care for them as the velocity was so low.

This thread brings back a lot of memories. I carried the 200 grain W-W Super Police round in a Model 37 back in the 1960's. At the time I was on the Yale Pistol Team (yes, students could get CCW permits in Connecticut if they were 21 years old) and several of us ran penetration tests on phone books using 158 grain and 200 grain .38 Special loads from both Remington and W-W. The guns were all snubbies - my Model 37, a recently introduced Model 60 (hard to find and pricey), and a Colt Detective Special. My 50+ year old recollection was that the 200 grain W-W load had the most impressive "wound channel" in the phone books, so we all started carrying it. Lots more to this story, but I'll leave it at that for now.

To clarify, "tumbling" within its usual meaning of a bullet turning end over end does not occur with any bullet. The proper description is yawing, i.e. partial rotation around its lateral axes. This can be clearly seen in high-speed videos of bullets passing through ballistic gelatin. In the case of military bullets, yawing at a high enough velocity through tissue (or ballistic gelatin) results in bullet breakup. The British first observed this effect in the .303 British bullet, and actually designed later .303 military bullets to yaw in tissue, thus circumventing the Hague Convention requirements proscribing expanding bullets in combat.

Yaw results from insufficient gyroscopic stability of the bullet in flight, and, as most know, the rifling twist rate affects bullet stability. Bullets which are heavy for their caliber (high sectional density) will require a tighter rifling twist to achieve stability.

Regarding whether Remington or Winchester 200 grain bullets will have different yaw performance when fired from the same handgun at the same MV, that seems very unlikely so long as the bullets have approximately the same mass and length. It's just physics in action.

My personal opinion is that using 200 grain bullets in any .38 revolver (.38 S&W or .38 Special) is not a good way to go in achieving highly effective terminal performance (call it "stopping power" if you wish). I believe one would be somewhat better off using more modern expanding bullet designs having higher velocity and lower mass which do not rely on yawing behavior.

A slow, heavy bullet that plows through soft targets. I like the concept.

Found this video on the subject...

I have a stand like that I got from Snap On 25 years ago for $125. I am not going to use it for a target stand.

Using the NEI #169A boolit designed to duplicate the service slug of the British Empire's 38/200 load, 3.0 grains of Unique gives the same 700 FPS that the 38 Special 200 grain Super Police loads yield. The bullet has more of a secant ogive rather than hemispherical nose of the Lyman 358430. It may be even more likely to yaw. In my opinion, the Brits seemed to have a knack for designing bullets that were nasty or effective, depending on your point of view

It shoots very well in both my Enfield No. 2 and my S&W BSR. B-16 targets at 25 yards, off hand last April.

Attached Images

	NEI 169a.jpg (53.4 KB, 38 views)
	BSR 881544.jpg (117.0 KB, 47 views)
	BSR target 19 Apr.jpg (74.6 KB, 41 views)
	Q2179(1).jpg (120.7 KB, 44 views)
	38-200 19 Apr.jpg (44.8 KB, 37 views)

If I recall correctly, the 200g Super Police load was not well regarded on the street back in the day.

The Remington 200 gr bullet was simply the 158 gr LRN with a longer body. The Winchester round used something that looked a lot like a Lyman bullet with what someone has called a hemispherical nose. The Lyman version in a .357 at ~850 f/s penetrated 60's era car bodies quite well.

I've tested bullet stability/integrity by placing cardboard sheets several feet behind either barriers (simulated interior walls) and/or water jugs. If bullets actually just yaw instead of tumble, they must yaw severely as I've seen quite a few holes in the cardboard that seemed to show a bullet flying sideways. The holes closely matched the profile of the bullets in question.

Added edit: most of the bullets tested were spitzer rifle bullets. I have foggy memories of at least one 200 gr Lyman that appeared to have tumbled. Another thing I learned from the tests was that pretty much anything faster/heavier than a .177 pellet at ~ 300 f/s will pass through an interior drywall partition with sufficient energy to cause serious injury.

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I have a couple boxes of Win 200gr lead 38Spec. The bullets are what I call blunt, darn near a wad cutter with rounded edges. They don’t say super police, not real old I think 80ish from box. Have never touched one off.

Mike, From PERSONAL OBSERVATION of numerous autopsies in New Orleans, when I was a deputy with OPCSO, the 200 grain .38SPL bullets by W-W "splatter " when they hit a concrete wall, do NOT ricochet, generally "tumble like H" & make what a coroner described a a "bloody rat hole" in the K5 area. = LETHAL out a a "snubbie" aptly describes the old 200 grain load.

just my opinon, tex

The 200 grain Super Police was an excellent stopper.

It had a reputation of tumbling in flesh and the long bullet left horrific wounds. No expansion required.

Performance against barriers, especially auto bodies, was not very good and the load didn’t stick around in Law Enforcement circles for all that long compared to other loads.

The British .38/200 was a similar concept and the Brits found it hit all out of proportion to its small size and low velocity. They considered it’s stopping power equal to the vaunted .455 Webley, high praise indeed.

The .38 Special Super Police is sort of a forgotten load but even today for civilian self defense usage it would not at all be a bad choice for the job, especially from a snub nose barrel where expansion even with good hollow points can be iffy. I don’t know of anyone loading commercial ammo in such a load which is a shame.

Jay:

The Rebirth of the 200-grain 38 Special Super Police Cartridge

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If anyone has Chic Gaylord's 1960 book Handgunner's Guide, you will see that he looked upon the Winchester Super Police load mentioned here with great favor.

In fact, he even cooked up loads consisting of 200 grain bullets, Unique powder, and 38 special cases that he said would go out at 1200 fps. These were for heavy-frame S&W and Colt wheelguns only.

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