Quote:
Originally Posted by jimmyj
In the 1950s Webley Mk IV, Mk V, and Mk VI Revolvers were .455 re-chambered to .45acp. Prices were from $9.95 to $14.95 depending on the Mk#.
Enfield Revolvers were .38 S&W
What has me confused is now there are Webley Mk IVs in .38 S&W. ??
Help ?
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There were two series of Webley top-breaks, with several Mark-numbered iterations over time.
The first .455 series started with the Mk I in 1887 and ended with the Mk VI introduced in 1915.
The second series of .38 revolvers was originally introduced as police revolvers and then submitted in response to the British government's decision to switch to the .38/200 (or .380) caliber in the 1920s. There was a .38 Mk III, but the version submitted was labelled .38 Mk IV. I've never heard of a Mk I or Mk II in .38, so maybe someone with more detailed knowledge can chip in here.
The .38 Mk IV was not adopted, though. The gov't instead had Enfield develop a similar design and adopted it as the Enfield No. 2 Mk I, leading to a legal dispute with Webley & Scott which the company won halfway, getting about half their claimed development costs back from London. They then went on marketing the .38 Webley successfully to police all over the Commonwealth.
When Enfield wasn't able to produce enough revolvers for WW II needs, Webley supplied about 105,000 Mk IV's as secondary handguns to the British Army from 1940-1944.
It's interesting to note that Britain and the Commonwealth nations fielded more S&W British Service models than Enfield and Webley topbreaks COMBINED.
After the war, production of the .38 Webley continued unchanged mostly for police and military customers until the 1970s.