I watched the 1979 film "The Onion Field" last night. I watched it many years ago, but saw it was available on Netflix Instant and took the opportunity to watch it again. Great cast - a very young James Woods as the killer Greg Powell, along with John Savage, Ted Danson, and Ronny Cox.
If you haven't seen it, its a very good account of the 1963 kidnapping of two LAPD plainclothesmen (Karl Hettinger and Ian Campbell) and the cold-blooded murder of Campbell. Hettinger escaped, but was treated badly by the department and later resigned under a cloud.
Both cops were shown carrying six-inch K38s, which is probably fairly accurate. I seem to recall from Joseph Wambaugh's excellent book of the same name both cops carried six inch guns, with 200 grain ammo.
One of the cops asks the kidnappers to pitch their guns in the bushes after the bad guys let the cops go (which obviously didn't happen) because they bought the guns with their own money.
I'd be interested to see if anyone here has a former LAPD K38 to show off. It seems like with the size of the department and the length of service of the K38 there should be a few of them floating around.
http://www.odmp.org/officer/2723-pol...an-j.-campbell