Quote:
Originally Posted by RABULL
There has been some very good information provided here. I am aware that the California Highway Patrol quickly placed an order for the Model 4006. At the time, I was working for the City of Red Bluff, CA Police Department and we had to be one of the first City PD's to place a complete order after the CHP order. If fact, the S & W Rep let us know what they would do their best to get us our Model 4006's ASAP even though everyone else was starting to make orders also.
The funny part was that after the FBI went up to the 10mm S & W Model and 10 mm Lite Loads, Winchester dropped the new .40 S & W caliber on us and all of a sudden there was a lot of scrambling to replace the S & W 1006 type Model with the 4006 Model in .40 S & W..... What was funny is that I thought the FBI kind of got hung out to dry with their 10 mm handguns..... I always wondered why Winchester ammo didn't tell them what was getting ready to do with the .40 S & W Ammo. I looked at the S & W 10mm Handgun and would have purchased a S & W .45 caliber before a 10mm handgun.
However, a .40 S & W on a 9mm Frame S & W Framed handgun was a different matter..... I would go with that, no problem.......
If you ask me why, it is simple....... a 100 pound female police officer could be trained to handled a 9 mm frame .40 caliber.....whereas the S & W 10mm Handgun was a very big handgun and I was not so sure that the same 100 pound female police officer could handle that big of a handgun.........
I thought a 9mm framed handgun shooting a .40 round made way more sense than a 10 mm sized handgun shooting a 10 mm "Lite" from a huge 10mm handgun.......
Now you can tell me that years later, this made a lot of sense but this was very shortly after this all went down.......You have to use your head right now and it was a no-brainer to me, so I pulled the trigger.........
My SWAT Team even went to a S & W Model 4006 sent out to Novak with Novak Low Mount Night Sights, a Novak Action Job, Bar-Sto Match Fitted Barrel and some other upgraded parts...... My SWAT Team as not out gunned complete with their H & K MP-40 40 Caliber, Colt M-4 5.56mm Submachine Gun and the Benelli M-2/ M-4 14" Semi-Auto Shotgun.
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Please note that I wrote this response several weeks ago but because of my schedule, I was not able to post it until now. As such, there are several additional points that have either been discussed by others since then or have been used to move this Thread’s discussion into slightly different directions. Therefore, I am sorry for any confusion that my comments might now cause.
“RABULL”
Only have a few moments here so I apologize if anything I say is short or sounds curt or impolite; as that is certainly not my intention in attempting to comment on what you said or, separately, to add a few things to my first response posted earlier.
The .40S&W cartridge, and the 4006 pistol meant to employ it, were introduced in a somewhat unfinished state at the SHOT Show in January of 1990. Yes, there were guns on display. Yes, there were shootable guns in existence (and there had been for some time) and there was a lot of data available about both them and the cartridge, so there was no attempt to (or even a need to) hoodwink the public as to what the Smith Factory had hoped for, or the end user could expect, in regard to their performance.
But there are always bugs to work out in any new firearm design and here there was also the matter of addressing the results of a new cartridge as well. The reason that those guns I spoke about earlier (in my first Post within this Thread: 4006's - information/ history/ tidbits??) were “X-Guns” was because “real guns” were not yet being produced.
I also didn’t spell it out and perhaps I should have but I hope that “824tsv” now realizes that depending on when in the Spring of 1990, he originally ordered his 4006, it might have been as much the delay in manufacturing the finished concept as well as a significant number of initial (and by then “stacked up”) back orders that caused his gun to take so long to get to him. More on that later.
I also know that a least a couple of the first guns sent to the California Highway Patrol/CHP (because of the sincere and immediate nature of their interest in the concept) were not only pre-production models but probably “Show Guns” so that they had something “in hand” to examine and review as soon as possible after their discussions about all of this with the Company at SHOT (those discussions also being something I mentioned in my first Post in this Thread).
Another thing I mentioned earlier was the lengthy and detailed process of testing and evaluating a number of different models from Smith and others by the CHP (my first “real” and detailed exposure to a double column, frame-mounted, decocking lever only gun from the Factory was early-on in this process), so it was actually quite some time later in the year before the conventional (I suppose I should say “Traditional”) TDA S&W 4006 in .40caliber won out (and ultimately, a bid for it was let).
I will agree with you that the Smith & Wesson salesman for that territory, who had done a great job of things representing the Company to the CHP in terms of getting all those samples organized and any questions about them or the cartridge (itself) answered, would have also done as much as he could to help the other agencies within the State whose interest in this gun and caliber was piqued by the Highway Patrol’s study of them. He was a good, hardworking man, whose commitment to law enforcement was beyond reproach.
But while there is a lot of misleading, if not outright wrong information about such matters here on this site (as well as in numerous other places around the ‘net.) it should be recognized that the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s move to the 10mm and Smith & Wesson's development of, and CHP’s subsequent interest in, the .40S&W had little, if anything, to do with each other.
The FBI’s interest in the 10mm was something they developed on their own (the original “test” gun for the conventional 10mm ammo they reviewed in what I think was 1988-89 was a personally owned Colt Delta Elite) and the lightened load they moved to sometime later (and which was ultimately sold to the public), was formally developed for them by Federal not Winchester (who developed the .40).
Separately, and not part of their work on the gun for the FBI (ultimately, the Model 1076; a gun that was “Spec’d Out” by the Bureau and not S&W), Smith & Wesson developed the .40S&W with Winchester/Olin with much the same thought (but not for the same purposes) that the Massachusetts gun maker had developed and introduced the .357 Magnum with Winchester, the .41 Magnum with Remington, and the .44 Magnum with Remington. (Historically, there were a lot more of these things but I need not go into them here.) In essence, this meant taking someone’s idea or initial loadings, testing things formally and then standardizing them by an ammo company that could make an “experiment” into a “cartridge”, which could be loaded responsibly and consistently at a repeatable and commercial level, while Smith designed and built a gun to safely employ (and showcase) it.
It should be noted, however, that while I was given the same “pitch” for the “Centimeter” cartridge in the late 1980’s (itself a cartridge being linked historically to the .40G&A) that one often sees quoted in part, and not always correctly, on line as well as elsewhere within this site, to help convince people of its possible value somewhere within the S&W product line (it was the cartridge that got things moving in the direction of the .40S&W), my role in things at the time did not make me privy to whatever verbal or written (as well as binding or non-binding) agreements were signed (if any were signed) with Winchester regarding the project, the sharing of information, or the release (disclosure) of information with each other or with those outside the combined (gun and ammo) project.
But having been involved in similar later adventures at Smith and gradually moving into roles there and elsewhere that routinely involved such corporate secrecy during their project development (secrecy and non-disclosure often spelled out by formal/legal agreement), I have to wonder why Winchester, working on what appears to have been a proprietary cartridge for S&W would have told anybody, including the FBI, who was developing a new and markedly different load with Federal Ammunition (a direct competitor), about their work on the .40cal. Especially as the two rounds (the proposed .40S&W and the downloaded Federal 10mm) were not only not directly interchangeable but were generally thought to be associated with two much differently sized firearms platforms.
For even if there weren’t legal reasons to keep them from doing so (and again, I don’t know if there were), there would have to be marketing concerns AND it seems very unlikely that knowing about the “.40” (a then unfinished and still unknown entity; as well as an unproven performer in the lab or on the street) was going to change anybody’s minds about the 10mm in Virginia or DC.
The FBI had already conducted a LOT of tests and had done a LOT of research. They already had a load they were pretty sure of and a gun that (on the surface anyway) met their specs and their needs. They were well on the way by January of 1990 when the .40cal cartridge and its pistols were still being developed and issues were still being resolved as a normal part of the design process.
I don’t believe that the FBI ever got “hung out to dry”
They wanted the 10mm and were moving along with it and in a gun they specified from features no one maker offered in a then-existing firearm. While not quite apples and oranges (at that point), these were still two different projects, driven by two (four) different entities (the Bureau and Federal AND Smith & Wesson and Winchester), along two different timelines, for seemingly, two different purposes (actually three for when adoption/modification of the “Centimeter” was first proposed formally within the Company in early 1989, a good deal of the reasoning offered for it focused on “competitive shooters” and “action shooting” and only passing references were made in regard to Law Enforcement).
As to the “lot of scrambling to replace the S & W 1006 type Model with the 4006 Model in .40 S & W”, that might have been the case in some circles, but that is NOT how the gun was ultimately (not initially) pitched by the Company. And separately, in some parts of the country (including those parts on the coast opposite from you), there remained a lot of interest in the bigger gun and Smith (and later Glock) made numerous sales of true 10mm firearms there and elsewhere.
Initially, Tom Campbell and others did a very striking and very effective video emphasizing in a very graphic manner (if I remember correctly), the powerful, almost hand-cannon-like, performance levels of the .40caliber. However, it was soon decided that a film more telling of the argument you make (that is, “a .40 S & W on a 9mm Frame S & W Framed handgun”) made more sense in trying to convince instructors, rangemasters, armorers, unit supervisors, chiefs, sheriffs, city officials, and union leaders of the benefits to this gun and its new cartridge.
So on tape, in print, and even on the lips of some of the LE sales force, Smith & Wesson rarely, if ever, mentioned the 10mm in relation to the .40. For from their standpoint, this cartridge was NOT an attempt to parrot or replicate the performance of the lessened FBI load but it WAS an effort to approach certain facets of the then popular 185gr JHP .45acp load in a gun (platform) that could hold more rounds than most “.45’s” and would fit more hands than most “.45’s”. In essence, the same thing you said about “a .40 S & W on a 9mm Frame S & W Framed handgun”.
(But for the record, this wasn’t just because of the “100 pound female police officer” that you single out but also because there had always been an additional group of traditional white male officers who also had trouble properly gripping the bigger frame. And more importantly in terms of numbers, not only had that group itself grown over time on its own but a separate and much expanded assemblage of individuals with the same problem of mismatched hand-to-frame-sizes came into this field with the move in the 1970’s and 80’s to not only hire women but also certain previously overlooked minorities and smaller statured males of all races, when the doors to a police career were rightfully flung open to anybody who could prove they could meet job-related standards and not just the oftentimes arbitrary height and weight minimums of the past. The “average” hand size of the past was obviously reduced as a result of finally hiring people of all sizes and therefore, gun fit issues, something seen with the revolver too, became more widespread.)
Such points regarding fit were not lost on that long list of departmental decision makers I mentioned above. But it should be noted that everything else I have noted came into play as well.
Fitting the firearm to the hand for control, as well as for proper operation of the trigger and any controlling levers, was a critical issue for the instructors, rangemasters and armorers tasked with first selecting a handgun for “everybody” and them making “everybody” proficient with it.
Capacity was not only on the minds of those same three groups but also the individual officer and the upper management (the chiefs, sheriffs and city officials I included in my list) who had to balance public concerns about hi-cap guns, as well as police union concerns about their members being outgunned, with the officers' actual needs (needs that had been historically hamstrung by the limited number of rounds carried in, and along with, the revolver).
And ballistics were a big issue too. Not only did the officers often argue among themselves regarding the “higher” capacity but perhaps lesser-performing “Wondernines” of the day versus the better-performing but “lower” ( “traditional” or “historical”) capacities of the big bore (.45acp) guns but again, the unions often got involved regarding their people being outmatched when compared to the criminals they faced and department and city managers were often very nervous about the public relation issues tied to the misconceptions regarding certain high-performance cartridges. Although, perhaps indirectly, there was some validity to that last point for while exaggerations sometimes plagued the supposedly overly powerful 10mm (and even the .45acp), there were often user-related recoil issues (both real and imagined) to contend with.
1) So offering a gun with higher capacity but not a warlike ammo reserve could make more than just one of these groups “happy”.
2) And offering a cartridge that was being positioned as a better performer than the 9mm loadings (of the day) and possessing of some things thought good in the 185gr HP .45acp, while not scaring the user because of recoil, or the “powers that be” because of potential liability, or the citizenry because of what they wrongly know about ballistics from television and the movies (all of which were something that a connection to the then already fabled 10mm Norma might do), was another multi-faceted winning characteristic of the .40 as well.
3) And then finally, putting all of this in a package that was relatively easy to carry (after all the 10mm platform was, for many, a much larger gun) and, perhaps more importantly, to put in the hand if it became necessary to employ, answered even more of those issues I have laid out above.
Please note and please understand that I am not telling you, as you say, that “Now you can tell me that years later, this made a lot of sense”, for what I am telling you is that this is how we actually positioned and presented the gun and, just as importantly, the cartridge and it’s concept to the marketplace.
Other than initial internal discussions that the market for the 10mm itself would be limited (for a wide range of reasons in all areas of potential sale and not just law enforcement) and, separately, that the “Centimeter”, like the 10mm, was in fact, a .40caliber cartridge, the .40S&W (not called that in those initial talks and reports) was not so much looked upon as a an option to, or a replacement for, the FBI-developed load for the 10mm as it was a proprietary cartridge with broad appeal that could set Smith & Wesson apart from its many competitors within the rapidly expanding United States pistol market of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s in the same manner as they had often done with other guns during the previous century of revolver-making.
Finally, and if you or others here just think I am making this stuff up (and I can assure you that I am not) just go to this Post elsewhere on this Site and look at both the front and back of the of the official, one-page, two-sided Product Announcement (that I assume was handed out and mailed out around the time of the SHOT Show in 1990: Uncommon 4006 Performance Center? New Information Added
First, the gun in the picture on the front side of that flyer is an X-Number gun. For while lead times in traditional film photography and non-electronic “printing” were certainly much longer then, than the way we see information relayed today, a “real gun” just wasn’t ready yet or available for the shot when it was needed to be taken.
This time frame/availability issue is further borne out by the projected availability date on the back side of the announcement: “April 1990”.
Second, that same projected availability date on the back side (“April 1990”) also points to my discussion the last time about needing to make those X-guns for Bisley early in that same year (1990) and to my possible explanation this time around for the delay in shipping the Springtime-ordered 4006 mentioned by “824tsv” (above).
Third, if you read the text of that factory “Announcement” (such things back then often served as de facto Press Releases or at least supplements to them), note that while references to “serious competition”, “major caliber”, “power” and “I.P.S.C. –style and other speed event competitors” abound within it, NOTHING is said in its discussions of Law Enforcement (or other matters) relating the “new cartridge” (or the “New Caliber” as both terms are used) to either the 10mm in general or the FBI's loading of it in particular.
In fact, one might even assume that the remark about this new round not possessing “undesirable pressure levels” could be an attempt to distance this cartridge from the standard 10mm itself for we often forget these days that back in the 80’s and 90's, the “10mm” was sometimes referred to as the “10mm Norma” and, separately, there were some real questions raised about how “hot” their original loads for it really were.
Finally, Fourth, the only real mention of Law Enforcement in that flyer emphasizes the “balance of major caliber performance in a high capacity pistols of very manageable size”, which is, in fact everything I have been telling you about here. That was the real focus and the real direction of the Cartridge and the Gun that contained it.
(Please note that at much later dates, I have seen remarks attributed to individuals at Winchester – not Smith & Wesson, where they – not Smith & Wesson – make comparisons between the two loads (the downloaded FBI 10mm and the .40) so such statements are out there but to be honest – and I cannot speak for Winchester – I think they were intended to serve as after-the-fact "ammunition marketing efforts" between two leading competitors in the ammunition field as this was not how the .40S&W was seen, discussed or presented to the consumer by S&W, whose idea it was.)
“RABULL”, I hope you find this of interest and I hope that anyone else reading this, especially “Poohgyrr”, who originated this thread, is finding my comments to be the “interesting information or history” that they, like he, were looking for.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 18DAI
Fascinating history Mr Nash! Thanks very much for sharing it with us!
I often wish to learn about the behind the scenes goings on concerning the 3rd gen pistols. Your posts are always educational and give us a rare insight into what was going on. One we would otherwise never get.
I found your comparison of the 4006 to the 5906 very timely as well. I looked at two NIB examples of both pistols recently. Why is the 4006 hammer so different in profile from the 5906? Cosmetics or functional reasons?
Could you share with us what became of those X prefix 4006's? 
I look forward to reading more of your posts Mr Nash! Thanks again for your willingness to share with and educate us! Best regards, 18DAI |
Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnHL
A couple of days ago 18DAI here noted the difference in the 4006 hammer as compared to the 5906 hammer.
I, too, had noticed a difference in the early .40 hammers, specifically a large hole through the model 411 hammer.
As many who frequent this forum will attest after attempting to decipher the logic behind the numbering system, understand what passes for "numerical progression", or fathom the reason for the multiple frame profiles on a single model (the 5906): Smith & Wesson seemingly applies the same rules to manufacturing that most people bring to a knife fight.
In my sloth, I had assigned this very reasoning (or lack, thereof) to the difference in the hammers.
That is, until 18 brought it back up.
It was then I remembered reading about it in a magazine article some years ago and I resolved to find it. Luckily I didn't need to dig too deep.
From the January 1991 edition of American Rifleman (pg 22), an article entitled: "The .40 Smith & Wesson" (table of contents listing: "Smith & Wesson's New .40") by Charles E. Petty,
I quote:
"When I saw the first production Model 4006, I noticed that the hammer was blued. This was unusual and my first thought was that S&W had run out of plated hammers and had substituted a blued hammer as an expedient. A flash chrome plating process is used on stainless steel hammers because stainless lacks the hardness necessary for continuous impacts with the firing pin. Further examination, however, revealed a cut in the rear of the hammer to reduce the weight.
A call to S&W provided the answer. The lighter hammer serves a dual purpose. It was developed in S&W's new "Performance Center" to speed lock time on competition pistols. S&W reports that lock time is reduced by 28%, which is certainly a plus for the shooter, but it also serves a more practical function.
We tend to think that the hammer is cocked as the slide moves to the rear but, in fact, the hammer is knocked back rather violently by the initial recoil impulse before the slide moves more than a fraction of an inch. The hammer strikes the tang of the frame and often rebounds.
By this time, though, the slide has moved to the rear and the hammer can strike the under surface of the slide in the area of the disconnector cut. Battering can result after extensive shooting, and the lighter hammer serves to reduce or eliminate this concern." (emphasis added)
End of quote.
So there you have it. It seems the .40S&W cartridge increased slide velocity to a point which mandated the use of a lighter hammer. And the MIM hammer which followed apparently was not scalloped to save money or material but was a proven method of making our Smith & Wesson pistols run better and last longer.
John
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Deputy50
I just went back and re-read the Shooting Times article. It talked about Smith and Wesson intended to use the 40 caliber and the 4006 as an IPSC competition platform. Specifically, S&W felt that the 40 could eclipse the 38 super because a 40 could make major factor very easily; where uploading the 38 super could lead to over pressure problems. The article noted that the 180 grain bullet was designed for the self-defense round (FBI protocol), but that a 150-155 grain bullet would be designed as a competition round.
Also of interest, the 1990 article noted that Smith and Wesson created the performance center that year to concentrate on IPSC comp guns, particularly for its new competition team of Brian Enos, J. Michael Plaxco and Jerry Miculek. The PC built 4006 comp guns used by some of the team members.
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“18DAI”: Please note the hammer on the X-gun photo in that linked flyer. “JohnHL” and “Deputy50” are on the right track and I will get back to you all when I can.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoodMornin
Mr Nash, out of curiousity, have you fired a 4043. If so, how did that feel to you, little more snap or just the same?
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And “GoodMornin”, I haven’t meant to ignore you either but I’ll have to get back to you with some notes about your question on the 4043 when I have the time. My dance card is full at the moment and I’ve got to get some work done.
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