.38 Failure pre WWI and bad rep of it and 9mm. Why?

Kip, both those loads that you provided links for are more properly considered 38/44 or light 357 Magnums, NOT as a 38 +P. BTW, the 38/44 was a specialty handload used in the large frame 38/44 revolvers and it led to the 357 Magnum. Typical 38 +P loads run about 250 ft.lbs. of muzzle energy out of a 4 inch barrel, at 350 ft.lbs. you're well above the pressure levels of a standard commercial 38 +P.

I would not consider it adviseable for use in any J frame that's only rated for a 38 +P or any K frame predating the introduction of the model 19. In a model 20 or older 38/44 it should be just fine. It will also be fine in a J frame rated for the 357 Magnum or any other 357 Magnum.

As for stopping power, you'll find failures in any caliber. These are handguns after all and handguns that can be carried conveniently and shot well lack the energy required to drop someone hyped up on drugs unless the shooter gets a good solid hit on the CNS.
 
The Thompson-Lagarde tests of 1904 were performed after the failure pf the 38 Long Colt in the Moro Rebellion, afaik they were the first attempt at any scientific attempts to determine what caliber was effective in handgun calibers. AFAIK I know there was very little "scientific" study of bullet shapes and effectiveness. The RNL bullet was "traditional, the wadcutter bullet caem about because target shooters wanted a bullet that left a clear hole in the target and could be easily scored. The FMJ was dictated by the Hague Convention and worked best in semiautomatic pistols. From what I have read military tests usually involve reliability tests, accuracy, ease of maintenance, stopping power really wasn't considered. Then there's the ongoing debate between the high velocity advocates and the large bore aficionados.
 
Actually, Thompson - LaGarde did look at different bullet profiles and attempt to determine how each behaved in target animals, and how that would translate into effective "stopping power." See Thompson-LaGarde They tried jacketed, soft lead, lead, soft-point, hollow-point, and cupped profile bullets. They also described the shapes pretty specifically.
 
.38 Special seemed to work pretty good until Elmer Keith came upon the scene.

Since then the old .38 just don't seem to work any more.:confused::D
 
JRWnTN said:
Only by those who've never seen the results of .40s on real human beings, up close.
Click to expand...

Agreed. That was long before the round had gotten it's street cred, and was being talked about by devout followers of Saint Cooper, the father/promoter of the 10mm. I've owned and shot many .40's and it's a fantastic round.
 
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I'll agree with that, as soon as something "bigger and better" is out, the old rounds are now "anemic".....

The 9x19 Para has been in police and military use for well over 100 years now, seen two World Wars in pistols and SMG's, limited use in Vietnam by SF guys......but now people talk about it like it's no good for anything but a pocket size auto......9mm Para is the "new .380" so it seems. Even Ruger has the "LC9" that just came out.

.38 Special 158 gr. was THE handgun round for decades, even after .357 came out. I have a 1956 M&P that was used by East Cleveland PD, if .38 Special was good enough for a cop in East Cleveland (one of the worst cities in the nation at that time) then it's good enough for me. Now, the full size 4" .38 Special K-frame service revolver is a "relic" and .38 is now seen as only good for snub revolvers.

What happened to the days when if you had a Model 10 and a Rem 870 stoked with 00 you were ready for anything:)

Cops worked some pretty tough towns with nothing more than a .38 revolver and a pump 12 ga. in the car.......now LEO's need to go to work with more hardware in the trunk than a squad of Army Infantry.......
 
Iggy said:
.38 Special seemed to work pretty good until Elmer Keith came upon the scene.

Since then the old .38 just don't seem to work any more.:confused::D
Click to expand...

This is similar to the way the .300 Ultra Mag is now required to do the job that used to be performed by the .303 Brit or .30-40 Krag.

Chris (a fan of the .38 Special and the .303 Brit)
 
The FMJ 9mm was accepted and used by military forces around the world, and one of the considerations was it's wounding capabilities. A dead soldier is left on the field, whereas a wounded one has the potential to tie up one or two of his buddies evacuating him, temporarily taking them out of the fight.
 
Dragon88 said:
As mentioned, velocity is the missing link in your research.

As to 9mm, i.., the US Army actually evaluated the P08 Luger for possible adoption. The results were unsatisfactory. ....
Click to expand...

Actually they tested the Luger in 7.65 (bought 1000) not 9mm, and it was a model 1900 not a P08, then they got a couple in .45 liked them but then DWM said they were not interested in a large trail lot of .45s so Colt and Savage were the trial pistols not Colt and Luger.
 
JRWnTN said:
Only by those who've never seen the results of .40s on real human beings, up close.
Click to expand...

From a ballistics standpoint the 40 S&W has been around since the 1870's. It's just a modern version of the 38-40. A caliber which seemed to have a strong following among those who felt a likely hood of using their sidearm for self defense.
 
I'm going to toss in a little food for thought. We keep seeing a lot of statements put forth as evidence in caliber wars, but how many of these are actually accurate, or even what was originally said? There's a lot of myths out there, and a lot of stuff that keeps getting re-quoted in print. To take a non caliber-war example: the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand with a FN Browning 1900 in 1914 that touched off WWI. Apparently, it was a 1910 (it's in a museum somewhere in Europe), but the 1900 keeps being quoted. How about the "heavy" recoil of the 1911, or the "fact" that a hit in the pinkie with a .45 will spin a man around? The .357 shooting through cylinder blocks? We can all come up with some of these gems. Sometimes, a writer will honestly speculate, but by the time it gets re-quoted a few times, it's official government policy. I'll finish with one of my favorites: we've all seen the famous video where four people are shot (one hit each), with a .22, and three of them go right down. So the .22 must have a 75% one-shot stop rate, right? Anyone? Buhler?
 
The modern infatuation with technology would be laughable if it weren't so dangerous. Everything pertaining to firearms involves trade offs. Military, Peace Officers, CCWs, Home Owners, Target shooters, Hunters all have different priorities and limitations.
Be confident and proficient with what you have and what you know, whatever caliber it is, and you'll be heads above the next guy (drugged up leather armored moros being the rare exception!)
It appears that we have more confidence in technology than what we know works
Thats unfortunate, unless you're in the business of selling guns & ammo.
 
Wild Bill Hickok carried two Colt Navy .36 revolvers, and it's certainly fair to say that he tangled with some pretty rough characters until he was shot in the back of the head in 1876. AFAIK, he was still carrying the two Navies, despite the availability of .44 Armies since 1860, and S&W and Colt .45 revolvers since the early 1870s. I've never encountered evidence that he used any ammo besides round ball lead bullets. I'm no black powder guru, but a glance thru Google links shows lots of evidence that the soft lead flattens nastily in tissue. .36 "paper ballistics" apparently parallel .32ACP/.32 S&W Long. So much for being "anemic," it would seem, as an 80-ish grain round ball obviously did the job for Hickok.
 
Mr. Hickock was a very careful man with his pistols and his effectiveness with what was essentially a .380 ACP power level pair of revolvers was due to his excellent performance under stress (read deadly accuracy).

Hickock's routine was reportedly to fire the five rounds from one revolver every day, clean the piece and reload with fresh loads. In a black powder gun, this was extremely important as the loads deteriorated quickly, giving rise to the saying, "keep your powder dry".

He then repeated the process with the second Navy revolver. This routine gave him 10 practice shots each day, two cleaned revolvers and fresh loads in each gun. I bet a bunch of us would be pretty good if we followed that routine, too!

I always wondered why he let down so bad in Deadwood though, sitting with his back to the door, especially knowing that there was somebody out there that didn't like him.
 
When I was in college I worked with an elderly black man who must have been down on his luck because he was working at a very physically demanding job well past retirement age.
We worked moving furniture in a women's dormitory after the terms let out. He'd been an orphan, got booted out of the orphanage right after WW1 and enlisted in the US Cavalry and was sent to the Phillipines where he served until mustering out before the start of WW2 (thereby missing the Great Depression)
He had lots of great stories and a great affinity for the 1911 .45!

The .38 Colt was a DA revolver, mechnically "high tech" compared to the old .45 SAA and certainly quicker to empty and reload, and utilized superior smokeless powder as well. It was a technological marvel of it's day along with the S&W Hand Ejector.

Apparently the Army neglected to tell the Moros about this great technology being unleashed against them, or the moros might well have surrendered or perhaps even drop dead of fright! LOL!

The troops did not have confidence in the .38 Colt. The stories about Moros may have been exaggerated up to a point (the .38 Colt is a wimpy cartridge compared to the .45 Colt after all) but the Japanese in WW2 were on the same islands and I haven't found any record that they felt pressed for more powerful handguns than the little Nambu.
The Americans however did have confidence in the old .45 SAA (even with it's quaint ways) and the later .45 1911. Having confidence plays a huge role in success.
 
In most of the discussions I have read about the .38 special vs. the 9mm Luger, the Luger is deemed weak and unacceptable, while the .38 is OK. One look at the ballistics shows that the 9mm with a 125 grain bullet beats the .38 with the same bullet by 200-300 FPS. Seems like that would settle the argument, but it still rages.
 
scattershot said:
In most of the discussions I have read about the .38 special vs. the 9mm Luger, the Luger is deemed weak and unacceptable, while the .38 is OK. One look at the ballistics shows that the 9mm with a 125 grain bullet beats the .38 with the same bullet by 200-300 FPS. Seems like that would settle the argument, but it still rages.
Click to expand...

Post WW2 I remember hearing stories about how powerful Lugers were "but they'd jam a lot" the old boys would relate.

When I first got involved in law enforcement, .38 spl was considered wimpy, and the .357 too powerful. The agency I was with had the policy that you could carry anything you could qualify with if it was .38 Spec/9mm Parabellum or larger. Revolvers had to be DA. Most of us carried .357s &.45 ACPs. The country to the South of us went to M59s,then when those wore out they've been changing models & calibers every few years. I think most of the local agencies now carry .40s judging from the brass I see at the range.

Getting back to the Parabellum though, europeans were fond of 'Machine Pistols' and the 9 is a perfect round for that---ammo was by far lighter than the .45 and when you're spraying the landscape the size of the lead really dosen't matter(consider that 00 buck ballistically isn't too much different than Hickock's .36 cap and ball x9) Logistically the 9 parabellum makes sense in that scenario.
 
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I "don't do" caliber wars, because I (a) enjoy fooling around with different calibers, rather than attacking one or the other, and (2) believe that a wide variety of calibers have served pretty effectively in their intended purposes, whether military, LE, SD or HD.

Few hoods of the '20s and '30s wanted to get shot with .32 or .38 S&W, much less .38 SPL, nor did GIs want to get hit with a "Schmeisser" (MP40), Luger or P38 in 9mm. They feared/respected these German weapons greatly. Obviously, however, all of these calibers also suffered failures from time to time, and the individual cop or citizen facing a psycho is also facing a different situation than most soldiers face on most battlefields, so comparisons are tenuous.

From what I have gathered over the years, the non-deforming round-nose bullets in light-to-medium calibers generally seem to suffer more failures to stop than bigger calibers and/or better expanding bullets. Still, many can indeed point to successful employment of 9mm ball, .38 SPL/S&W LRN, etc. I suspect most mere mortals are heavily influenced by their own personal experiences or those of their close acquaintances, so anyone who has seen a .38 or 9mm fail will despise it, and those who have seen it "knock someone down" think it's a howitzer.

Since I'm particularly interested in 200g bullets in .38 S&W and .38 SPL, I've run across many accounts of these bullets being highly rated, while others insist they are/were weak and ineffective. I think both are true, if that makes sense :-) And while comparisons of .38 vs. 9mm in 110-125g weights indeed show the 9mm has better velocities, the .38 is primarily designed for 158g ammo. . .and even proved adaptable to 200g bullets. Those provide a different approach to "stopping power" than the lighter/faster 9mm, and bullet types, designs, shapes, and composition tend to vary widely. Add in the fundamental distinction between the semi-auto solution and the revolver solution, and you have all the ingredients for endless discussion & disagreement. Loads of fun to be had by all!
 
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