Why wasn't the 52 made in .45ACP?

[rboineau]

The 52 S&W is such a great gun, the best centerfire target gun I ever shot. But I always wondered why S&W couldn't have made it in .45 auto caliber too. I realize the 52 used the Model 39 9mm frame but it looks large enough to handle the 45 cartridge. At most they could have made the frame a few millimeters wider/bigger from the start to handle 9mm, 38 Super AND 45ACP in their double-action service gun, then the 52 could have been 45 too.

Think how nice a .45 Model 52 would be--no five-round magazine limit either. Yeah, I know S&W made .45 autos but they are not 52s.

Colt would have sold far fewer Gold Cups if a .45ACP Model 52 had been available!

 

[swlate]

Have you looked at the 845?

 

[novalty]

Probably the 945 is a more relavent comparison. The 845 being it's predecessor, preceeded by the 745.

 

[swlate]

Probably the 945 is a more relavent comparison. The 845 being it's predecessor, preceeded by the 745.

I see the 845 as a Performance Center ‘follow-on’ to the 745 but having had the all three…the 945 is a completely different beast to me. Its trigger and safety are 1911ish. The 845 is much closer to the 52 (if you consider the 952 a follow-on to the 52) than the 945 to me.

I also prefer the trigger on my 845 to a to any my 945s.

 

[TOM BECKWITH]

Because God gave the secrets for the S&W 41 & 52 to Smith and the secret for the 1911 to J. Browning and COLT.

 

[ralph7]

and along these lines, why was there never a .45 acp flush seated wadcutter like the .38?

 

[colt_saa]

I bought a 952 when they came out. I was thrilled to have an updated model 52. That is until I shot it. The 952 may look like a model 52, but it does not even come close to grouping like one.

While the 845 may not look like a model 52, it does group like one. I shot my Uncle's for a while and then found one for myself. These are very fine pistols. It is a shame that there were only two short runs of these very accurate target pistols.

They could not have named the 845 the model 4552 because that would have fallen into the 3rd generation naming convention and not made any sense when decoded.

 

[Dave_n]

I have two 745s and also two 52-2s. In 45, these SAO pistols are almost as accurate, out of the box, as the 52s. So to my mind SW did make an "almost 45/52". Dave_n

 

[RGPM1A]

I bought a 952 when they came out. I was thrilled to have an updated model 52. That is until I shot it. The 952 may look like a model 52, but it does not even come close to grouping like one.

If you reload and use the right bullets it will and
IMHO they are far easier to shoot tight groups with off hand than a M52 because they cycle faster.

I have a 945-1 too and it will also shoot very nice groups too with the right loads - on par with a M52 or a M952.

 

[TAROMAN]

745 is pretty close. Haven't tried full wadcutters in it yet, but it might feed them, too:

 

[BUFF]

Why didn't S&W build a Model 52 in .45 ACP?

Two reasons. First, the M-52 isn't big enough for the .45 ACP.

Second, tooling up for another frame size was extremely expensive at the time and S&W had their hands full meeting demand for their existing product lines. Whether the market for such a gun would have been there is debatable, as Colt and military surplus 1911's were plentiful and inexpensive and even at the time, Bullseye target shooting, the target market for such a pistol, was in decline.

S&W's first .45 Auto pistol was an experimental gun made by Tom Campbell, one of their engineers. Campbell was a successful IPSC shooter and S&W sponsored him. Scoring in IPSC matches was caliber-sensitive, hits outside the main scoring area counted higher with 'major' calibers like .45 than they did with 'minor' calibers like the 9mm. Campbell had been competing with S&W 9mm pistols, but Campbell both wanted the higher scoring ability of a .45 ACP pistol and also wanted to remain loyal to his employer and use a S&W product. His solution was ingenious.

Campbell took 2 Model 52's and cut them into 2 pieces each, along the verticle axis. One gun was cut with the left half thicker and one was cut with the right half thicker. He then welded the two thick halves together and hand-made the parts to make the hybrid in .45 ACP, such as barrel and magazines. The gun became known as "Supergun" and was quite a sensation.

S&W didn't really see an economic marketing opportunity for a commercial .45 ACP pistol until the 1980's. They were upgrading their first generation series of service-grade semiautomatics (the Models 39 and 59, basically) and could see the demand for a .45 ACP pistol for police and civilian use in their traditional double action-single action system. Computer aided design and manufacturing was developed then, and that's where we got the first commercial production S&W .45 pistol, the Model 645. The 645 and then third generation .45 and 10mm pistols resulted. Demand for a single action version just wasn't there, and the single action variants, using this basic frame, like the 745, 845 and 945, have been produced in only limited quantities. The 745's, the first single action variant, was a really slow seller. It seems that most folks wanting a single action .45 ACP pistol prefer the 1911 system. Even S&W makes 1911's now.

Probably more than you wanted to know, but there it is.

 

[WR Moore]

The model 52 was initially born as a result of the NRA 3 pistol matches: .22, centerfire and .45. Autopistols were available for .22 and .45 but the centerfire stage was fired with a .38 or, much less frequently, a .32 revolver. Smith was also looking for a way into International competition where absolutely no one fired a .45. As a result, a centerfire target pistol seemed a good idea to fill the niche and could be done using an existing frame.

Sometime later, pistolsmithing advanced to the point where .45s could be used in the centerfire class without losing significant points. That pretty well killed the market for the 52. You've also got to remember that S&W's bread and butter then was revolvers.