So cleaning up the gun locker today and got my S&W Model 57 (no dash) 41 MAG out to clean up. I purchased it as a blue steel new in the box with target hammer and wide target trigger when I was on Embassy duty in West Germany in 1975. The wiesbaden Air Force Base had a gun store back in those days and of course we always hit the gun store when we had to pickup supplies. I really wanted a model 29 (thanks Dirty Harry), but they we just impossible to get then.
When I got out of the USMC in 1978 I was hired by a small Midwest police department- they furnished everything but your underwear, boots and gun. The gun requirements were it had to be 38 special or larger, Colt, Smith & Wesson, or Ruger and you had to be able to qualify with it. If you carried a 38/357 Mag the department supplied you with a 1000 rounds of 38 WC reloads per year. So the training Sgt found me a well worn N Frame holster and I was off carrying my 41 mag.
Factory ammo was very expensive on a cops salary so most of us were carry our own reloads on duty- I settled on a Lee cast lead 240 grain SWC (Elmer Keith recommendation) with a gas check and pushing about 900 fps. Speed loaders on my belt had 210 grain jacket hollow points loaded hot to punch through vehicles was the idea.
So after about a month of wearing short sleeve shirts and the Model 57's checkered target hammer rubbing the skin off the underside of my arm- it became a bobbed double action only Model 57. A few months later I had the gun Magnported and not only did it help with recoil but helped my night shooting scores go up.
Summers in the Midwest getting in and out of air conditioning was tough on blued guns in leather holsters, so I sent it off and had it and it coated with a new metal product that was being used on oil drilling bits- sorry can't remember what they called it. No more surface rust- yea.
I carried the gun during my tenure as a city cop and later as a Sheriff's patrol deputy all the way until I made detective- it was too heavy to wear in a shoulder holster for a 10 hour shift in plain clothes.
So for all you old timers who were cops back then what were you carrying? In the Midwest in the 1970's and 1980's and the agencies I worked for it was most S@W and Colt, and folks were very vocal about what they carried. Lots of Colt Python guys and lots of S&W Model 19, 27 and 28 guys, I also loved the 3 inch round butt Model 13 heavy barrel when I was a Detective.
Cheers,
Jeff
