Quote:
Originally posted by tac803:
Weak round, yes. Would I want to get shot with it? No. Darned accurate gun there...good find!
I recall hearing that the head of the OSS in WWII (Donovan) had his operatives use a downloaded .38 spl round. Theory was to minimize recoil and be able to place rapid follow up shots accurately if needed. I still try to use standard velocity .38's from my snubs and pre-model 10's. FWIW
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In their own accounts, OSS personnel usually used either Colt .32 automatics or the common .45 auto. Some also had Marlin submachineguns, as well as standard types. I do know that Donovan had some .38's issued, and he gave a Colt Official Police .38 to Ian Fleming, then a Royal Navy intelligence officer. Fleming sometimes posed with that and other guns in publicity photos for his books.
As for .38 S&W power, my younger brother once had an accidental discharge with a commercial (pre-Victory) .38/200, which had a six-inch barrel. The bullet lodged in a book on a bookcase across the room. It penetrated the dense paper about a half inch! The book was lying on its side, and he hit the bottom pages.
(The title was Haven and Belden's, "History of the Colt Revolver, 1836-1940. I had to buy a new copy.)
I knew David W. Arnold, once a senior Rhodesian police official who was deeply interested in firearms. Many of you read his magazine articles after he moved here and worked for Petersen Publications. His death was a sad event for gun lovers.
Dave told me that he once hung up an old British Army greatcoat and had at it with a .38/200. The military bullet didn't even penetrate that heavy coat! That may explain why he usually carried a 9mm!
British military personnel who were especially likely to use handguns in WW II were often equipped with Colt .45 autos (the standard sidearm of Commando regiments) or, late in the war, Browning Hi-Power 9mm's made in Canada. Commando and parachute troops were also given added handgun training.
The British soldier who could capture a German pistol often used it, and enormous quantities of Lugers, P-38's, etc. were dumped in the Channel after the war, when troops were ordered to dispose of any non-standard weapons. Politicians were afraid that they'd be used in crimes. (Or, maybe to change the government?)
Not all of those captured pistols went in the ocean. Robert C. Ruark, the famous author, saw all sorts of them being carried in Kenya during the Mau Mau Emergency of the 1950's. Souvenirs...
He mentioned this in his wonderful (if gory!) book, "Something of Value." He had one female character comment, "My, the lads did have sticky fingers, didn't they?"
Not only German, Italian, and Jap guns were brought home; they sometimes "liberated" Allied guns.
This was enough of a "problem" that Australia and New Zealand had postwar amnesty periods when illegal guns could be turned in to police.
The African colonies seem not to have bothered to collect wartime souvenir weapons, perhaps figuring that settlers might need them to defend against black terrorists. Their use in crime was negligible, anyway. As far as I know, this also applied to whites living in the Republic of South Africa. I know that a lot of military ordnance ended up in Canada, too, but don't know if any legal issues arose, as long as one was licensed to have the guns. Canada wasn't especially anti-gun until fairly recent years, when liberal politicians came into office and began the anti-gun policies that most governments try to enforce now. This is mainly intended to prop up their sometimes dictatorial regimes, as with the black governments now in power in South Africa and the former Rhodesia. (Now Zimbabwe.)
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