.38/200 Logic

[mi2600]

I've often wondered the logic behind using the 200gr bullet that the British used in the .38 S&W cartridge. A cursory search disclosed the .38/200 had a whopping 620 fps with 176 lbs of energy!

Hopefully someone can explain the rationale.

 

[murphydog]

It was the slow, heavy bullet stopping power theory, also tried with the .38 Special 200 gr loads from the 1930. For the British, I think it lost something in the translation from .455 to .38, however.

 

[DWalt]

Part of the logic was that the 200 grain bullet was longer than the typical 148 grain bullet, therefore somewhat less stable, and tended to yaw in body tissue, causing greater damage during its passage. The heavier bullet also was thought to have improved penetration vs. the lighter bullets. They also felt the .38 could be more easily used owing to less recoil, vs their earlier .455 revolvers. Part of the same philosophy the US had when it adopted the 9mm in the 1980s. You also have to remember that the British military leadership considered a handgun more as a badge of rank than as a weapon.

The real question is why did the British embrace an obsolescent cartridge from the late 19th Century and a top break revolver from the same period as their standard military cartridge and revolver, when so many better cartridges and revolvers were available after WWI.

 

[jonny13sb]

The choice of the .38/200 round never seemed to make much sense to me either. But as with so many other gun/caliber 'mismatches' it doesn't need to make sense ; it just is what it is and we collect em or reject em. The model 34 with a two inch barrel and adjustable sights in .22lr also never made sense to me but there's enough guys out there that like em so it works.... big or small love em all for what they are.

 

[Art Doc]

I thought longer bullets were more stable, not less.

 

[DWalt]

I thought longer bullets were more stable, not less.

Precisely the opposite. It requires a much more rapid rifling twist to stabilize a longer bullet.

 

[L Pete]

I thought longer bullets were more stable, not less.

It depends on the rate of twist......longer bullets become less stable in slower twist rates.......

 

[Skeetr57]

Bullet stability depends on the twist rate of the rifling. For a given caliber, a heavier bullet will be longer, and therefor need a faster twist to stabilize it. The original US .30 caliber rifle was the .30-40 Krag, using a 220 grain round nose bullet which required a 1:10 twist for stability. The same twist was retaied for the 1903 Springfield and the M1 Garand although bullet weight for the .30-06 cartridge had been reduced. When the M14 rifle was adopted, the caliber was 7.62 Nato, which never used over a 150 grain bullet, so the rate of twist was reduced to 1:12, which gave adequate stability. There is a formula for determining the required rate of twist for a given projectile called the Greenhill formula that has been around since before 1900 that can be used to calculate what bullets can be used accurately in the S&W standard rate of twist of 1:18.75.

 

[glowe]

I thought longer bullets were more stable, not less.

I assume the 38-200 was much like the old military 45 Auto-loaders, which showed up on my targets key-holing as often as they made round holes. Slow speed and heavy bullet, but still made quite an impact so to speak.

I think this caliber is a British invention. It seems the Brits were very interested in having many types of guns, but all in the same caliber. Their choices in calibers were not the best, but they were more about economics and convenience, than about ballistics. Think about their historical choices in military weapons. Those who have shot a 577 Snider rifle know about how inaccurate they were, but they could do it cheaply. Those who have shot the 455 caliber revolver know that the cartridge is a relatively poor choice for WWI troops, but it had history. I assume the 38-200 falls into both the preceding categories.

 

[DWalt]

A good example is the M16. The earlier M16 rifles used a cartridge having a 55 grain bullet and a 1:14" twist. At very cold temperatures, bullet instability was noted, so the twist was increased to 1:12". Later, when the M855 round was adopted, it had a much longer 62 grain bullet (and the tracer version had an even longer bullet). Those bullets in a 1:12" twist barrel resulted extreme bullet instability, and the rifling twist was then increased to 1:7" to regain stability.

 

[Skeetr57]

In answer to DWalt in the second part of post #3: I have considered the reasoning behind the crudity and obsolescence of the British revolvers of WWI and WWII, and have decided that it was a matter of economics. I have no doubt that the British recognized the superiority of the later solid frame, side swing cylinder revolvers, but were unable to make the capital investments necessary to adopt the designs. The Webley designed revolvers could be produced from plate and bar stock using existing machinery, without the expenses that would have been needed for the heavy forging equipment that would have been required to build a S&W or Colt style revolver. The Webley design was stronger than the older S&W top break design, as proved by the conversion of many of the MkVI and earlier .455 top breaks to .45 ACP, a much higher pressure round than they were designed for. As for the .38/200 cartridge, I don't think it was obsolete in the time frame that the .38 Webley and Enfield revolvers were adopted. S&W and Colt were still using the cailber for police revolvers until the S&W RP and Terrier revolvers were dropped from production after 1960, and Colt used it in the Police Positive for many years.

 

[jimmyj]

There is no reasoning or logic to British thinking.
At the beginning of both World Wars the British found themselves short on arms. Therefore they looked to other countries for arms. Then after both wars the British sold off or destroyed weapons instead of putting them in storage/reserve.

 

[poordevil]

Again, here I come with stuff I remember reading , but not when. Its been a while though. It was an article about the .38 S&W 200gr from the 1920's. To make a long stay short, it mentioned a police shooting with it and the recovered slug was described as about the size of a quartier.

I have 3 boxes of .38 Special 200 gr Super Police and just last week end shot 12 rounds from a box. 6 form a 2" M-10 and 6 from a 6" m-10. I shot them into a Cabellas hard bound spring catalog with about 1000 pages and gallon water bottles. All rounds fired into catalog first, with bottles as back up went through the catalog and stopped in the second (mostly) bottle and sometime 3rd bottle. When shot into a gallon jug with the book behind, the bullets stopped in the book and all were sidewise. All had some deformation with one fired into book first flattened out to about .54 cal., maybe more. The velocity listed on the back of the boxes (Western, yellow box) is 745fps.

 

[DWalt]

It's odd that by WWII, most of the major national armies had already converted, or largely converted, to the use of semi-automatics as official first-line sidearms. Think of the Colt 1911A1, the Luger, the P-38, the Tokarev, and the Nambu to name just a few. Except, that is, for the British Commonwealth. There were a few Canadian-made Browning Hi-Powers in Commonwealth service during WWII, but a large majority of their handguns remained revolvers until well after the war.

 

[william iorg]

A friend has pointed out to me the .38-200 may have been considered the practical upper limit at the time with regard to recoil and controllability. This may well be true. My thoughts are certainly the British high command of the 1920’s felt the .38-200 and its Enfield revolver were satisfactory for war use. Julian Hatcher writing in his book Textbook of Pistols and Revolvers gave examples of a few uses of the .38 S&W Super Police load on criminals which were satisfactory..

The British handgun training of WWII era did not discuss slow fire shooting. The British soldier was taught to shoot double action on disappearing silhouette targets. “This new weapon has been designed throughout to facilitate instinctive aiming and firing.”

W.H.B. Smith thought highly of the Pistol No. 2 Mark I* when he wrote of it in early WWII American Rifleman Magazines. Smith stated the revolvers grip was developed using “try grips” which allowed use by many testers in developing the right balance and pointability of the revolver. Smith went on to ask the need for sights at all since the revolver was designed for “point and shoot” use.

The cylinder latch and the receiver side plate garnered considerable praise from Smith. The two-point hand – similar to that of the Colt revolver also gathered it shares of praise for pushing the cylinder forward and helping to seal the cylinder/barrel gap.

The fixing pin which locks the extractor star came in for praise as it helped to prevent lead spitting as the mechanism wore in use.

Of the cartridge smith wrote that it was an adequate man stopper and that it saved one and 1 ½ pounds weight per every 100 rounds of ammunition over the .455 cartridge.

“Battle tests have demonstrated to the satisfaction of British field commanders that the .38-200 answers all the needs for a close-quarters weapon, and more and more stress has been lain on the efficient use of these revolvers.”

 

[WaMike]

"I think this caliber is a British invention." Actually, as has been pointed out, the cartridge (not caliber) was originally the black-powder 38 S&W; the Brits loaded it with a 200 gr. bullet and called it the 38-200 or more accurately, 380-200. From what we know about the reactionary Brit military establishment, we can be mildly surprised they didn't continue to use black powder. But then again, since the 380/200 is much more economical to load than the .455 Webley, I'm thinking that fact may have influenced the powers-that-be as much as relieving the hand-gun carrying infantry officer of a couple of pounds (no pun intended).

Friend of mine wanted help in loading his WWII M&P in 38 S&W. In the process of loading standard 150 gr. loads, we found a bullet maker who casts .360"/200 gr. bullets. We had so much fun shooting them, I bought some .358"/200 gr. bullets from the same maker for my Mdl 10 38 Special.

Our standard "mortality test" is to find a large, rotting Doug fir stump. (hard on the outside, soft on the inside; .22 LR barely get past the hard outer crust, 45-70 and 300 Win bullets blow through and out the other side).

38-200 went nicely through the hard outside and ended up well inside; many, but not all, had turned sideways. My 38 Special loads, because I'd boosted the load somewhat, went slightly deeper, but not substantially so, again, many were sideways.

So I suppose in wartime conditions, the 380-200 was much more effective than throwing a rock, but still.....I'd much rather have something with a little more oomph.

 

[DWalt]

During WWII, the official revolver combat load did not use the earlier 200 grain lead bullet, but rather a 178 grain FMJ bullet (the ".380 Revolver Mk2" cartridge) to comply with the Hague convention restrictions on use of "inhumane" bullets in warfare. Apparently stockpiles of the old 200 grain lead bullet loads (Mk1) were used only for training during the war. I've often wondered why the S&W revolvers were not called the ".38/178".

By the way, for a long time I reloaded the .38 S&W with typical .357-.358 lead bullets as used for the .38 Special. They always seemed to work fine for me. More recently, I have been using the Missouri Bullet Company .361" diameter lead bullets. I don't see much difference, but as those don't cost any more than .357" bullets, why not use them in the .38 S&W?

 

[STCM(SW)]

I have several box's of thies:



Shot them from this Reg. Police.



I've loaded a 200 gr bullet I mold and belive at short range they would work OK.

A half oz of lead even going around 700 fps can be deadly.

 

[kaaskop49]

Sometimes expediency carries the day. In 1911, Britain developed a modern, rimless, roughly 7MM rifle round (believe it was called the .276) much superior to their .303 cartridge. Trajectory at 1000yds, important for long-range MG fire was, I believe, 4 feet less. Why was it not adopted? Belief held that a war was in the offing and Britain was already tooled up for the .303 in their rifles and MGs.

Wars are not won with handguns. The British had used military revolvers for decades in the 19th Century. Made sense to them to continue what they already had. Also less expensive. IMO

 

[cmj8591]

I think we are talking about terminal ballistic stability, what the bullet does after it hits the target. The longer bullets tend to be less stable after penetrating a body. The weight of the long, pointed bullet is mostly in the rear so that when it hits a body, the front of the bullet wants to slow first and the momentum in the heavier rear wants to continue on causing the bullet to yaw inside of a body. If you look at the photo of the 30/200 in the previous post, you notice that it is quite pointed for a handgun bullet. That is what the Brits were after when they designed this bullet. The Russians have used this principal with the 5.45x39 round for the AK74. The front of 53 grain bullet is actually an air pocket leaving the maximum weight in the rear. On contact with flesh, the bullet almost immediately starts to yaw causing a larger wound. When the same round hits a solid object, the resistance causes the air pocket to collapse and the steel penetraitor continues on. The 5.56 m16 round also uses this principal, just to a lesser degree. In fact, most military small arms rifle ammo uses this principal to one degree or another. It is how they get around not being able to use expanding ammo.