I had the pleasure of working across the bench from Joe Foster, the primary inventor of the Model 39, 52 and 59 S&W pistols, for two days back in about 1978 or 79, when I was rangemaster for our department. Our department had about 300 Model 59's at the time, which was about half the department, and they had feeding and extraction problems, as did most of the early 59's. S&W brought Joe Foster back out of retirement to come up with a fix for the problem, and he came up with a new extractor (marked with a punch mark on the front), extractor spring, barrel bushing and magazine followers with four legs. I believe there was another part, but it was a long time ago and I can't remember what it was.
Anyway, we worked on guns for two days together, along with Henry Perez, of Cheshire & Perez, the Calif. distributor for S&W at the time. We talked while working and Joe Foster was a wealth of knowledge about S&W handguns. They figured that after two days, I could handle the rest of the 59's by myself, and they moved on to another department to fix their pistols.
Joe Foster said one of the hardest things to overcome with the Model 52 was reliable feeding of the full wadcutter .38 Special. He also said the Model 39 was developed in response to an Air Force request, but they didn't buy the guns, so S&W decided to sell them to the public, and the rest is history.
Hope this helps.
Fred
