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Old August 1, 2012, 04:25 AM   #9
FloridaVeteran
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Join Date: July 26, 2012
Location: Central Florida
Posts: 399
This may be simplistic and more or less already stated, but the term "Long Colt" came about only because of Smith & Wesson's .45 Schofield, an unfortunate attempt to corner the military-revolver-contract market during the Indian Wars of the late 1800s. The Schofield cartridge case was shorter than the Colt, though not intentionally so, from what I've read. Just bad luck.

A Schofield .45 would shoot in a Colt SAA but a .45 Colt (the proper name, as noted by many here and even so engraved on the side of Model 25 Smith & Wessons) was too long for a Schofield. When it came time for bidding out a humongous contract for cavalry revolvers, someone in Army Ordnance at the time asked Smith to modify the Schofield revolver to chamber the longer Colt cartridge. All historical accounts I know of show that, solely due to ego, someone in power at Smith refused.

Today, you can shoot a .45 Schofield in a .45LC revolver, kinda sorta like you can shoot .38SPL in a .357 and .44SPL in a .44Mag, but not vice-versa.

The Army wisely wanted a single handgun cartridge for its troops, particularly in the wild West, and they sure as heck didn't want those troops to be shoving too-long Colt cartridges into Schofield cylinders while the arrows were flying, much less to deal with two sets of similar but different ammo in the field.

Conceptually, the Schofield revolver was a great solution for mounted cavalry shooters because of the ability to eject and reload on the run. It lost out because of someone's ego. Nevertheless, had it been accepted in a large contract it might have lost future sales because of the weight and complexity of the gun, versus the simpler and reliable Single Action Army.

Next time you go to a gun show and there's a table full of CAS replicas, heft a Schofield and then any SAA and see the difference.

Nifty history.
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