Colt Army Special in .38

[Doc Hoy]

Second treasure (?) from the Doswell GS is what appears to be a 1908 Colt Army Special in .38 Cal (Might be .38 Special)

Has Colt grips and "Colt Army Special .38" on the left side of the barrel
Also has the appropriate patent marking on the top of the barrel.

But I am concerned

The Colt logo includes a pointed oval behind the horse. Could be a stylized fish.

Serial Number is 301XXX. It is where it is supposed to be and it is on the crane and frame.

This pistol is in great operational condition with probly only about 80% finish. Bore is very good.

Any of you Colt experts have experience with this logo? How about counterfeits?

Tnx,

[James K]

The caliber is .38 Special. Yes, it can also fire .38 Short Colt and .38 Long Colt; the latter is available as a "cowboy" load. .38 S&W won't fit. In case there is concern, it was made from the first for smokeless powder, and should be OK for SAAMI spec +P; no +P+. though.

The grip symbol is not a "fish", it is just scroll work.

There are copies of those grips made, but they are identical to the originals. The original grips are made of hard rubber, aka gutta percha. It is a natural product that turns brittle with age, so if those are the original grips, be careful to do drop the gun or hit the grips hard. The repros are much more durable plastic; some folks whose guns have good original grips will put on repros for shooting, but keep the originals to be put back on if selling the gun.

The Army Special is a great old gun. It was the successor to the New Army and New Navy series and continued those serial numbers. Colt apparently called it the Army Special in hopes of getting a military contract. When that didn't happen, they renamed it the Official Police and went for the police market. The New Army/New Navy were discontinued in 1908 and the Army Special introduced the same year; it was a completely revamped gun. The first serial number was c 291,000 and it went to c. 540,000 before it was renamed in 1927.

Jim

[Doc Hoy]

301XXX is from the middle of 1908.

BTW, Tnx for the quick wink back.

Happy to know the logo could be authentic Colt.

[Doc Hoy]

I purchased a Smith and Wesson DA from 1962 which is a dead ringer for this Colt.

Barrel is a half inch longer and the cylinder rotates the opposite direction. Also a keeper under the barrel for the ejector rod. Apart from these minor differences the pistols are very similar.

Both of these pistols are in simply super operational condition.

[James K]

The Army Special/Official Police corresponds pretty closely in size to the S&W L frame. When it was being made there was no L frame, and it fit between the S&W K and N frames. Many police liked it because it could handle hotter .38 Special loads (like the metal penetrating loads made for highway patrolmen) without the weight of the Colt New Service or the S&W N frame .38-44. The lighter Police Positive Special was preferred by city police because it was lighter to carry, and they didn't see any need for much firing at automobiles.

Jim

[Doc Hoy]

That the law enforcement practice in the country was to shoot the cars but in the city they just arrested the cars?


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. ;o)

[Doc Hoy]

[James K]

Yep, they just arrested cars without shooting them. Seriously, the sight of crooks fleeing in cars was more common in rural areas, for obvious reasons, than in cities. One criminologist, when asked what put an end to the gangster era of "Tommy" guns blazing from the back seats of sedans, replied "traffic jams."

(I re-read your original post and I misspoke. The device surrounding the colt is a stylized "C" for Colt. I was thinking of the scroll at the bottom of the grip.)

Jim

[spacecoast]

Nice old Colt. What did you have to pay for it?

[highpower3006]

Nice old Colt. It is chambered for the .38 special. There was no way that Colt was going to put the letters S&W on their gun, so they called the round the .38 service cartridge, or in this case just .38.

[James K]

No, the .38 Service Cartridge in that era was the .38 Long Colt, which was used in the Navy Model of 1889, then in the Army Model 1892. It was adopted by the services in 1892. While commonly known because of its failure in the Philippines, its shortcomings had been recognized for years before that, leading S&W to lengthen the case and increase the charge to produce the .38 Special, which it introduced with its Model 1899 Military & Police Model revolver.

Colt did refuse to use the ".38 Smith & Wesson Special" marking but snuck the word "Special" into the name of its .38 revolvers made for the .38 Special.

The .38 Army Special was always made for the .38 Special, though of course, the .38 Long and Short Colt cartridges will fit and fire.

In fact, the New Model Army and New Model Navy revolvers after around 1903 were made for the .38 Special. The Army Special had a totally new lockwork and was a much better revolver, but it was not the first Colt to use the .38 Special.

Jim

[BlueTrain]

Gun makers would go to some length at that time to either avoid using a competitor's name for a cartridge or to create a slightly different but completely interchangeable cartridge. They were essentially attempting to have proprietary cartridges. To some extent, that still happens. Whoever refers to a .40 automatic as a .40 S&W, which was the original name.

A US Army field manual from the 1950s refers to the .38 S&W (the .38-200) as the ".38 regular."

Needless to say, those practices sometimes create some confusion when it comes to cartridge interchangeability. A few old catalogs list revolvers, usually from H&R or similar manufacturers, in really odd calibers that don't seem to correspond to anything. Of course, if you go back a few decades further, before 1900, there was a bewildering variety of rifle calibers, mostly straight walled and rimmed and they sometimes were produced in different lengths. Even now, old-style single shots can be had in a lot of different calibers. Now I wonder how many different calibers the Ruger No. 1 was made in. I think some were made in .303 British.

[Jim Watson]

A US Army field manual from the 1950s refers to the .38 S&W (the .38-200) as the ".38 regular."

I did not know that. I used to hear a lot of people say ".38 regular" to mean .38 S&W. I thought it was just a countrified idiom. But they got it from the Army.
They mostly say .38 Short, these days.

[James K]

The term ".38/200" originated with the use of a 200 grain bullet in the .38 S&W which someone called "the manstopper bullet." When the British were testing revolvers to replace the .455 Webley, there was a demand that any new revolver have at least the same power as the .455 Revolver cartridge. The .38/200 seemed to meet that requirement and it was adopted in the .380 Enfield revolver. But some killjoy pointed out that the silly old Hague Convention required jacketed bullets. So, in spite of the vaunted power of the .38/200 (or .380/200) and the use of that designation by S&W in the revolvers made for the British, the ammunition made and issued during WWII was actually loaded with a FMJ bullet of .357" diameter and only 178 grains.

Jim

[BlueTrain]

Maybe I should elaborate on that .38 regular. First, I've never seen that term anywhere else.

The reference in the manual was to the revolver, which was the Smith & Wesson long action M&P with a 5-inch barrel. The manual distinguished between the earlier long action models and the later short action models. It's really surprising that it was in the manual, yet I have seen a photo of soldiers on the range, probably in the 1970s (wash and wear fatigues), using what appears to be the very same revolver. There were no other revolvers in the manual with a five-inch barrel.

There were, however, lots of other revolvers. All fixed sights, no large frames, both Colt and Smith & Wesson.

As you all know, the .38 S&W was a common chambering in small frame revolvers for a long time. In fact, I believe S&W continued to offer models in that caliber into the 1970s. I have even seen a Ruger chambered in that round. Both the .38 S&W and the .38 S&W Special were loaded with 200-grain bullets (the so-called Super Police load) but I've never seen any.

Another interesting curiosity was that when S&W introduced the short action models of their revolvers, the older long-action models were suddenly considered better and more desirable by knowledgeable revolver aficionados.

[Mike Irwin]

"So, in spite of the vaunted power of the .38/200 (or .380/200) and the use of that designation by S&W in the revolvers made for the British, the ammunition made and issued during WWII was actually loaded with a FMJ bullet of .357" diameter and only 178 grains."

Actually somewhat incorrect, Jim.

While the .380/200 Mk I cartridge (lead bullet) had been superceded by the .380 Mk II (FMJ) in the 1930s, the Mk I cartridge remained in stores with VERY little emphasis placed on actually building stocks of the new cartridges.

At the outbreak of the war officers of the British Expeditionary Force deployed to France primarily armed with Mk I ammunition.

The ammunition situation was so critical that one of the first purchased the British made from American manufacturers was several million rounds of .38 Super Police ammunition with a 200-gr. lead bullet, which was the equivalent of the .380/200 Mk I round.

Remington-UMC, Western, and possibly Peters (which had been absorbed into the Du Pont/Remington/UMC sphere in 1934) all provided ammunition to the British under terms of Cash & Carry and, later, Lend-Lease.

Mk I specification ammunition (British or American made) was still being issued to troops in combat areas apparently as late as 1943.

So, while the British had stopped making Mk I cartridges in the 1930s, Mk I and American-made Mk I analog ammunition was made, issued, and saw combat well into World War II, and likely some of it was fired through S&W's contribution to Britain's war effort.

[James K]

The British placed very little emphasis on the revolver or revolver ammunition, so it is not surprising that .380 Mk I ammunition was still around or even being purchased well into the war, even though it had been declared obsolescent on 6 January, 1938. I would have thought that the jacketed Mk II would have been issued for combat, though. (There was no problem with the use of lead bullets for training, of course.)

In contrast to the U.S. forces, where .45 ammunition was used in SMG's as well as pistols and was widely available, the standard British issue for revolver ammunition was one 12 round box, with one more box per gun in unit supply. That helps explain such (dangerous!!) expedients as staking the rims of 9mm rounds to use them in revolvers.

Jim

[Mike Irwin]

" I would have thought that the jacketed Mk II would have been issued for combat, though."

It was. What little was available. There wasn't enough available to arm the BEF, so it was either issue Mk I cartridge, or nothing at all.

There was a single production facility making Mk I/Mk II ball ammo, ROF Woolwich, in the 1930s.

The Ministry of Defense began building new Royal Ordnance Factories in the middle 1930s during the rearmament phase leading up to World War II, but as you noted, revolver ammunition was given a very low priority.

The first new ROF to produce .380 Mk II was, I believe, Bridgend, opening in 1941.

During the war several other factories were brought on line to produce .380 ball ammunition, but the British continued purchasing Mk I ball specification ammunition from the United States for the duration.

[James K]

IIRC, they also purchased a lot of Mk II ammo from Canada. I think the role of Canada in supplying ammo to the Mother Country has been largely overlooked.

I recall being told that most, if not all, of the 7.9mm used by the British was made in Canada, and I know that a lot of it was around as surplus because I shot a lot of it. It was good ammo, and non-corrosive.

Jim

[Mike Irwin]

"IIRC, they also purchased a lot of Mk II ammo from Canada. I think the role of Canada in supplying ammo to the Mother Country has been largely overlooked."

They did. I have some in my collection.

But, it wasn't until well after the British had been kicked out of France, probably 1941 or 1942, that Canadian ammunition began flowing in any significant quantity.

And it still wasn't enough to supply Britain's needs, which is why Britain also kept ordering Mk I equivalent ammunition from the United States through Cash & Carry and Lend/Lease.

According to the tallies here, it looks like the US shipped around 5 million rounds of .38 S&W ammunition to the British under Lend Lease. Not sure if I'm reading that right, but that sounds a bit light to me.

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/...L-Ship-3C.html

[James K]

FWIW, that list seems to apply ONLY to Lend-Lease items. But the Lend-Lease Act was not signed until March, 1941, so not included are the many items the U.S. sent to Britain, before that date. And it does not include those items purchased by Britain on a "cash and carry" basis before WWII began on 1 Sept 1939.

Example: the U.S. released to the British Purchasing Commission* about 1,100,000 Model 1917 rifles starting in June 1940 and extending over three shipments of 500,000, 300,000 and about 300,000. All had been received by the end of 1940, BEFORE the L-L act was passed. Since those rifles were considered the U.S. war reserve, the "release" had a heavy impact on American preparedness and, since M1 rifle production was nowhere near what it would become, triggered the contract to Remington to make M1903 rifles.

*Under a presidential order; Congress was NOT consulted.

Jim

[Mike Irwin]

Yeah, I specifically said that list was Lend Lease.

[James K]

So you did. All too often, folks use the term "Lend-Lease" for any transfer/sale of any guns or ammunition to allies, even in WWI or the Vietnam era.

Jim

[Mike Irwin]

Also said this in an earlier post...

"Remington-UMC, Western, and possibly Peters (which had been absorbed into the Du Pont/Remington/UMC sphere in 1934) all provided ammunition to the British under terms of Cash & Carry and, later, Lend-Lease."

[James K]

Cartridge collectors might also watch for some of the .38 S&W ammo with steel jacketed gilding metal plated 125 grain bullets. Some 60k were made by Remington for the OSS for use in Police Positive revolvers. The headstamp is "REM-UMC /.38 COLT NP". Bullet diameter was .3575-.358".

Jim