Category: All About Guns
The Colt SAA revolver only served officially for the U.S. Cavalry between 1873 and 1892, which begs the question of what other handguns served American horse soldiers before and after those years?
Mostly they were made by Colt and mostly revolvers. Although during the Civil War the federal government armed their horse soldiers with just about any revolver that could be purchased in quantity its “standard issue” was Colt’s Model 1860 Army. That was a cap and ball revolver of .44 caliber, and it was on active duty until a metallic cartridge-firing revolver was adopted circa 1870.
That first U.S. revolver taking fixed ammunition happened to be S&W’s Model No. 3, chambered for the cartridge eventually named .44 American. Its tenure was short, as was the Colt Richard’s conversion in .44 Colt caliber, the adoption of which shortly followed the S&W. Actually the government only bought 1,000 of the Smith & Wessons and 1,200 of the Colts during that time.
1911 Horse Soldiers
In 1909 the army decided to return to a .45 caliber revolver, knowing full well it was a stopgap measure because they already were set on soon adopting an autoloader. The Model 1909 was simply the Colt New Service revolver chambered for .45 Colt again. However, to make sure extraction was positive the government-loaded .45s had a wider rim by about .025″ than civilian issue .45 Colts.
When the U.S. Cavalry adopted the Colt Model 1911 they had the sidearm that stayed with them until horses were retired from active duty during World War II. That’s probably a fact somewhat hard for most Model 1911 lovers to accept — it was actually designed with horse soldiers in mind.
Here’s something interesting. Except for the .38 Colt, all of the U.S. Cavalry’s handgun cartridges were similar in power. Mostly they fired 225-to 250-grain bullets at 725 to 750 fps. There’s a fable the big .45 Colt used a 250-grain bullet over 40 grains of black powder for 900 fps. Not in government service, it didn’t. Loads for the U.S. Army contained only 30 grains of powder with those 250-grain bullets, and would have been lucky to hit 750 fps.
A box of Model 1909 military .45 Colt loads I own says velocity with 250-grain bullets was 725 fps with a plus/minus factor of 25 fps. Nominal ballistics for the .45 ACP called for a 230-grain bullet at 830 fps, but the military surplus ammo I’ve personally fired chronographed more in the 750 to 770 fps range. So there you go.
Tough Moros
It’s a little known fact the U.S. Cavalry also toyed with a single shot, cartridge-firing handgun in the early 1870s. This was the .50 caliber Remington Model 1871 using their rolling block form of action. It seems extremely odd the army issued such a handgun when revolvers had been common for decades, but then again governments have been known to do stranger things.
The Colt SAA was adopted in 1873, but S&W didn’t give up easily. They were actually able to get a remodeled No. 3 adopted as “substitute standard” by the army in the mid-1870s. In fact their shorter .45 caliber cartridge was adopted as standard issue for both Colt and S&W revolvers as early as August 1874. Since an army officer named Schofield had redesigned this S&W Model No. 3, that informal moniker has stuck. By 1880, the army tired of having two types of sixgun in service and sold the S&Ws as surplus. The S&W “Schofield” had a 7″-barrel and walnut grips.
For a dozen years the Colt SAA reigned supreme, but in 1892 the army adopted its first standard-issue DA with swing out cylinder. The Colt DA .38 in its basic form with 6″-barrel and walnut grips was standard issue for nearly as long as the big Colt .45. Its puny .38 Colt cartridge used a 150-grain bullet moving at barely 750 fps, and this revolver was official issue during the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection. As such, it no doubt saw more action than the famous Colt SAA .45 did during the Indian Wars.
After all it was the .38 Colt DA, which spawned all the stories of U.S. troopers being killed after emptying their revolvers into attacking Moro warriors during the Philippine Insurrection. That led the U.S. military into going back to a large bore handgun; at least until the mid-1980s.
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Smith & Wesson model 1 REVIEW
In 2002, I was doing a fair amount of pest shooting on a couple of ranches onto which I had access. Hornady announced at the SHOT Show that year it was bringing out a hotshot, .17-caliber rimfire round for just such tasks. I recall first shooting the .17 Hornady Magnum Rimfire cartridge in a bitterly cold gale of a windstorm at the range day before the show.
Predictably, it was nothing more than a noisemaker in that gale since the wind simply ripped the tiny 20-grain bullets from their intended paths and flung them to who knows where. Nonetheless, the idea intrigued me, but like a lot of things, I put off getting a rifle for it.
Sometime later, I ordered a 93R17 rifle from Savage for the cartridge, as well as a G2 barrel for my T/C Contender. Once I got rifle, G2 barrel and ammo assembled, I set about seeing whether the bite was as bad as the bark.
The .17 HMR is one of those relatively rare cases where the bite is as bad—actually good—as the hype. Velocities in the 22″ barreled rifle were nearly 2,400 f.p.s. with Hornady 20-grain V-Max ammo, and the 14″ barreled G2 generated a consistent 2,100 f.p.s. Accuracy from both rifle and handgun were sub-3/4 m.o.a., as long as there was no wind.
.22 Long Rifle (left), .17 HMR (center) and .22 WMR (right) compared.
When I took them into the field, both ground squirrels and prairie dogs found a lot to dislike about the little rimfire. Hits out to 150 yards were quite doable—again, as long as the wind stayed down—though especially toward that outer limit, the impacts were not as spectacular as with centerfires. Gun and ammo companies have been trying over and over again to create a rimfire cartridge that would generate the enthusiasm of the .22 Long Rifle. The .22 WMR, developed in 1959 and debuting in 1960, has had some success.
Its trajectory is twice as flat as its .22-cal. sibling over 150 yards, and it carries nearly two-and-a-half times the energy as the .22 LR cartridge. However, the WMR carries with it a stinging report to the ears, especially in a revolver. In 1969, Remington, as part of its compulsion to take an idea and make it better, brought out its 5 mm Remington Rimfire Magnum, a cartridge that launched a 38-grain .204″ bullet at 2,100 f.p.s. with 372 ft.-lbs. of energy. The parent case, which was loosely based on the .22 WMR case but stronger and larger in diameter, was designed in-house.
Rifles were produced in the form of Remington Models 591 and 592, the principle difference between the two were a 4-round, composite box magazine in the Model 591 and a 10-round tubular magazine in the Model 592. The rifles were accurate, well-designed and ballistically on par with the .218 Bee and .22 Hornet, but ammunition was comparatively expensive, compared to .22 LR and .22 WMR ammo. Distribution suffered, ergo the cartridge and rifle sales languished. Production ceased in 1974, although there has been a revival of the ammunition by Texas Centurion (Aguila) in 2008 to feed existing guns.
The author shooting one of his scoped single-shot handguns chambered for .17 HMR.
Thompson/Center produced some 30,000 barrels for its Contender (G1), but again sales were less than spectacular. So that brings us back to the .17 HMR. There is no doubt that the cartridge has been an unqualified success. For one thing, Hornady went all-in on the cartridge, producing massive amounts of it and seeing to it that it got into the right distribution channels. Other reasons the .17 HMR has done well is that it is accurate, its flat trajectory and that guns are available. Today, almost every manufacturer of rimfire rifles makes a .17 HMR-chambered gun. Bolt actions seem the most popular, but Savage has been successful with its bolt-action 93R17 and semi-auto A17 rifles.
Henry makes a lever action in .17 HMR. Marlin has the XT17 bolt-action rifle. Ruger makes a nice bolt-action .17 HMR in its American series. Winchester chambers it in its 1885 Series of single shots. Ammunition companies have followed suit, as CCI, Federal, Remington and Winchester all produce 17 HMR ammo today. Even during the current ammo supply crunch, .17 HMR ammo seemed to be one of the more available cartridges, at least in my neck of the woods. The .17 HMR has beaten the odds—that of producing a successful sub-.22-caliber rimfire round—by making an accurate, affordable and available cartridge, while working hand-in-hand with gun manufacturers to build rifles wanted by consumers. I have a feeling it’s here for the long run.