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    Massad Ayoob's Greatest Handguns of the World Volume II
    Massad Ayoob's Greatest Handguns of the World Volume II
    Massad Ayoob's Greatest Handguns of the World Volume II
    Ebook497 pages3 hours

    Massad Ayoob's Greatest Handguns of the World Volume II

    By Massad Ayoob

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    MORE! of the Greatest Handguns of the World From the Best-Known, Most Popular Handgun Authority in the World

    After the first edition of Greatest Handguns of the World, author Massad Ayoob cringed at leaving so many great guns on the cutting-room floor, and readers clamored for their favorites that didn't make the cut.

    This companion volume picks up where Greatest Handguns of the World left off, covering more of your favorite handguns, including:

    • Beretta 92
    • Bren Ten
    • Browning High Power
    • Colt Pocket Model
    • Colt SAA
    • High Standard Supermatic
    • Mauser C96
    • Ruger Single Six
    • SigSauer P226
    • T/C Contender
    • Walther P38
    • And More!
    From the best handguns for concealed carry, self-defense and home protection to the world's best hunting and target handguns, Greatest Handguns of the World Volume II informs and entertains with insights from the world's most widely-read, acclaimed expert on the subject of pistols and revolvers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGun Digest Books
    Release dateMay 29, 2012
    ISBN9781440228773
    Massad Ayoob's Greatest Handguns of the World Volume II
    Author

    Massad Ayoob

    Massad Ayoob owns and operates Massad Ayoob Group (massadayoobgroup.com), teaching thousands of students annually about practical shooting tactics and the many aspects of self-defense law. He has published thousands of articles in gun magazines, martial arts publications, and law enforcement journals, and authored more than a dozen books on firearms, self-defense, and related topics, including best sellers such as Deadly Force and Combat Shooting with Massad Ayoob. 

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      Book preview

      Massad Ayoob's Greatest Handguns of the World Volume II - Massad Ayoob

      INTRODUCTION

      Welcome to Volume II … and if you bought Volume I, thank you, because the good sales of that one were the reason this one was commissioned.

      A whole lot of chapters scheduled for the first one didn’t make it when we ran out of room. Editor Dan Shideler wanted to make it more visual with more and bigger pictures, and that left less space for words.

      There was an angry thread at www.sigforum.com which took me to task for not mentioning the SIG-Sauer series as among the greatest. Alas, that had been one that wound up on the cutting room floor after Volume I. It is, most certainly, here in Volume II.

      Some at www.coltforum.com were shocked that a book with the words Greatest Handguns in the title did not include the Colt Single Action Army. When we had to cut some out, we decided to keep a twentieth century focus, so the SAA was deferred to the book we hoped would follow if reader interest warranted…the book you are now reading.

      Both of those chapters appeared originally in Dave Brennan’s magazine, The Accurate Rifle. So did several of the other chapters appearing here. The Thompson/Center chapter originally appeared in American Handgunner magazine, and is reprinted here courtesy of editorial director Roy Huntington. Some chapters, including those on the Mauser C96, the Colt Pocket Model, and the  .41 Magnum, were written expressly for this book.

      Criteria were simple enough: Did the gun in question ‘make a difference’? The Colt Peacemaker, the Gun That Won the West, obviously qualifies; the qualifications of some others were less obvious. Sometimes, the difference was limited to a relatively narrow field of users, as with the High Standard Supermatic. There were good  .22 target pistols before and after it. Yet, the Supermatic ushered in the age of a  .22 auto engineered for super accuracy, and equipped with quick change barrels that delivered modularity and flexibility without sacrificing precision grouping capability. (Yes, the S&W Model 41 had that too…but it came later. The High Standard gets the credit for establishing the concept.)

      The Colt Pocket Hammerless set the stage for one of the most widely produced genres of handgun the world has ever seen, the flat little  .32 and  .380 carry autos. The  .41 Magnum never met the expectations of popularity that heralded its arrival in 1964…but the reasons why it didn’t make it an important case study in how ebbs and flows in trends and forces outside the gun design room can influence firearm trends and sales. And then, there are handguns such as the Mauser C96, whose effects can reach far, far beyond the world of the hand-held firearm.

      I had a great time researching this material, research that spans several decades. It was a labor of love. I hope you get just as much enjoyment out of reading it.

      Massad Ayoob

      October, 2011

      CHAPTER

      1

      The  .41 Magnum

      Introduced as the next be-all/end-all, the  .41 Magnum was a victim of timing. It failed miserably to keep the promises commercially made for it, but established a successful niche of its own.

      In 1964, Smith & Wesson and Remington jointly announced a new handgun caliber: the  .41 Remington Magnum. Gun magazines and law enforcement journals alike predicted that it would quickly make  .38 Specials and even  .357 Magnums obsolete, and that in a decade or so the  .41 would be the standard American police service revolver cartridge.

      It was not to be.

      The  .41 did not fail and reinvent itself; rather, it brought to the table attributes that were recognized and appreciated more by its secondary market than by its first.

      The first  .41 Magnum to go on sale was the Smith & Wesson Model 57 with adjustable sights. This specimen, fitted with Pachmayr Grippers, exhibits the pinned barrel of the period.

      From the Blake Huff collection.

      .41 Magnum! This 4-inch stovepipe barrel with low profile fixed sight system marked the Model 58, which was supposed to become the new paradigm of the American police service revolver…but didn’t.

      A brief history

      It was something the most respected voices of the time had called out for.

      Bill Jordan, famous for inspiring the S&W  .357 Combat Magnum, had suggested there was a power gap between  .357 and  .44 Magnum that needed to be filled. The living legend Elmer Keith had said the same. So had Charles Skeeter Skelton, who had already become one of the most popular gun writers, and whose career in that regard was still on the rise. Chic Gaylord, the quick draw champion and holster maven from New York City, popularized to the general public in magazines like True and Argosy, had articulated the need for it, too. Gaylord even, presciently, named it!

      Gaylord wrote in 1960, The caliber that I feel would be the most effective of them all is a  .41 Magnum firing a 200-grain semi-wad-cutter bullet at a velocity of about fifteen hundred feet per second. This should be an ideal service load, combining the best features of the  .357 and  .44 Magnum loads. I have talked with gun manufacturers who liked the idea and saw the merits of the load. I have also talked with ballistics men from a major ammunition company who were enthusiastic over the possibilities of such a new caliber. Maybe some day they’ll get together, and the cop will get the benefit of a far more effective service weapon than any available to him today.¹

      Ruger chambered the Blackhawk single action revolver for the  .41 Magnum, and did much to keep the caliber going. This is the deluxe stainless Hunter model with Bisley grip configuration. Courtesy Outpost Armory.

      And so, one bright day at the national sporting goods wholesalers’ show, where the firearms industry congregated annually before SHOT appeared and became their very own trade show, Elmer Keith and Bill Jordan got together. As they separately confirmed later, they approached top executives of Remington with their idea and extracted a promise that Remington would manufacture the ammo – in a rip-roaring full Magnum round for sportsmen, and in a more sedate loading for law enforcement – if Bill and Elmer could find someone who would make the gun. Keith and Jordan also talked to the CEO of Smith & Wesson, who agreed that if an ammo company would produce the cartridge, the firm that produced the favorite revolver of both the instigators would make the guns.

      Remington, meet S&W. S&W, meet Remington.

      Both companies were as good as their word.

      To understand the nature of the market and the rationale of the  .41 Magnum round, we need a bit of a backstory. Early in the 20th century, American police had pretty much chosen the  .38 Special as their standard cartridge. Beat cops walked foot posts back then for the most part, with only a few riding in vehicles. It was important for a man on his feet all day to have a fairly light gun, and the S&W Military & Police  .38, at only 30.5 ounces unloaded with four-inch tapered barrel, fit the bill. The slightly heavier Colt Official Police in the same caliber was an acceptable size, too, obviously so since it outsold the S&W in most parts of the country prior to WWII. State troopers and some other rural law enforcement had gone to the  .357 Magnum jointly introduced by S&W and Winchester in 1935. A bullet advertised as capable of ruining automobile engine blocks seemed just the ticket for Highway Patrol duties, and the chiefs didn’t think a guy whose job description was sitting behind a steering wheel for much of the day would mind a heavy Magnum on his hip.

      The  .357 didn’t catch on with city cops, though there were a few notable exceptions. The reason was the very penetration that made it so appealing for going up against motorized bandits like the gangs of John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and Bonnie and Clyde. Such situations had sparked the development in the late 1920s of more powerful handgun rounds: the souped-up  .38 Special revolver round that S&W called the  .38/44, the deep-penetrating  .38 Super Automatic from Colt, and of course, ultimately, the  .357 Magnum.

      An uncommon  .41 Magnum variation is this one, the Titanium-composition AirLite Ti. Easy to carry, nasty on recoil with full power loads.

      The shroud of the two-piece barrel on the recent AirLite S&W  .41 Magnum. Though seen as moribund by those who look only at sales figures, the  .41 Magnum is too cool to die.

      The Winchester Silvertip is probably the optimum, most street proven self-defense load for the  .41 Magnum revolver. Sadly, it came along too late to help the  .41 live up to its predicted popularity.

      Unfortunately, the town and city chiefs reasoned, anything that would shoot through automobiles would also shoot through people, sending the projectiles on at residual speed powerful enough to kill innocent bystanders, and perhaps the station wagon full of nuns that was probably talked about in law school liability classes even then. Chic Gaylord himself had written, No Magnum revolver should be used for work in a city or suburban area; the bullets travel too far and have too great penetration.² This, plus the Magnum’s violent recoil and expensive ammunition, had kept the  .357 on the highways and in the sticks, and out of the populated areas where so many law enforcement gunfights actually occurred.

      The trouble was, the traditional  .38 Special load was a 158 grain round nose lead bullet, at relatively low velocity. Its pointy tip punched through an opponent’s torso and left a narrow, puckered wound track as if he’d been stabbed by an icepick. It could kill, but it did not reliably stop. The word was out from coast to coast among the boys in blue, denied only by chiefs and their appointed apologists: the 158 grain lead round nose was a widowmaker, because you could empty your service revolver into the guy coming at you with an ax, and he could still chop your head off and make your wife a widow before he fell.

      Author’s favorite  .41 Magnum, a Model 58 S&W tuned by the late, great Andy Cannon and later fitted with Hogue grips.

      On the LAPD, once you got out of the Academy, the older heads in your precinct were likely to advise you by saying something like, If you have to shoot somebody, empty your gun into him. That’s the only chance you’ve got of stopping him. Three thousand miles away, in New York City, street cops passed among one another bootlegged copies of an evidence scene photo of a dead sergeant. I’ve seen the picture. He lies on his back, in uniform, his eyes closed and looking almost peaceful there on the sidewalk. He has shot his assailant six times in the chest with his department issue round nose  .38 Special ammo, and the cop-killer has still stabbed him to death before collapsing and dying himself.

      Its hammer spur shaved, tuned internally for smoothness and double action only function, and fitted with Hogue finger-grooved grips that reduce shifting in the hand upon recoil, this Model 58 is built for rapid, accurate fire with full power  .41 Magnum rounds.

      The need was certainly there. Keith had had a great part in the 1955 introduction by S&W and Remington of the  .44 Magnum, but its recoil was so great even most gun buff cops couldn’t control it in accurate rapid fire, and it too was likely to blow its flat nose, 240 grain bullet through the assailant and on down the street in search of that station wagon full of nuns. Thus, even Keith agreed, however reluctantly, that a large-bore service cartridge a step down from the  .44 Mag in power was needed.

      There was, of course, that legendary man-stopper of two World Wars and Korea, the 1911  .45 auto. Trouble was, the police rationale of the time was that (A) a revolver was traditional, and therefore a semiautomatic pistol in a police holster was sacrilege; (B) automatics jam, but reliable revolvers are our trusted old friends; (C) the idea of openly carrying a pistol that was (gasp!) cocked, even if locked on-safe was anathema; and finally (D) departments that were familiar with real-world shootings with the only duty load available at the time, 230 grain full metal jacket hardball, knew that would over-penetrate as surely as a  .357 Magnum.

      Smoothed trigger surface reflects internal action slicking on this Model 58, customized by the late Andy Cannon for street self-defense.

      There were a few exceptions. Texas Rangers, given carte blanche in their weapon choices, had carried cocked and locked  .45 autos for so long they were almost trademark guns for them. In California, a superstar of the embryonic sport of practical pistol shooting named Ray Chapman convinced the Los Alamitos Police Department in California to go to cocked and locked Colt  .45s as standard, and some other smaller departments such as El Monte would follow. In violent Chicago, coppers took advantage of a loophole that let them carry almost anything they wanted for backup so long as they had a  .38 Special with regulation ammo on their person. If you ever saw a Michael Mann’s outstanding TV series Crime Story, set in Chicago in the early-to-mid-1960s, you recall the lead character. Played by Dennis Farina, burned-out detective lieutenant Mike Torello led a gang squad, and carried a Colt Government Model  .45 auto with a snub-nose Colt  .38 revolver for backup. Farina was himself a retired Chicago Police detective (and shootout survivor), and Michael Mann was and is a gun guy, and the result was realism; what the fictional detective carried was exactly what a CPD copper on a felony squad probably would have carried in that time and place. For most of American law enforcement back then, however, the  .45 automatic was simply off the table.

      Thus, in 1964, the time seemed ripe for the introduction of the  .41 Magnum service revolver.

      It came out in two versions. One was the police gun, S&W’s N-frame service revolver with four-inch stovepipe barrel, fixed sights, and the standard stocks S&W called Magnas that were cut to the frame without overflow. Resembling the old  .38-44 Heavy Duty but without that gun’s distinctive shrouded ejector rod, this new Model 58 Smith & Wesson would later be described by countless shooters as looking more like a Military & Police  .38 on steroids. It was an apt and fair description, though oddly enough, S&W never called it a Military & Police themselves.

      The other was the deluxe gun, the Model 57. Fitted with fancy target stocks made of Goncala Alves wood, and finished in S&W’s top of the line Bright Blue, it looked for all the world like the Model 29  .44 Magnum. Indeed, some of us were instantly suspicious that they’d put a photo of a 29 in the catalogue and captioned it Model 57, since the pictures appeared exactly the same, right down to the shadows on the gun and the grain of the Goncala Alves.

      Relative size comparison. Left, S&W Model 10 Military & Police K-frame  .38 Special; right, S&W Model 58 Military & Police N-frame  .41 Magnum.

      The Model 57 weighed 48 ounces with six-inch barrel, and the four-inch barrel Model 58, 41 ounces. The two loads Remington offered – soon to be virtually exactly duplicated by Winchester – were the 210 grain lead semi-wadcutter police load at 1100 to 1150 feet per second, and the 210 grain jacketed soft point Magnum hunting load at a nominal 1500 foot seconds.

      The Model 57 came out first, with delivery of the Model 58 starting some three months later. Suggested retail price was $140 for the deluxe 57 and $80 for the service 58. For perspective, a Model 10  .38 Special Smith & Wesson revolver was then retailing for $65.

      Early adoptions looked promising. Chicago appeared ready to adopt it for the five-digit count of officers that made CPD the second largest law enforcement agency in the nation. Amarillo, Texas became the first city to officially adopt the Model 58 for its police department. San Francisco, California, adopted the Model 58, too, and so did San Antonio, Texas. It was reported that the S&W  .41 Magnum would be the new service revolver of the New Mexico State Police. It looked as if the predictions would come true and the  .41 would become the new standard US service revolver cartridge.

      But they did not come true.

      Chicago never adopted the  .41. San Francisco didn’t keep the  .41 for long and San Antonio gave up on the  .41 Magnum circa 1980, both switching to the  .357 Magnum. If New Mexico ever did adopt it, it wasn’t long before the  .357 Magnum was NMSP standard instead. Of those flagship departments, Amarillo alone kept the Model 58 as its official service revolver until it was discontinued.

      The  .41 languished. In 1977, S&W discontinued the Model 58 police gun. The Model 57 sportsman’s gun continued in the catalog until it, too, was discontinued in 1993.

      Recessed chambers (shown) and pinned barrels were hallmarks of the original Models 57 and 58.

      What happened?

      As a college student going for a degree in business administration in the late 1960s, I did a term paper for a marketing class on the S&W  .41 Magnum product. The thrust was analyzing why, in half-a-decade or so, a market-leading brand with what seemed to be a timely marketing idea with a running start had crashed like an Edsel hitting a concrete abutment at a hundred miles an hour. Five years on the market, the  .41 had already failed conspicuously. The research included a trip to Springfield, Massachusetts, where I was graciously given ample face time with Fred Miller, then head of sales, and a tour of the factory. Five years after the introduction of the gun that would replace the multi-million-unit-selling Model 10  .38, there were only one or two  .41 Magnums on the whole factory premises…and it wasn’t due to backorder or enormous demand.

      21st-century reintroduction of the S&W Model 57 in  .41 Magnum, an uncommon variation with tapered barrel.

      Photo courtesy Outpost Armory.

      This rare variation of the S&W  .41 Magnum is the recent production Mountain Gun version, with tapered barrel and chamfered front cylinder edges. Fast into the holster – and fast out of it! – this configuration combines light weight with reasonably good recoil control. Stocks are factory-installed Ahrends.

      The failure, in my opinion, was due to timing. I wrote to the Chief Rangemaster of San Francisco PD at the time, and he graciously answered all my questions. He assured me that the department had used Remington 210 grain police loads, not the full Magnum round, but that recoil had still proven too great for most of the officers to master in accurate, rapid combat fire. They had also been disappointed with the frequency of repair rate, and the accuracy of their Model 58s.

      Experts such as Skelton had called for a flat-nose lead bullet in the 200 grain weight range, at 900 to a thousand feet per second. Not only heavier, but faster, the recoil of even the watered down police load was on the sharp side, the weight of the heavy-barreled N-frame revolver notwithstanding. Moreover, at that four-digit velocity, the soft lead composition of the bullets leaded the barrels heavily and quickly. The powder tended to burn dirty, leaving particles of debris between the cylinder face and the forcing cone of the barrel where they could build up and eventually cause cylinder bind. I know of no department that issued the full Magnum loads for these guns.

      In addition to those problems from the training side and the mechanical side, there were political issues. In Chicago, for example, there was much hostility toward the police, and the term police brutality was coming into vogue. Magnums were simply not politically correct.

      Clint Smith and Bill McLennan are both old friends. Bill was a cop and a department firearms instructor in San Antonio when the  .41 Magnums were adopted there and worked as a senior instructor for Clint at Thunder Ranch years later. Using input from Bill and his own insights from being a lawman in the middle of the latter half of the 20th century, Clint had this to say in his column in Guns magazine in April of 2008. The column was titled, The  .41 Mag – If Only We Could Do It Over.

      Clint began, Unfortunately at its introduction the  .41 Magnum received mediocre support from the big-named shooters of the era who were supporting pet projects of their own. Bill Jordan was fostering the Model 19  .357 Magnum and Elmer Keith plugging the Model 29  .44 Magnum… In… addition, two other key ingredients helped seal its law enforcement fate: politics and ammunition.

      Tapered 4-inch barrel is the mark of Smith & Wesson’s Mountain Gun series, designed by world shooting champion and handgun hunter Ross Seyfried and Tom Campbell when Tom worked at S&W…

      …and chambered here for  .41 Magnum. Photos courtesy Outpost Armory.

      Asking what’s in a name? Clint continued, "The political correctness of the ‘60s and ‘70s was one of those you almost had to see to believe. The Vietnam War was in full swing and the fruits and nuts were proving that the country doesn’t always run on democracy, but was in fact being converted to the principle of the squeaking wheel—actually the loudest squeaking wheel—gets the oil, deserving or not. At issue was the word Magnum, which was roll stamped on the barrel. The issue was so intense that the City of San Antonio, Texas, for example, actually bought the guns but went through a load of sheer nonsense trying to get the barrels roll stamped with options such as  .41 SAPD, or  .41 Police or  .41 Special. The then Chief of Police was adamant he would not accept the nomenclature  .41 Magnum, as it was in his opinion not politically correct or acceptable. To show how subtle issues can affect history here is an example.

      Blake Huff kicked mucho butt in bowling pin matches with this uber-customized S&W Model 57  .41 Magnum.

      "Bill McLennan, a now retired 30-year veteran SAPD officer who

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