Fun with a Webley Mark IV 38/200 AKA 38 S&W AKA 380 Rimmed

[LouisianaMan]

9.3: FWIW, you're one of the brains of the operation in my opinion! Seriously, you've provided lots of insightful info and advice from which I have benefited, on this forum and others. And I've certainly gotten many a chuckle from reading your lively posts, too!

Outpost: you and others are right, of course, that trying to sell this not-so-shiny object made of "old technology" is likely a pipe dream today. But hey, there are always CB shooters to chew it over with! I look forward to your testing and impressions, only fearing that I may now have to add another powder (2400) to the inventory. With the I and J Smiths I shoot most often, I've stayed somewhat short of 700 fps with various configurations of 200g bullets, but would like to work up the Smith 4" J frames to about 700 with a SWC and perhaps the same+ with the Accurate 190g.

With my Indian Ruger 2 3/4" Speed-Six, I hope the Accurate 190g will chamber cleanly; if it does, what velocity level do you suspect might be reasonable and with what powders? With I's and J snubs, my velocity targets remain 550-650 or so, but I'd like to get that sturdy Ruger to get well above 700 with a flatpoint--no quibbling about low vels and tumbling with a FP! I'll want highest vels compatible with safety, wear & tear, accuracy and controllability.

[Outpost75]

In the RUGER 800 fps with the 201D is absolutely do-able, just stuff the .38 S&W case with all the #2400 it will hold (about 7 grains), stuff in a bullet, hold on and cut loose!

DO NOT do this in your Colts, S&Ws or Webleys!!!!

The nose immediately ahead of the crimp groove is reduced slightly to .359" by my RCBS seater die and drop into and falls out of the Ruger and Colt chambers of its own weight. If your seater die has greater internal clearance it may be necessary to size the bullets to enter tight throats, but mine are .3590-.3595 so fit is perfect.

[Bigslug]

I still think it would be a good idea, but it would take full standard .38 Special pressure at 16,000 psi to get the performance, which is no problem for a sturdy revolver, but they would not introduce a +P .38 S&W load (16,000 vs. 14,000) because of worries with the old top-break guns.

Been thinking about solutions for working around this:

#1. Use the .38 Short Colt Case - at least as the starting concept. I don't know what the .38SC originally came in, so I don't know if a tiny increase in length would prevent chambering in those guns or not. I honestly can't say that in almost a quarter century of working with and on guns, that I ever recall seeing a gun chambered for the .38SC. I've seen new made Cowboy ammo, and .38SC blanks are used to drive 40mm sponge rounds out the barrel - that's about it. I don't think there's many out there in service TO blow up. Obviously, whatever we cook up would work fine in a Special or .357 chamber, so no worries there.

2. Change the headstamp. I vote ".36 Noisy Cricket" after the pocket ray gun from Men In Black, but the point is not to even call it a .38 (because it technically isn't) and it'll at least make SOME folks do some homework before plunking it in an old Colt.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Ballistics in Scotland, Yes it was the With British Snipers to the Reich. In looking at my records I see it was almost five years ago that I read that book and you seem to own your own copy. It is possible it was a different memoir that contained the incident of the author being disgusted he couldn't own what he fought with after the war. If it is in Shore's book it is probably near the end.

You put a list of books on the old Shooter's board around 15 years ago that I copied. These were mostly military history/adventure type books. Thank you for that. I've read many of them and ended up buying the entire Tales From the Outposts series from a UK bookseller and have read the series twice. You mentioned someone taking a goose on the Scapa Flow with I think a New Service .45 in your Shooter's post and attributed it as being in the Tales From the Outposts series. It isn't there. Would you happen to remember just where you read that?

Thank you for thekind words from yourself and others, but I hope I didn't mislead you all thoseyears ago. The story of a deniable naval mission shooting domestic geese and ducks isn't from any of the "Tales of the Outposts" series, but from the excellent "Shooter's Delight" by Thurlow Craig, whom I have already mentioned on this thread for his pamphlet on Webley firearms. www.bookfinder.com is the best place to look for his books, which nowadays vary from cheap to the triumph of optimism over experience. But you sometimes find bargains on eBay.

Craig was involved in pistol training in the early stages of WW2, and had a low opinion of the spurless .38 Enfield, the main reason probably being that those he encountered had brutally heavy trigger pulls. (I've only ever handled a couple of early ones, in which it was excellent.) His own favourite was the New Service Colt, bought as .455s but with the chamber lengthened for .45LC and the cylinder shaved for the .45ACP in half-moon clips, with a screw-on plate foruse with the revolver cartridges. That way he was pretty sure of getting useful ammunition anywhere and at any time.

I suppose we had better not waste too many of someone's electrons by straying too far from the topic. Here is some evidence that the Webley revolver is not completely dead, although the standard velocity .32 is a poor substitute for even the .38-200 in my estimation:

http://ofbindia.gov.in/index.php?wh=Sporting Arms&lang=en

I think Bigslug is very right in his assessment of a short .38 and matching frame for a small pocket revolver, equaling or slightly exceeding normal .38 Special performance. But I am not so sure there is a need to go for the .38 Short Colt (or .38 Special) diameters, effective as these would be. People accept .32 or .25 caliber all the time to get a smaller pistol, on thequite reasonable principle that having any sort of pistol is better than having none at all. It seems pessimistic to assume a very small .38 would remain a limited production proprietary cartridge, for which standard case and bullet diameters would be a big cost-cutter.

I now live in the UK, where handguns are how prohibited... with exemptions. The prohibition provoked the start of my fairly extensive and totally legal collection of European military revolvers. Self-defence has never, in modern times, been looked on as a valid reason to own a firearm, although to keep a shotgun in the home, the perfectly valid legal reason of wanting to have one will do instead. It makes some sense. Like anyone in the UK who doesn't keep bad company or work with large quantities of cash or valuables, I have never felt in the slightest danger of deadly violence. There has never been any heart disease in my family that I know of, and yet I think my chances of survival would be better served by carrying a portable heart defibrillator.

But I sometimes think the cause of fighting crime would be well served if everyone were permitted a powerful single-shot, non-reloadable pocket pistol which he could never replace, once fired, unless the victim were proven byinquiry to be a dangerous assailant. Taggant grains could be inserted in the powder, and bullets serial numbered. Imagine if one were attached by a short steelcable to every airline seat? We would get the occasional psycho committingmurder that way - not many, as they could hardly get out and swim for the shore afterwards, and certainly not every soul aboard. I don't fancy walking downthat aisle with a box-cutter.

I keep up a detailed booklist, but in the interests of good order and economy I will append it as an attachment. Unfortunately there is a severe limit on the size of Word files, so I have had to reduce it to text, and it is a bit of a lottery how that will show up. There are one or two coffee table books with little to recommend them but pretty pictures, but the majority have something else good, and a few are real treasures.




Attachment 148216

[Bigslug]

I think Bigslug is very right in his assessment of a short .38 and matching frame for a small pocket revolver, equaling or slightly exceeding normal .38 Special performance. But I am not so sure there is a need to go for the .38 Short Colt (or .38 Special) diameters, effective as these would be.

I think the logistics of using a .357/.358 bore would greatly aid this round's appeal. MANY more options for what you can load it with here in the States, and you can even fake it with some 9mm bullets. The ability to shoot it in a Special or Magnum would also help sell it as a "gallery load" for the wives and kids. The .360+ of the S&W bores & cylinders are dinosaurs that amuse gun nerds like us, but are a headache most sane folks don't want to deal with.

[Bigslug]

OK! MILK JUG TESTS!

I would post photos, but I think you guys have a pretty good idea what a totally undeformed .455 MKII and NOE 200RN with rifling marks on them look like. . .

I fired and recovered two 600-630fps .455's which took six and seven gallon jugs to stop. These were some of the first boolits I ever cast - the ingots they came from were 9.75BHN range scrap, but they got water dropped, so who knows?? All the jugs were your standard white plastic gallon milk jugs except for the last one - clear plastic Minute Maid O.J., which tends to be more brittle and shatters when hit with something socially significant - like a 1600fps .45-70. In this case, it drained it's water from a perfectly round hole. I'm pretty sure that after close to two feet of water and 13 layers of plastic, if they're not tumbling, they aren't likely to do much in soft tissue. I think if the .455 bullet were a solid base, it might be more likely to swap ends on impact, but with the hollow skirt, it's pretty well balanced. Best just to direct your bullet to the spine and not rely on any "special effects" to get the job done.

As I said earlier on, the .38 NOE 200RN is not an authentic bullet profile, but I think I can make some deductions. This was basically WW consistency at 14BHN and running at 630fps. The bullet today stopped in its fourth jug. The holes were not super clean - more of a bullet-sized tear - with nothing definitive to show if it tumbled or not. I think in retrospect that a sheet of paper between each jug might be helpful in showing the bullet's orientation as it passes. I also think that the MKI bullet, being more cylindrical than the NOE would be MORE stable and LESS likely to tumble.

But here's my main point - while the .38 got the second jug in the stack to hop slightly out of line, neither caliber managed to do more to the jugs than make them "stand there and bleed". Neither .38 nor .455 is displacing much of anything - I'm pretty solidly convinced at this point that the British service rounds were all about penetration, and weren't seriously trying for anything else. Even if you drove them through an adversary sideways, you're looking at a slightly elongated round ball at 600fps - which the .38MKI's nose basically is anyway.

I think that the flat nose is our answer guys.

[Bigslug]

Well. . .this thread petered out quick. A little more data and head scratching - such as it is.

When I did the jug shoot a couple weeks back, I chrono'd the .455 load and learned pretty definitively that Unique is too slow a powder for the round - velocities pretty erratic and lots of unburned powder granules falling out. So off to the range yesterday to burn up what's left in preparation for starting over.

As I mentioned earlier, the ingots for those rounds tested at 9.75 BHN, but the bullets were cast in my early "water drop everything" phase, so no telling where they're at. At any rate, plugging dog food cans at about 20 yards has them hitting the ground at a fairly shallow angle, skipping up to the berm five yards behind, leaving many lying on the berm pretty much undamaged save for a slight skid mark from the intial impact.

So, I'm thinking that the next time I visit the pot for Webley bullets in either caliber, I'm going to pour some from 40-1 to see if we can achieve any upset at all in milk jugs with round nosed designs. The hollow base for the .455 and the small throat / big bore combination will probably appreciate this anyway.

I also have NOE's copy of the 452423, which, if cast soft enough, should work well enough in the .455 to give us a read on monster meplat (.34") performance at 600fps. I also have NOE's 358429 which seems to cast a little big, so should work in the MKIV. It's similar in weight and not completely different in shape from the 178 grain FMJ, so we may learn something there as well.

Who knows when there'll be TIME for all that, but the wheels are a-turnin'. . .

[Outpost75]

Chronograph data from my circa 1930 Colt Police Positive .38 Colt New Police, with 4" barrel, bore .344", groove .354", cylinder throats .359", cylinder gap 0.005," Fiocchi cases, Federal 200 small pistol magnum primers. Bullets cast 1:40 tin/lead from Roto Metals, shot unsized, .360" Lee Liquid Alox lube.

Attachment 149301Attachment 149302Attachment 149303

Fiocchi 146-grain LRN, 794 fps, 14 Sd, n=12 rds.
Accurate 36-155D (solid) 2.5 grains Bullseye, 718 fps, 6 Sd, n=12 rds.
Accurate 36-155D (solid) 6.3 grains Alliant #2400, 771 fps, 33 Sd, n= 12 rds.
Accurate 36-155D (hollow-pointed, 146 grains), 2.7 grains Bullseye 789 fps, 14 Sd, n=12 rds.
Accurate 36-178D 2.5 grains Alliant Bullseye, 706 fps, 12 Sd, n=12 rds.
Accurate 36-178D 5.6 grains Alliant #2400, 705 fps, 8 Sd, n=12 rds.
Accurate 36-201D 5.6 grains Alliant #2400, 710 fps, 11 Sd, n=12 rds.

These loads showed no signs of hard extraction in my Colt and should be OK in sturdy solid-frame revolvers. I expect that they DO exceed factory pressures for .38 S&W, but probably are below the level of .38 Special +P, based on pressure tests of flush-seated .38 Special wadcutters of similar bullet weight and overall cartridge length. I would not use them in small hinged frame US revolvers. I leave to your own judgement whether you want to risk your collectible Webley militaries as your mileage may vary.

Attachment 149297 Attachment 149298Attachment 149299

Accurate 36-201D mold is currently off to Erik at www.hollowpointmold.com for his inset bar conversion to what I call the "Cavernous Cup Point" which will reduce weight to about 185 grains in 1:40 alloy.
I may try shooting these as as a HBWC (in .38 Special brass) as well as loading normally in .38 S&W brass and in .38 Special as a cup point.

[LouisianaMan]

Outpost, that is a very nice-looking old Colt! Its sights sure seem to have been regulated for the 150g +/- 5g bullets, too, and "Super Police" bullet weights of 200g reliably bang in there several inches higher, as expected. Is it just me, or does that rounded Colt frame tend to roll in your hands enough to make a heavy bullet hard to group as tightly as the 150-ish bullets?

As someone who has no access to pressure testing but who loves to load .38 S&W from mild to hot, I find it extremely helpful to read your estimate comparing these loads to .38 Special +P. Some book .38 S&W loads have given me velocities in the .38 SPL +P range; guns and brass have handled them beautifully, even though I was a bit shocked by the chronograph readings!!!

(NOTE: I've used only solid-frame Smiths, Colts, and Rugers to handle the "rough stuff," with a couple of warm 200g loads tried in Enfields after proving them in the other guns. I've owned several nice old S&W top-breaks, but fed them ONLY factory-level 146/685 type loads, as every manual takes care to emphasize.)

It's been a while since I fired a Police Positive or Special, but I found myself pawing over a PP at the LGS a few days back. It was tight as could be with trigger pulled, just as it was designed and manufactured to be, and timing was only the tiniest hair slow if I cocked it as slowly as I could. With a normal cocking action, of course, it worked fine. It was dark colored with plastic/Bakelite (?) grips, luckily for me--if it had had the old fire blue look like yours, I don't think I could have resisted. And I don't think my better half would let me get away with blaming Outpost!!!

I will soon be able to load up some of these bullets and give 'em a try--got "range clearance" from a buddy so will get some loads ready to shoot when this blazing heat backs off again. Some hints that fall may actually come sometime soon down here on the bayou.

[Outpost75]

I have a Tyler T-grip adapter ordered to fit the old Colt frame. Factory stuff is like shooting wadcutters, but a cylinder full of 200s shot DA with those tiny service grips will raise a blister on your thumb knuckle!

[Bigslug]

Outpost,

Any chance you can line up some rows of sacrificial milk jugs with those 40-1 slugs of yours? I can handle the round nosed side of the puzzle, but seeing as you're already rockin' the flats. . .

[9.3X62AL]

Still looking on here, was off the board for a while with illness but still very interested. Like Outpost noted, the little Colt Police Positive grip frames don't provide a whole lot to hold on to. I do have Tyler T-grips for both of my examples, but even those lack a bit for my big old paws. I re-worked the innards of a Pachmayr Presentation grip set for the 2nd-series Colt D-frames, and they do a decent job of allowing some comfort and control while shooting. Not what you could call "elegant", but they allow for effective use. No one ever accused Glocks of surplus elegance, but they seem to have caught on nicely.

[Outpost75]

Outpost,

Any chance you can line up some rows of sacrificial milk jugs with those 40-1 slugs of yours? I can handle the round nosed side of the puzzle, but seeing as you're already rockin' the flats. . .

That is in the works, but firing tests will wait until the 201D mold has been return from Erik converted to cup point, so I can test bullets of both configurations, side-by-side on the same day. I am now hoarding milk jugs!

[Combat Diver]

Got my first Webley Mk IV back in West Germany in 88' from Frankonia in Munich. IIRC I paid 188 DM for it (around $90 US without the Value Added Tax). Went home to San Antonio and brought back a Lee Classic Handloader kit in .38 S&W. Used .357 bullets and some French BA powders. When it was time to rotate home sent ATF my Form 6 importation license and came back denied as they considered it War Surplus at the time and non importable (same with my all matching 1939 dated P08 Luger).

Had couple battlefield pick ups in Iraq in 08'. Course had to leave these there too as ATF again won't let us bring anything home
Enfield No2 Mk1 in .380/200 British (.38 S&W) made in 1932
Nickled Webley MkIV in .380/200 British
Webley MkVI in .455 Webley made in 1923



CD

[LouisianaMan]

CD,
Great photo of some great guns!!

And sad stories about ATF--those are utterly irritating on several counts. War surplus in 1988--come on, really, with a Webley and Luger? Re. the battlefield pickups: other than an anti-gun mentality, there is no excuse to refuse servicemen the right to bring home these trophies of war. Not sure exactly HOW the Army did it in WWII, other than the fact that (a) they DID allow it, and (b) lots of guys managed to avoid the paperwork and get them home by hook or by crook. It's not like looting the kitchen silver or whatnot, it's something taken from enemy soldiers. You can kill 'em, get killed by 'em, but you can't bring home a pistol...that's legal to buy in the US anyway?

Well, it's not like everybody on this forum doesn't know this already, but I just had to rant about that. A *DOZEN* combat deployments, and you can't bring back a pistol. Yet our Commander in Chief can take multi-million dollar shopping trips and vacations on our dime, anytime, anywhere, with wife, dog, etc. flying separately.

OK, back to gun stuff. What types of ammo have you fired thru the .380/200 and the .455, and what are your impressions? (Or are they wall-hangers?) Among other things, I'd really like to know whether .455 service ammo, or its close equivalent, tumbles after penetrating a soft target. Likewise, it would be informative to know if you've stacked up the blunt-nosed 200g soft lead .38 against the pointy, 265g lead alloy .455 cartridge it was officially declared "roughly equivalent to in stopping power."

Although I've never seen anything confirming the alloy used in the original Mk 1/1Z .380/200 service ammo, lots of accounts describe it as soft or dead soft. On the face of it, I can imagine that a blunt, soft, slow, 200g .38 could equal a pointy, harder, slow, 265g .455. If neither tumbled, then both would damage only what their meplat hit, more or less. Both have the sectional density to plow through a human target fairly well. The blunt .38 probably has similar "meplat" size to the pointy .455, if not more. The soft lead .38 could well have similar effects on bony structures to the heavier, harder .455, especially since the latter would have a greater tendency to glance off of bone struck at an angle.

But if both tend to tumble, then the greater diameter of the .455 should inflict somewhat greater damage than the .38, on average.

I haven't calculated momentum or sectional density to compare the two, so it's certainly possible that the .455 would smash through a soft target deeper, and more reliably, than its .380/200 counterpart. Have you shot anything to compare them?

BTW, I'm not on some quest to declare the Mk I/IZ .38/200 "equal in stopping power" to the .455 Mk II. What I'm really after is to determine the truth of the matter, since the British Army said one thing, and modern American shooters routinely declare that conclusion to be impossible poppycock (to keep the adjectives family-friendly). I have a sneaking suspicion that modern American views primarily reflect our experience with the old .38 Special 158g LRN "police service" round, as compared to our experience with .45 ACP ball ammo. I think there's a tendency among many to assume the British .38 vs. .455 experience duplicates ours. Insofar as your average Internet commenter is aware that the .38/200 had a velocity of about 600 fps, they may also be making the mistake of comparing that to our .45 ACP at about 850 fps, perhaps forgetting that the .455's vel was also only about 600 fps.

[9.3X62AL]

LA Man--

This whole "wounding potential"/"stopping power"/"lethality" question as discussed EXHAUSTIVELY over the years has generated a lot more heat than light. As a trainer and as one of the people going in harm's way at work for a long time, getting at the truth was a strong motivator. After some 45 years as a very active shooter in a lot of roles, I'm not sure that we can couch our conclusions as "facts" or even as "knowns". The results (terminal ballistics and the recipient's response to same) are just too variable, as opposed to the "exact science" statuses of internal ballistics and external ballistics. To corral terminal effects prediction is like herding cats.......a surplus of effort for a surfeit of results. In short, Caliber Wars are the wrong answer to the question raised (How do I enhance handgun defensive performance?) A better and more reliable answer should be "TO SHOOT WELL". Placing hits on assailants in meaningful locations is the best predictor of ballistic performance, and for darn sure when 91% of your defensive shots fired do not connect with their intended target, none of those background bullets will do you a bit of good irrespective of diameter, weight, or velocity. I'll take an X-ring hit with a 200 grain 38 bullet at 600 FPS over five 230 grain 45 ACP SXTs in the assailant's background any day of the week.

[Combat Diver]

LA,

Never used the Webley's on anything other then paper targets and plywood target boards. The .455 ammo that I had in 03' which was by the case load (think 10 wooden cases of Indian manufactured to British specs but using a copper washed bullet) but never got to shoot that as I didn't have a MkVI that year (did have a Polish PM63 machine pistol in 9x18 and 2 ea MP44 7.92 Kruz) Later in 05' fired the only 6 rds of .455 and one bounced back off the 1/2" plywood stand! Ammo was battlefield pickups and don't remember the origin. No ammo for either the Webley's or Enfield in 08'. When I was reloading for the .38 S&W in Germany in the late 80s used primary 125gr or 158 gr JSP/SWC as HPs are a No No there. You have to remember Iraq was a British territory from 1918 till 1933 and armed the Kingdom of Iraq until 1958, so lots of British guns here (ie Sterlings and Enfield rifles) and at least on immaculate preWWI field gun.

CD

[LouisianaMan]

LA Man--

This whole "wounding potential"/"stopping power"/"lethality" question as discussed EXHAUSTIVELY over the years has generated a lot more heat than light. As a trainer and as one of the people going in harm's way at work for a long time, getting at the truth was a strong motivator. After some 45 years as a very active shooter in a lot of roles, I'm not sure that we can couch our conclusions as "facts" or even as "knowns". The results (terminal ballistics and the recipient's response to same) are just too variable, as opposed to the "exact science" statuses of internal ballistics and external ballistics. To corral terminal effects prediction is like herding cats.......a surplus of effort for a surfeit of results. In short, Caliber Wars are the wrong answer to the question raised (How do I enhance handgun defensive performance?) A better and more reliable answer should be "TO SHOOT WELL". Placing hits on assailants in meaningful locations is the best predictor of ballistic performance, and for darn sure when 91% of your defensive shots fired do not connect with their intended target, none of those background bullets will do you a bit of good irrespective of diameter, weight, or velocity. I'll take an X-ring hit with a 200 grain 38 bullet at 600 FPS over five 230 grain 45 ACP SXTs in the assailant's background any day of the week.

No worries, 9.3. I, too, lose no sleep over the "stopping power" matter, as I have what I have & carry what I carry, and that's that--for me, anyway. I can hit pretty well with any of them, and figure that in 99.99999% of situations I'll have enough other things to occupy my mind. I don't chase the latest magic bullet, although I do find the attempts to provide ever-better technical solutions interesting. I agree fully that the holy grail of "stopping power" really isn't achievable with any certainty, but the attempts of various military (and law enforcement) organizations to find an answer are interesting to me.

As a career soldier (ret.) and especially as a historian (my book and articles were Civil War-related, not gun-related), my curiosity was piqued some years ago about the British Army's apparently intensive efforts to work out some sort of solution to this particular question c. 1930. Issues beyond my control have prevented me from researching British military records as I'd like to; unless that changes, I won't be able to evaluate whatever documentary evidence they developed--flawed or not. There are countless reasons why the relevant materials may not even survive at all: WWII is one possibility that comes to mind. I'm left, therefore, with trying to learn what I can about this exceedingly arcane topic through a sort of backyard reverse-engineering process.

After all, this question is why we have a .38 Webley to paw over

[LouisianaMan]

CD,
Certainly, Mesopotamia and other lands thereabouts were British stomping grounds for quite some time, and I'm not surprised that your years there have brought you into contact with lots of British ordnance. I would say that I envy you that, except you clearly weren't there as a tourist or gun crank, as the Brits call(ed) it.

Indeed, their Imperial experiences "East of Suez" had a great deal to do with their Army's concern with the topic of handguns and handgun ammunition in the first place. Too bad you couldn't bring back that pre-WWI fieldpiece. Was it a 13- or 18-pounder, or something larger or older?

I was stationed in Germany from 1983-90, but wasn't yet handloading. Simply shot what was available at the Rod & Gun Club, for the most part! Unfortunately my line of work was nuclear ordnance, not conventional, and it would have upset Pres. Reagan if we'd cavorted around much with his nukes. If you were already SF then, perhaps we kept your SADMs up & running

[Combat Diver]

LM,

Believe it was a 18 pounder like this.


I was SF my whole career coming straight into SF in 84'. Spent time in Bad Tolz 88-90 and then Stuttgart 00-03. I remember the SADM but never got to play with them.


CD