Colt's Manufacturing Company Armorer Instructor
Aimpoint USA L/E Pro Staff
Co-owner Hardwired Tactical Shooting (HiTS)
Disclaimer: The above is not holy writ. It is just my opinion based on my experience and knowledge. Your mileage may vary.
My nephew who just retired say that they try to shove the 9mm stuff on them but the grunts still want their 45's.I don't know if that is fact or something that he has came up with.
Are my kids/grandkids more important than "o"'s kids, to me they are,darn tooting they are!!! They deserve the same armed protection afforded "o"'s kids.
I have been hoodwinked but not by"o"
In God we trust,in "o" never trust
Support those that support the Constitution and the 2nd Amendant
Hello,
I thought there was a .40 or .41 caliber prototype cartridge that served as the 45acp's parent, or at least inspiration.
I do not recall where I heard this, so I could be wrong.
I don't think it was a production round, though.
Regards,
Josh
I saw a documentary one time. Seems JMB almost never drew anything up. He built it and his brothers documented it. Brilliant guy that.
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No parent case, but I guess an argument could be made that the 7x57 Mauser is sort of the daddy of all rimless cartridges designed for mechanical, controlled-round feeding. Certainly, it's the daddy of the ubiquitous .473" case head.
WWJMBD?
In the Land of Oz, we cast with wheel weight and 2% Tin, Man.
A good story, but on close examination it doesn't quite hold water:
1) A .30-40 Krag cartridge case measures approximately 0.457" at the head, just above the rim. Even if trimmed to an appropriate length and with the body taper removed, it is seriously doubtful a .45 caliber projectile could be successfully seated. I have several .44 Magnum cases that were made from .30-40 brass, and they had to be reamed to accept a mere 0.429" projectile. Think about it: a 0.452" projectile is only going to leave 0.005" total for case mouth thickness when reamed to accept it, resulting in an extremely thin case mouth thickness of only 0.0025".
2) Unique was a development of the Laflin & Rand Powder Company, not Hercules, c.1900.
3) Unique's original intended use was as a reduced load powder in .30 U.S. (.30-40 Krag) and U.S. Service Revolver (.38 Long Colt) cartridges.
4) There was nothing "unique" about Unique's double-base (nitroglycerin/nitrocellulose) chemistry. The entire smokeless powder output of the Laflin & Rand company was double-base, beginning with W.-A. .30 in 1898 (actually, a development of the American Powder Co. in 1894). The Laflin & Rand Powder Company, and its product line, was absorbed by DuPont in 1902. The L&R powders were continued under DuPont until 1912, when they were transferred to Hercules. It was not until this time that Unique was regarded and marketed a shotgun powder and pistol powder.
Attachment 191807
FWIW, I have a 20-round box of Frankford Arsenal produced .45 Model 1911 cartridges, dated 1914. According to the box's label, the cartridges inside (headstamped "F A 10 14" and "F A 12 14") were loaded with a powder identified as "H. No.1 Pistol Powder, Lot No.4", with a reported muzzle velocity of 800 f.p.s. +/-25 f.p.s.
Attachment 191808
If you choose your bullet and think you need a hundredth of an inch neck thickness, you get a neck diameter. If you want a slight taper in the case for ease of extraction, you get a base diameter. I doubt if the design was more complicated than that. It was intended as a military cartridge, produced in very large numbers, so I don't think the ability to be made from existing cases or with existing machinery came into it.
Cols. Thompson and La Garde conducted the Chicago stockyard trials which led to the adoption of the .45AP, Thompson being the ordnance officer and La Garde a military surgeon. They actually wanted a rather different kind of bullet, heavier, blunter and thinner jacketed - not so much for expansion as to prevent glancing off major bones, which other than the major nervous system they judged to be the only way a pistol could have dependably fast stopping power. They knew as they proposed it that it would probably be rejected in a desire to comply with the Hague Convention. The relatively light weight was probably because the pistol, deriving from earlier work on a .41 version, was designed around a 200gr. bullet.
Josh go to the link above
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.45_ACP
Colt had been working with Browning on a .41 caliber cartridge in 1904, and in 1905, when the Cavalry asked for a .45 caliber equivalent, Colt modified the pistol design to fire an enlarged version of the prototype .41 round. The result from Colt was the Model 1905 and the new .45 Automatic Colt Pistol cartridge.
The original round that passed the testing fired a 200 grain(13 g) bullet at 900 ft/s (275 m/s), but after a number of rounds of revisions between Winchester Repeating Arms, Frankford Arsenal, and Union Metallic Cartridge, it ended up using a 230 grain (14.9 g) bullet fired at a nominal velocity of 850 ft/s (260 m/s). The resulting .45-caliber cartridge, named the .45 ACP, was similar in performance to the .45 Schofield cartridge, and only slightly less powerful (but significantly shorter) than the .45 Colt cartridges the Cavalry was using.
...
The cartridge/pistol combination was quite successful but not satisfactory for U.S. military purposes. Over time, a series of improved designs were offered, culminating in the adoption in 1911 of the "Cal. .45 Automatic Pistol Ball Cartridge, Model of 1911", a 1.273 in (32.3 mm) long round with a bullet weight of 230 grains (15 g). The very first production, at Frankford Arsenal, was marked "F A 8 11", for the August 1911 date.
The cartridge was designed by John Browning for Colt, but the most influential person in selecting the cartridge was Army Ordnance member Gen. John T. Thompson. Thompson insisted on a real "man stopper" pistol, following the poor showing of the Army's .38 Long Colt pistols during the Philippine–American War (1899–1902).
je suis charlie
It is better to live one day as a LION than a dozen days as a Sheep.
Thomas Jefferson Quotations:
"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
In fact even the .45 revolvers, mostly using the Army's Schofield round, which replaced the Colt .38 were far from satisfactory in stopping fanatical attackers. It required a hit on the central nervous system or major bones.
I've seen photographs of the famous Antonio Caspi, who apparently wasn't a juramentado or even a moro, just an ordinary Filipino in disagreement with legislation. The entry and exit wounds were identified, and it looks like one or two of them may have been inflicted while he was lying on the ground.
Colt's Manufacturing Company Armorer Instructor
Aimpoint USA L/E Pro Staff
Co-owner Hardwired Tactical Shooting (HiTS)
Just to add to the confusion, I seem to recall reading (a very long time ago) that sometime between the Wars the Government actually cut off fired 30-06 cases and made them into 45 ACP cases as a cost-saving move. Anybody know anything about this, or am I totally wrong?
The parent case is the .30-06 which was derived from the 7x57 Mauser cartridge. IE: essentially the same .473 dia. Case Head.
The extractor groove may have been modified during production but the first ones were cut off .30-06 cases.
Randy
"It's not how well you do what you know how to do,,,It's how well you do what you DON'T know how to do!"
www.buchananprecisionmachine.com
The Laflin & Rand Powder Company history has always fascinated me. One of my dad's friends had a medium sized powder can collection that was to be mine but they got thrown when he passed. If I remember correctly he had a most if not all of the Laflin and Rand cans.
http://www.castpics.net/subsite2/Gen...-Smokeless.pdf
http://www.indianahistory.org/our-co...collection.pdf
http://www2.dupont.com/Phoenix_Herit..._h_detail.html
jrmartin1964,
Thanks for the clarification and informative post. I am always glad for the chance to learn something new, or unlearn something that was incorrect. That's one of the great things about this forum.
Well, this got me thinking. Sure enough, according to a page on Wiki, apparently JMB and Colt were indeed working on a .41 caliber cartridge when the Army said they wanted it in .45. So they made a larger version of the prototype. If there's any truth to the cut down 30-40 Krag thing (not saying there is), maybe it was that it inspired the case for this .41 prototype.
Last edited by blackhawk man; 03-26-2017 at 11:37 PM.
BP | Bronze Point | IMR | Improved Military Rifle | PTD | Pointed |
BR | Bench Rest | M | Magnum | RN | Round Nose |
BT | Boat Tail | PL | Power-Lokt | SP | Soft Point |
C | Compressed Charge | PR | Primer | SPCL | Soft Point "Core-Lokt" |
HP | Hollow Point | PSPCL | Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" | C.O.L. | Cartridge Overall Length |
PSP | Pointed Soft Point | Spz | Spitzer Point | SBT | Spitzer Boat Tail |
LRN | Lead Round Nose | LWC | Lead Wad Cutter | LSWC | Lead Semi Wad Cutter |
GC | Gas Check |