Originally Posted by
Outpost75
Those Colt single-actions sent to the Philippines by the way, were fed with Schofield ammunition.
The .45 Schofield cartridge dates from 1875 when Major George W. Schofield convinced the U.S. Army that the S&W No. 3 top-break’s simultaneous ejection was faster and easier to manage on horseback than the Colt Single-Action Army’s rod ejection. By 1879 the Army had bought 8289 No. 3 Schofields and by then also realized that having two different .45 revolver cartridges in its supply system was an awkward complication. So, the Schofield cartridge was adopted as the M1887 for interchangeable use in both Smith & Wesson No.3 top-break and Colt Single-Action Army revolvers. The .45 S&W was loaded commercially until just before WW2.
Keith, in Sixguns (1950) stated, “While many soldiers could shoot the Smith & Wesson better, on account of its lighter recoil, the S&W cartridge was never as good for knocking over a running Indian pony.” None the less, by the late 1880s, the Schofield was the only .45 revolver cartridge being produced for US Army issue. By then, it had gained a reputation as a reliable man-stopper, in the hands of gunmen such as Bill Cody, both the James and Younger gangs, John Wesley Hardin, Pat Garret, and Virgil Earp, among others. In 1902, Colt Single Actions and Schofield ammunition would be sent to the Philippines as a stopgap, after noted failures of the .38 Long Colt, until adoption of Colt’s .45 Double Action Revolver Model of 1909.
Hatcher’s Textbook of Pistols and Revolvers (1935) stated that the .45 Schofield cartridge was loaded with 28 grains of black powder and a 230 grain flat-nosed bullet, producing a muzzle velocity of 730 f.p.s. The performance expected of production ammunition was a mean absolute deviation of 5 inches, with 4 inches of penetration in soft pine, at 50-yards, the range at which Army revolvers were sighted. This standard of accuracy and penetration still represents a useful benchmark to assess what an adequate “service revolver” should do.