All very good points. In my targets, I am cutting the orange spotter in half with the front sight. Where it sits, if I aim at a rabbit's feet then he/she is going home for the fricassee!!
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All very good points. In my targets, I am cutting the orange spotter in half with the front sight. Where it sits, if I aim at a rabbit's feet then he/she is going home for the fricassee!!
These guns were to give officers something else to hold on to when they had nothing else to do. Any pretense of a combat arm went out the door when the Brits adopted the 38-200 round. Anything you want to do with a handgun can most certainly be done better with almost any other handgun round. The guns are fun to play with noiw but for serious work...I don't think so.
Take Care
Bob
I had one for a few years, definitely not something I'd want for serious work. I once shot a bottle at about 20 feet....the bullet bounced off it and landed at my feet.
Fun to play with as all guns are, but not built for tough battles....or bottles.
I have never set foot in Canada and know little about that place excepted for the droves of Canadians that come down here to deep tropical south Texas to get away from the cold. But I have lived outside the US and traveled allot around the world and know that folks there have a different point of view on what folks need as handgun to take care of business. They think the 32 ACP, 380 ACP and 9mm are good service rounds. I lived in Costa Rica for a time and the police there carried High Standard 9 shot revolvers in 22 LR. Only in the US do we think it takes a 45 or smaller caliber expanding high velocity bullet to knock the bad guy down and out of his shoes if possible. We like our handguns stout.
From my point of view the Webley 38/200 is a pretty puny round, but I am not going to be as dismissive of it and the British military as you seem to be. There are plenty of stories around about it being effective for it's intended use. I certainly would not want to be shot with it, or any gun for that matter.
I am reminded of a favorite story told by the late Harry J. Archer, about an incident which took place in the China Sea, when on a "fishing" vessel conducting SIGINT between the Chinese mainland and Matsu island, when they were boarded one night by a group of combat swimmers wielding knives. The ROC first mate was armed with a 1922 Browning in .32 ACP and Harry had a .45, their being outnumbered 3 to 1 it was touch & go for a while playing "whack-a-mole" until the boarders were all repelled.
Harry said that the first mate was calmly shooting at the bobbing heads as they came over the transom, while Harry kept his .45 trained on a panicked crewman to prevent him from depressing the Browning .50, engaging and sinking the boat with friendly fire.
The story always ended the same way, "Hell, I never got a shot off! The first mate was doing fine with ten rounds in his .32, as there were only six swimmers... he didn't need any help."
If there are stories about how effective this round is they are simply just stories. I know of no one who ever claimed to have used one in combat other than to waive at German prisoners. No doubt you will find someone who claimed to use one and might even say it was effective but they would be rare indeed. While most of my relatives never spent much time talking about the war, none ever spoke of using a handgun in combat. For the most part they were to engaged with their rifles and in the case of my one uncle his 75MM gun in his Sherman.
Texas 268,820 sq miles
British Columbia 364,764 sq miles
We like um bigger up here too.:razz:
Take Care
Bob
Those things always looked clunky and unwieldy to me as a younger guy...but now I'm rethinking that opinion. Maybe because I'm not younger any more.
It is very fun gun and actually quite slim and easy to use.
It is no 357 Magnum, but Robert is not the only Dominion resident I've heard deriding the 38/200 round. It may be as simple as "Familiarity breeds contempt"--a lot of peace officers weren't real impressed with the 38 Special at the time it held sway as the universal USA police sidearm loading. Getting shot with ANYTHING is no flippin' joke, and I will again say that the 200 grain 36 caliber slugs hitting steel targets at 25 yards make a far more significant impact than do the 150 grain #358477s at the same speed. Cold hard fact of the matter is......very few people who carry sideiron as their primary defensive implement are abundantly happy with them, because even a lick of sense tells you that the handgun is a compromise between portability and stopping ability that hugely favors the former element. They do beat hell outta throwing rocks, but good-sized rocks work well too--if you connect.
My brother busted my head open with a thrown rock.
Al has hit it on the head as usual. Holes in the body tend to make people reevaluate their life choices.
A rude gesture by your brother, indeed.
The Webley revolvers aren't my idea of a Doomsday Prepper mainstay. They are fun, a little funky, and accurate enough to be enjoyable. They are conspicuous by their absence at Camp Perry, but so too are Winchester 94s and Marlin 336s, and both leverguns keep right on harvesting the venison--and have for 120 years. It is easy to get carried away with the uber-efficiency and ultimate-tactical foofahrah that besets our hobby field--just trying to keep it real. (Spoken like the longtime owner and user of an 1895 Nagant revolver).
It accepts and locks up correctly on .45 Colt cartridges, but I haven't slugged the bore yet. I plan to use smokeless powder data thats meant for use in the old .45 black powder revolvers. If the bore and chamber throats slug near .455", I can use my Mihec 455423 boolits with a cat sneeze powder charge for some fun shooting. Tt.
My load for my old Webley was 2 gr of Bullseye under a 358477 boolit for an avg velocity of 531 fps or a power factor of 82. This is over twice the power calculation of a 22LR. I never did run factory ammo over my Chrono. I guess I should have.
Phil Sharpe's Complete Guide to Handloading lists a 147gr boolit at 731 fps using this load. I could not duplicate those results with the slightly heavier 358477 Lyman boolit. My load was fairly accurate at 15 yards so I left it at that.
Take Care
Bob
Sounds like it has been shaved. My old 455 would not lock up on a 45 Colt.
Take Care
Bob
Most old Webley Mk4 and Mk6 revolvers I've checked will accept shortened .45 Colt brass or .45 Cowboy Special, without alteration. Most of these guns were intentionally built with loose headspace and excess firing pin protrusion for "mud clearance". I have NEVER seen one with tight headspace which actually saw combat service.
My understanding is that there was some .38 S&W with decent ballistics back in the day. Didn't Winchester once sell a .38 S&W "Super Police" load for solid frame revolvers?
Sharpe's book quotes loads to 900 fps which using a 147 gr bullet is respectable. The military load using a 200 gr bullet ran along at 620 fps according to Wikipedia. I suspect the 620fps might be the upper range but maybe not.
From what I can gather the American loads used lighter bullets with higher velocities.
The Edmonton City Police used commercially made cartridges from Winchester if memory serves me correctly in their Webley's.
Take Care
Bob
The "38 Super Police" loads I'm acquainted with were 38 SPECIAL loadings with a 200 grain bullet at about 700 FPS. I have fired a large number of these "dupes" using Lyman #358430 and enough WW-231, Unique, or Herco to arrive at 700 FPS. The usual victim of these experiments were Mojave Desert jackrabbits, and these loads dispatched them handily and showed signs of tumbling as they traversed the target. The Lyman bullet was and is accurate as all get-out. We have gone from "pillar to post" with the 38 Special in our attempts to "improve" it for street fighting, using standard-weight (158 grain), uber-heavy (200 grain), and ultra-light (90-110 grain) bullets to work magic. The 9mm has been given the same treatment more recently. Ghost-chasing, most of it.