Early Smith & Wesson Double Actions
From .44 to M&P
Sometimes things just happen! Several years ago a friend appeared at my door with a sixgun he wanted to show me. In fact, he was hoping I would want to buy it.
When he gave me a price, I told him he would be much better off trying to sell it somewhere as he could get a lot more than he was asking and I would pay. The sixgun in question was a Smith & Wesson .44. No, not that .44 but the first double-action .44 Smith & Wesson. That would make it the .44 Double Action Model of 1880.
Smith & Wesson .44s includes the Model #3 Russian,
New Model #3 and the Double Action.
Rare Beauty
It had a 5″ barrel, 100% nickel plating still intact, beautiful pearl stocks — real pearl not the faux pearl found so often today — and was in nearly perfect condition including the barrel. It had been fired but not very much. The chambering was not the .44 Magnum of today, not the .44 Special so many of us appreciate, but rather the magnificent .44 Russian. Did I buy it? Surely you jest!
In 1869, Smith & Wesson brought out the first big-bore, cartridge-firing revolver with the break-top Model #3 chambered in .44 S&W American. Not only did this revolver fire a serious cartridge, it was very easy to unload and reload. When a latch in front of a hammer is unlocked, the entire barrel and cylinder assembly rotates 90 degrees downward and the ejector assembly automatically ejects the fired cartridges. It took a couple of seconds to refill the cylinder, rotate the barrel and cylinder assembly back into place, and the gun was ready to fire.
Smith & Wesson’s Double Action .44 Russian would not be manufactured until 1913; however, all frames were made prior to 1899. Approximately 54,000 were manufactured. A rare variation was the lighter Wesson Favorite, also in .44 Russian with approximately 1,000 being produced. By slightly lengthening the cylinder, the Double Action became the Frontier Model with approximately 15,000 being made in .44-40 and less than 300 in .38-40.
For many years I have read the original double actions were very hard to shoot double action and I had no reason to doubt this. That is, until I acquired my own Model 1878 .45 Colt and a Smith & Wesson Double Action Frontier .44-40. By acquiring I should say both were anniversary presents from Diamond Dot, a wife who truly understands.
Perhaps I have a stronger than normal trigger finger from so many years of shooting. However, I found both revolvers easy to operate double action and also easy to handle when point shooting. I’ve always had an immense fondness for single actions in general and the Colt Single Action in particular. However, in the past 30 years I’ve also learned to appreciate the Smith & Wesson single action revolvers — the American, the Schofield, the Model #3 Russian and the New Model #3.
If I had lived in the 1880s and if I had normally carried a single action and if I had been introduced to either the 1878 Colt or the Double Action Smith & Wesson, what would I have chosen? Single Action or Double Action? Colt or Smith & Wesson?
Targets fired with the .38 M & P.
Smith & Wesson M & P .32-20 (top) compared to a .32-20 Colt Single Action.
New & Improved
The introduction of the 1st Model Hand Ejector in 1899 also soon introduced a new cartridge, the .38 Special. It was not only more powerful than Colt’s .38 Long Colt, it was destined to become the most popular center-fire revolver cartridge in history. The Military & Police revolver was destined to become the most popular DA revolver of all time.
Originally, in 1899, the Military & Police was chambered for what was the service cartridge at the time, the .38 Long Colt. The .38 Special arrived shortly thereafter — some say in 1900 while others say 1901–1902 — and those first cartridges were loaded with black powder. In addition to being chambered in .38 the Military & Police was also offered in .32-20, making it an excellent varmint and small game gun; .22 chamberings are very rare. From 1905 until the eve of World War II, just under 1 million M&Ps were produced.
A new chapter began for the Military & Police in 1940 with the 5″ Victory Model. These M&Ps were chambered in .38 S&W, which was the British service revolver cartridge, with over one-half million being made to aid the British with their lack of weapons. A second version of the M&P Victory Model was the same basic sixgun chambered in .38 Special for our own troops, with approximately 250,000 of them being manufactured by 1945. By the end of WWII, nearly 2 million M&Ps had been produced. My wife’s premier bedside sixgun is a .38 Special 5″ WWII M&P — that pretty much says how much we think of it.
War Breaks Out
The United States was unprepared for WWI and did not have enough .45 sidearms. The official pistol for the U.S. Military was the 1911 Government Model .45 ACP. However, we did not have enough to outfit the American Expeditionary Force nor could we make them fast enough. The answer was the Smith & Wesson 2nd Model HE and the Colt New Service both of which were standardized with 5 ½” barrels and chambered in .45 ACP.
To make this rimless cartridge work in the cylinders, an engineer at Smith & Wesson came up with the half-moon clip to hold three cartridges. It not only provided proper head space but also provided for extraction as without the clips there was nothing for the extractor star to engage in order to push empty cartridges out. Today, of course, the half-moon clips have evolved into full-moon construction allowing six cartridges to be loaded and ejected at once.
The 1917 Smith & Wesson in military dress was produced from September 1917 to January 1919 with almost 164,000 being produced. The frame is stamped “US ARMY MODEL 1917” and the left side of the barrel is marked “S&W D.A. 45.” There is also a U.S. Ordnance flaming bomb marked on the left side of the frame in front of the hammer.
The 1917 Smith was modernized further at approximately serial number 185,000 with the addition of a hammer block safety, which still remains on Smith & Wesson double action sixguns today. Military models were finished in standard blue with smooth walnut grips while commercial versions have a deeper blue and checkered diamond grips with Smith & Wesson medallions. Grips that filled in the hand up to the top of the frame were still approximately 20 years in the future, so these grips were very small and did not add much to comfort when firing.
