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Special specials: what, where and why?

American Handgunner, Sept-Oct, 2005 by Clint Smith

Interestingly enough, of the three handgun cartridges bearing the title "Special" as part of their name, two of the earliest ones are considered to still be two of the most inherently accurate handgun cartridges ever developed. Now, if you're thinking "power factor, in the dark, in a fight" and such, stop it now. It's not dark and you're not in a fight, so let's just have some fun and generate some food for thought.

The Original Special

More Articles of Interest: The .38 special: one of our favorite rounds; .500 S&W Special; The one stupidest thing I saw at SHOT; The two best lines I heard at the SHOT show; Psst … it's not your fault

Although still argued about by some upstarts, it's believed the cartridge that started it all was introduced for the Smith & Wesson 1st Model Hand Ejector Military & Police in 1899. And, you might not realize it, but that first .38 Special was loaded with 21 grains of black powder! Late that year the first smokeless loads were produced and the die was cast for the future of one of the most often used, accurate and cussed-at handgun cartridges ever made.

The base line load is considered to be a 158-grain lead bullet at a nominal 850 fps. Screeching is heard often concerning the .38's failures to stop, yet many an old time copper carried the .38 Special without fail for their whole career. My father toted the same Colt Official Police revolver chambered for .38 Special for 25 years and lived long enough to die of a heart attack at the age of 72. The cartridge never failed him and he must have never doubted it, as he had the gun until his last day.

Fussed with over the years, the baseline cartridge went through a series of changes--and attempts on the part of owners--to improve the cartridge's performance. Often with little or no actual benefit.

But, introduced in the 1930s to counter the auto-bound bandits of the day, the .38/44 attempt was gassed-up with the 158-grain lead bullet pushed to 1,150 fps and shoved from a S&W .3844 Heavy Duty revolver. By today's standards the old .38/44 loads seem to be weak. As I write, I have three loads from CorBon on my desk that proclaim a 125-grain 1,125 fps, a I I0-DPX at 1,200 fps and a Pow'R ball 100-grain at 1,400 fps. These .38 Special loads are not in the 2" barrel shoot' em a lot category. And the Pi-guys at CorBon definitely do know how to raise the .38 Special ammo bar!

Often, in many shooter's minds, the .38 Special cartridge recalls an old adage about a silk purse and a sow's ear. The bottom line is .38 Specials have failed--and .38 Specials have worked.

The Big Special

The big Special is the .44 Special; what one guy recently screeched was a "gutless belt anchor." I don't know. I guess that could be true, except for guys like John Taffin and Mike Venturino who have spent a lot of their adult years pounding the snot out of big game animals with a wily old G.B.A.

Gutless or not, the .44 Special has been one of the most inherently accurate pistol cartridges ever made. Debuting in the early 1900s, the .44 appeared as the Smith & Wesson Model 1908 New Century, or Triple Lock named due to the new three point locking system. Birthed from the .44 Russian, one of the biggest flaws always haunting the .44 Special was the failure on the part of the ammunition folks to give the cartridge some "barn," as the TV chef says. Base-loaded with a 246-grain round nose lead bullet at around 750 fps, it could be construed as sort of lame compared to the cartridges of today.

Mr. Elmer Keith used the .44 Special as a test bed to design his own bullets, and stoked the .44 Special to new levels with 17 to 18.5 grains of 2400 powder (based on the type of brass case used), pushing a 250-grain bullet to over 1,200 fps. So much for the gutless belt anchor connotation.

History now records that Elmer Keith used this .44 Special case to travel toward trying to get the factory to lengthen the .44 Special. And yet even Mr. Keith was surprised by the destination--the awesome .44 Magnum cartridge presented-up by Remington and Smith & Wesson in its gun platform, the Model 29. That svelte wheelgun pushed a 240-grain bullet at a nominal 1,400+ fps.

In his classic work Big Bore Sixguns, Mr. John Taffin stated he thought the .44 Special might be the cartridge of the century. You know what, that Mr. John is a pretty smart guy. Without any disrespect, Mr. Taffin is an older gentleman, but is a classic case of: "Young guys should hang out with old guys--old guys know stuff."

I think this is the case with Mr. John, and he may well be correct in that the .44 Special just may be the cartridge of the century past, and the century present.

The Bigger Special

As much as I hate to say it, the .500 Special is founded in boredom. With a little extra time on his hands, the young Peter Pi Jr. of CorBon fame cut the full size .500 Smith & Wesson magnum case down to 1.285". By doing so he gave all of us who wanted to shoot the SAW hand-held cannon--but didn't have the elbows or wrists to do it--a chance to fire this boomer without hurting anything important.

Sort of a half-pint to the .500 Magnum developed in 2002, the 2004 innovation still uses all the big boy projectiles to include the 275-grain HP, 350-grain HP and a 350-grain FMJ bullet. Helped by the Starline brass folks, the ammo came into being. With sales in the 10,000-plus range, the Smith & Wesson .500 X-frame revolver is here to stay, and with the Pi-guys producing two types of base loads, the .500 Magnum and .500 Special, this assures it a future at the range and in the field for a broad spectrum of uses and users.

Special specials: what, where and why?

American Handgunner, Sept-Oct, 2005 by Clint Smith

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