Basic Pistol Question

[Van Owen]

Wow; been awhile since I posted here! One of my my hobbies is roleplaying online, and in preparation for one that will be set in a post-post apocalyptic setting, I've been researching Victorian era firearms, which of course include a lot of classic, old west guns and calibers such as the .44-40 and reading up on the ballistics of it, it would seem that it has statistics at least as good as most modern pistol rounds, despite being a black powder weapon, which was surprising to me, as I thought BP was distinctively inferior to smokeless powder, let alone the evolved varieties of it we have today.

 

With this in mind, what real advantages are 140+ years of handgun and propellant research really giving me? I'm looking this only from an ammunition perspective, not a platform one. In terms of terminal effects on the target, is there really any advantage of say a 10mm Super Redhawk firing Speer Gold Dot rounds over an 1870s Smith and Wesson Model 3 chambered in .44-40?

[Simon Tan]

No clouds of smoke. Minimal fouling. Smaller, lighter ammunition with much more velocity. Much more reliable priming.

 

Terminal ballistics, you can essentially pick your wound profile. You are still bringing a handgun to a gunfight. Don't.

 

You cannot take away the platform from the ammunition. Blackpowder essentially made self-loading a non-starter. Self-loaders are much better handguns than revolvers by every metric. Using a Super Redhawk for a 10mm is simply dumb when you can use some sort of plastikfantastik like a Glock. The Ruger is twice the weight, has less than half the capacity and has slower follow up shots. It's also almost twice the price and is a bitch to reload. They can't be suppressed either.

Edited June 24, 2018 by Simon Tan

[Chris Werb]

The BP weapon, with its original Victorian era loads, won't have the advantages of projectile design improvements resulting in much improved terminal ballistics, many of which only came about in the last few years. Revolvers do have some advantages accruing from their operation being entirely independent of the load used. This gives the advantage that the revolver will repeat regardless of the power of round used. With double action revolvers another squeeze of the trigger will put another round under the hammer should a primer fail. It is also easier to make revolvers with vastly different barrel lengths and to mount scopes etc on them without it affecting their operation. This, together with the flexibility in load development and vast array of possible cartridges, many of them her high powered, accounts for their continued popularity for hunting. Another thing is that revolvers can sometimes fire different cartridges more or less interchangeably. A .357 Mag will shot .38 Special and a .44 Magnum .41 Special. Finally, revolvers may not be ideal for most combat applications, but they really are lovely things (mostly!) 🙂

 

Ps: if you want really great source material for RP, the Call of Cthulhu Investigator Weapons Guides by our very own HANS here on tank-net are simply marvellous.

[rmgill]

The question for your post apocalyptic setting would be what sort of tech base do you have? Are you looking to make new weapons or work with what's available?

[DougRichards]

Just remember that the .45 1911 is closer in timeframe to 1870 than 2018.

[bojan]

Well, .45 ACP ballistics replicated US .45 M1909 cartridge which was a smokeless version of the previous .45 Government, which had same powder load (26-28 grains) as paper cartridges for .44 Colt/Remington cap and ball revolvers. So it traces origin to 1860...

[Colin]

The 1911 is a remarkable firearm, when you compare it to the other guns of the era, robust and simple. Browning truly understood what was going on inside the gun when cycling. I love the Luger and the Broomhandle, but the Broomhandle is a machinist nightmare.

[Simon Tan]

When 90% of handguns use your basic prinicple.....

[Chris Werb]

Another factor with Victorian era firearms was that what would now be a easily survivable abdominal wound would then have been a sentence to a painful lingering death. That partly accounts for some of the small and ballustically anaemic handgun cartridges in use back then.

[Panzermann]

Well, .45 ACP ballistics replicated US .45 M1909 cartridge which was a smokeless version of the previous .45 Government, which had same powder load (26-28 grains) as paper cartridges for .44 Colt/Remington cap and ball revolvers. So it traces origin to 1860...

 

Originally Browning designed what would become the M1911 pistol around a new .38 cartridge of his design. The U.S. Ordnance Department inisited on the .45.

 

 

 

---

 

Another factor with Victorian era firearms was that what would now be a easily survivable abdominal wound would then have been a sentence to a painful lingering death. That partly accounts for some of the small and ballustically anaemic handgun cartridges in use back then.

 

 

Blowback guns are also easy and cheap to make comapred to locked actions and can kill a man. Easy to shoot as well. There was barely familiarization training with firearms. Where they fall short is in the still valid military requirement to drop a horse.

Edited June 26, 2018 by Panzermann

[Van Owen]

The question for your post apocalyptic setting would be what sort of tech base do you have? Are you looking to make new weapons or work with what's available?

I'm pretty much looking to make new weapons, though basing their operation and statistics off of existing historical designs. I want to avoid everyone and their brother sporting lever action, repeating firearms, so I'm reserving those for the extremely wealthy, or at least sponsored by them. They'd represent the cutting edge of firearms development.

 

My idea is that the most common designs are equivalent to the Snyder or Springfield Trapdoor, with those who can afford better having Martini-Henry equivalents. for those who need repeating firearms, but can't afford the complicated and expensive lever action arms, revolver carbines, despite having their drawbacks, are probably the way to go. There are going to be lots of very bad, inhuman things in this setting, including a lot of creatures from folklore and such, that are going to be ferociously hard to kill, though most will still go down if you put enough bullets in them.

 

The basic idea I'm looking at is a setting like Europe, with city-states, which are linked by rail. In between these, are large areas of hinterlands, where the bad things dwell. Conditions in the city-states themselves vary. The most developed areas are industrialized, and probably not terribly far off from the cities of our own Victorian era, but the further away one gets, the the more primitive and dangerous the setting becomes, with conditions on the border, being almost medieval, with having to defend from constant raids.

 

I chose the .44-40 as it was a common round in the wild west, and seems like it would be adequate here. Looking up data on it, and comparing the numbers, however, I was struck in that it didn't seem very far off from modern loads, which really made me wonder.

 

I'm also thinking having the pepperbox still around, too.

[bojan]

Krnka action is simpler than Snider and Trapdoor and stronger than both. Rolling block is also incredibly simple.

[shep854]

No more Tactical Tupperware for sure.

[Ivanhoe]

My idea is that the most common designs are equivalent to the Snyder or Springfield Trapdoor, with those who can afford better having Martini-Henry equivalents. for those who need repeating firearms, but can't afford the complicated and expensive lever action arms, revolver carbines, despite having their drawbacks, are probably the way to go. There are going to be lots of very bad, inhuman things in this setting, including a lot of creatures from folklore and such, that are going to be ferociously hard to kill, though most will still go down if you put enough bullets in them.

I'm not convinced that lever actions are complicated and expensive compared to revolvers of the handgun or rifle ilk. Lots of precision machining involved in a revolver with small cylinder/barrel gap, hand and timing cuts, etc.

 

I chose the .44-40 as it was a common round in the wild west, and seems like it would be adequate here. Looking up data on it, and comparing the numbers, however, I was struck in that it didn't seem very far off from modern loads, which really made me wonder.

I'm not overly nostalgic, but the .44-40 is a rather nice cartridge. Especially in a "cowboy combo" revolver and levergun. Not for sniping, but for a purely defensive "trail combo" not bad at all.

[shep854]

The .44-40 was indeed very popular as a general purpose cartridge in the 19th century West.

[Van Owen]

I'm not convinced that lever actions are complicated and expensive compared to revolvers of the handgun or rifle ilk. Lots of precision machining involved in a revolver with small cylinder/barrel gap, hand and timing cuts, etc.

 

It's more of a balance and worldbuilding issue, really. If everyone had lever action repeaters, the bad things in the setting would be as extinct as the dinosaurs by this point. With the level of technology they have, strides are being made, and they'll likely eventually reclaim the world, but that's still going to be a ways down the line...

 

 

 

I'm not overly nostalgic, but the .44-40 is a rather nice cartridge. Especially in a "cowboy combo" revolver and levergun. Not for sniping, but for a purely defensive "trail combo" not bad at all.

That also factored highly into the my thinking and choice of calibers

 

I'm thinking that there are also going to be some rather large shotguns in this setting, with 6 and 8 gauge ones not uncommon, particularly where they're likely to be needed, in single and double barreled variants, though I'm not sure if both barrels could be discharged at once, without significant damage to the gun, the user, or both. Of course, the effect on the target is bound to be pretty spectacular...

 

I think some of my confusion about how powerful these BP era guns were, might have been based on me misreading the data, not realizing in the case of the .44-40, the statistics were for it being fired from a 20" barrel, where it outperformed a modern 10mm fired from a 6" but I don't think it necessarily would have done so from a pistol barrel. Wouldn't the unjacketed lead ammo of the time flattened out like a modern hollowpoint? I think that was what made the minie ball so deadly, wasn't it, after all?

Edited June 27, 2018 by Van Owen

[bojan]

Note that a lot of data for 44-40 is for smokeless loads.

 

There were .500 Tranter and .577 Tranter/.600 Gilon handguns in real world. First one was reasonably popular (since it could use frame of the .450 revolvers) and ammo was made until late 1930s. It fired 300gr @ 210m/s. .577/.600 fired 350gr @ 170-190m/s.

If you want "European" feel, ditch 44-40 and go for 11x36 Gasser. It fired 20g (312gr) lead projectile with 32-36 grains of powder from a 9" revolver barrel @ 240-250m/s (~220-230 m/s with 7", 200-210 with 5", ~190m/s with 4"), which was pretty impressive for a 1870. They were historically incredibly popular in Europe, especially Balkans. Here is a cartridge compared with .45 Colt (smaller on top is .45 Colt):

 

There was also a 1872 Fruwirth carbine that used same cartridge, with a muzzle velocity of about 300m/s from a 22.4" barrel with a tube magazine for 8 rounds. It is also simpler to make than lever guns and fits European style more.

​

Single shot Werndl carbines also used same cartridge initially, but hotter loaded, reaching about 330m/s from a same length barrel.

Edited June 27, 2018 by bojan

[Van Owen]

I'd debated the Chassepot/Gras, but in terms of Rate of Fire, I sort of doubted it had any advantage over say the Martini-Henry, though for some military applications, they might have been superior. What's driving firearms development in the setting isn't warfare, rather personal defense.

There were .500 Tranter and .577 Tranter/.600 Gilon handguns in real world. First one was reasonably popular (since it could use frame of the .450 revolvers) and ammo was made until late 1930s. It fired 300gr @ 210m/s. .577/.600 fired 350gr @ 170-190m/s.

If you want "European" feel, ditch 44-40 and go for 11x36 Gasser. It fired 20g (312gr) lead projectile with 32-36 grains of powder from a 9" revolver barrel @ 240-250m/s (~220-230 m/s with 7", 200-210 with 5", ~190m/s with 4"), which was pretty impressive for a 1870. They were historically incredibly popular in Europe, especially Balkans.

Excellent suggestions, and I'll add to the list. In truth, because of the city-state arrangement, there will likely be a wide variety of firearms floating around, so plenty of room for many different calibers and designs. Also, many older guns will be in use, simply because not everyone can afford the most current, and have to rely on inherited or secondhand pieces.

Edited June 27, 2018 by Van Owen

[Van Owen]

I found myself watching this on YouTube, and was wondering, if given the issues with revolvers, namely the need for comparatively complex machining of the cylinders and indexing mechanisms, this might be a better way of going for standard pistols? I could also picture carbine versions, which would likely be superior to revolver carbines in a number of ways.

 

Edited June 27, 2018 by Van Owen

[Colin]

Had a Lever action in 44-40, sad I sold it. For citizen use a Lever action is a mighty fine choice, quick rate of fire, good ammo stowage, light, easy to carry.

[R011]

If people need to use a handgun, they need it desperately and it must be certain to fire. At this tine, that means a revolver. If 11 mm Gasser is the most popular round then and there, choose it. Pick one long gun in carbine/PDF and infantry lengths. If precient enough, a proto Kar98k for everyone might be nice. FN made Mausers are probably your best bet and I'm sure they can suggest a suitable cartridge. There's not all that much difference between them. I'd suggest 8 mm German if there are no licencing issues because eventually, it will be really popular. The MG should be the Vickers-Maxim with the Hotchkiss M1909 for cavalry.

Edited June 28, 2018 by R011

[Simon Tan]

I refer you to the Tankovian thread.

[R011]

I thought that was where I posted it. Oops.