.38 Rethinking the Special
LIKE LONG-PLAYING VINYL records, cassette tapes, and drive-in movie theatres, the once highly-popular .38 Spe cartridge has faded into the shad As newer calibres, or perhaps more correctly, newer delivery platforms in the form of high-capacity, semi-auto pistols increasingly gained ground, the writing was on the wall for the old war horse. Or was it?
The .38 Special first saw the light of day in 1898 when it was chambered in the original Military and Police K-frame revolvers of Smith and Wesson (S&W), the most produced revolver line in history. The earliest cartridges were charged with 21 grains of black powder, but just a year later the switch to smokeless propellant took place.
This cartridge was designed as a higher velocity cartridge with better penetration potential than the .38 Long Colt used by US forces in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. During that conflict, the Americans discovered that their .38 Long Colt revolver bullets wouldn’t penetrate the shields of the insurgent Philippine Morro warriors – often with disastrous consequences –
