History of the .40 S&W (You might be surprised!)

hey folks welcome back to the next video in our series of caliber throwdown you may or may not know but we talked about the nine-millimeter in our last video and I will post that link today we're going to talk about the 40 Smith & Wesson and then next time we're gonna talk about the 45 ACP what we're doing is talking about the most popular big bullet calibers right now and I say most popular because I know 10 is pretty popular we are gonna do a spin-off piece on the 10 millimeter later but for now we're gonna keep it with the 9 40 and 45 I'm gonna go back as far as the turn-of-the-century 1900s John Moses Browning this guy can be tied to almost anything ammo or firearm wise that has any real staying power and again this is no different John was part of that whole process john was approached for a different sized round for the Romanian army it was a little bit interesting back then how Colt and F in both used John Browning services the way it work was you would find a Colt model that would get introduced and then you would have a I guess you could say competing FN model but the same model but with an FN moniker on it they were both utilizing John John Moses Browning as designs in his creations they pretty much took the world as far as firearms use goes and divvied it up between them Belgium got X amount of countries in the United States got the other ones so they had an agreement a friendly agreement between them that they would not sell guns in each other's territories and that's how they kind of did it it was a gentlemen's agreement and actually back when gentlemen were still gentlemen and it worked however remote Romania was not really no one had claimed it and they were looking for a handgun with a particular round John Moses Browning took his 1911 design scaled it down to about a seven seven eighths design nine or 10 percent smaller than what his original 1911 design was and he chambered it for that nine point eight millimeter colt round the crazy thing was Romania decided that they didn't want it so they were actually left with four prototypes out there four prototypes of this scale-down 1911 I even saw where one was actually sold back in 2012 for 63,000 bucks that one prototype you'll notice on the prototypes and this is actual picture one that it says our ad 40 on it that's research and development and of course 40 being 40 caliber so a little bit of pretty cool history there again taking the metric and imperial system the nine point eight millimeter was roughly what a 40-caliber is that's why you see the ten millimeter is the same exact round as far as projectile as the 40 caliber another cool thing to kind of keep in mind John Moses Browning was actually designing the high-power if you remember he was working with FN at the time we're working for FN at the time and if you remember the nine-millimeter was all arranged back then with the Luger the introduction of the Luger and the nine-millimeter being developed and all that good stuff that wasn't what John was looking for John was looking to chamber the high-power in nine point eight millimeter which is again essentially the 40 caliber however he died and his apprentice who went on and completed the high-power actually finished it in nine-millimeter because again he was in Europe and that was kind of all the thing right it probably had a lot to do with the availability of the 9-millimeter the the round was extremely available at that time and you know the 9.8 wasn't so it's very possible that he just saw it as a non-member we got a bunch of them so let's chamber this thing and that one quick thing I want to add as to why the nine point eight millimeter was kind of sought-after by John Moses Browning is that back during that time there was a rifle and a revolver round called the 38 40 the ballistics of it it was a perfect round for both weapons for the revolver handgun and a rifle John Moses Browning wanted to harness that same ballistic capabilities in a handgun round in one of his newer creations so that's why he included that and created that in that earlier gun that that scaled-down version of his 1911 and was pushing towards that in his high-power of course they needed to use smokeless powder at the time because with that semi-automatic gun and this is kind of one of the reasons why semi-automatic guns did not take place but or weren't built and manufactured back then the ideas were out there it's just that with the black powder it wasn't enough power to cycle the slide and bring you know do everything you needed to do okay now Wars happened the Luger happened which propelled the 9-millimeter into superstardom back then so everything from the nine point eight millimeter colt round to anything resembling at forty was kind of shelved at that point let's move all the way to the early 1970s a man by the name of wick Collins comes along and I'm not going to go into all his background but Witt wanted to make something with a little bit more power ballistically than the nine-millimeter he wanted to make something that had the ballistic performance up again going back to the 38 40 now he was also a fan and a friend of Jeff Cooper if you guys know Jeff Cooper Jeff Cooper was a huge fan of the 45 caliber he liked a handgun that had stopping power and I put that in quotes cuz I don't want to offend anybody out there but he liked a handgun round that would drop whatever it was hitting regardless of where you shot it again that's a different organ we're gonna have later on in our caliber throwdown about placement and all that good stuff but Jeff Cooper liked the big stuff the big bore stuff so between the two of them they got together and wit decided that he wanted to chamber he wanted to use the high-powered design they wanted to reach amber the high-power from nine into 40 caliber and they did it they tested it in it they liked what they saw Cooper's ultimate goal was to have a 200 grain bullet around the diameter of a 40 caliber travel that act or over 1,000 feet per second and that's kind of what wit hung on to also he was like yeah I think we can do this so the two of them got together and they pushed forward and started doing this this is an interesting piece a lot of no not a lot of people know they developed a round that's called the 40 G and a do you know that the 40 GA is actually standing for guns and ammo because Guns & Ammo magazine remember they did a lot of investigating they were journalists they were the real investigators back then all the publications were you know there weren't people like me and other guys out there that were doing all this you know research to try to figure things out it was usually your true journalist of your publications so because guns and ammo got involved as kind of like the investigative arm of Jeff Cooper and wit Collins group they put GNA on the ammo that's why it's a for TGA it doesn't stand for any other crazy acronym or word or anything like that it's not like Smith & Wesson where it's actually manufacture on there no its guns and ammo so the 40 guns and ammo is what wit and Jeff put out there by 1972 they had made a high-power that had a 5 inch barrel that was shooting their 40 GA a 100 grain point at 1050 feet per second they had accomplished what they had set out to do but the round just never took off Collins continued his work on the 40 GA and Cooper went off still kind of in search of that bigger better he went in search of the 40 super he was still looking for something a little bit bigger not necessarily bigger but had more ballistic trophies if you will again not much ever happened to that Wildcat round the 40 GA the Guns & Ammo version of it it just kind of died on the vine a little bit it just never caught caught power of course at that time in the United States as well as the rest of the world the nine had finally kind of made its way over here along with the 45 remember the United States was in love with that 45 for many many years that's why they night and stayed popular in Europe and the rest of the world but we just we wanted that for that big hunk of lead flying downrange so we were kind of torn the nine finally became popular in United States and we already had the 45 that we still love so there was really no room for that 40 you know the 45 and the 9-day stole the show at that point then comes along the 1986 FBI thing again we'll have this story we'll put a full video on that whole thing it was a tragic tragic event but essentially again the rounds that were shot the 38 special and the nine-millimeter did not have the penetrating power that could have ended this firefight a little bit sooner so the FBI started looking they were like alright we got to find a stronger better round we need to work on this one of the guys when they were testing different things somebody brought in their Delta elite by Colt and said alright this is my 10 millimeter why don't we include this in our testing also and see if it's a formidable round well they did and they liked it however they were using Jeff Cooper true 10 millimeter round again you would highly offend F Cooper if you told him today what had happened to his 10 millimeter round that he actually designed back then for them from a ballistic standpoint but one thing you have to keep in mind and this is not a knock against the FBI of today necessarily because I think think that the way that they recruit and where they recruit from is a little different today than what it was twenty thirty four years ago when they were actually working back in the eighties you got to understand a lot of the FBI guys were accountants attorneys let's just say they weren't the most practical tactical guys out there let's just say these were not guys that were hand-picked as former Navy SEALs Rangers Special Forces guys no offense to all the accountants and attorneys out there these were not the manliest of people and boy that's dangerous to say in today's day and time because everything's supposed to be so feminist the truth Jeff Cooper ten millimeter round these super 40 it was a handful even in that Delta elite it was a handful people were having trouble shooting it you know I've heard people use the phrase pansies that these FBI agents were pansies so what they decided to do so more people could control the round is they decided to water down the ten millimeter round now remember we're talking about a longer round in the today's forty caliber round they decided to water that ten millimeter round down to make it quote recoil less so that more of their recruits could actually manage the round so they did they decided to shorten the round up which actually they took the 10 millimeter cut it down cut the casing down put the same amount of powder in there the only difference between the the full ten millimeter that they had watered down was that the ten millimeter at the time or still was using a large primer and whenever they shortened that casing and made it short like the today's forty caliber is they put a small pistol primer in there and it worked so at that point they decided wait a minute we can now take this 40 caliber round which is shorter than what our 10 was our 10 millimeter and we can use our nine millimeter zoom guns because now the 10 millimeter was just a little bit too long they were having to use larger frame guns so now you were going to give them a shorter on a smaller gun a lighter gun and put a 40 caliber round in there now the 40 caliber still had more felt recoil than a nine-millimeter so handling is still and was still an issue but not so not near as much as that 10 millimeter would have been but one thing to remember is that 10 millimeter still would have been made in a larger frame gun so that would have tamed just by default a little bit of that recoil had they stuck with the original Jeff Cooper 10 millimeter round so at this point Smith the Wesson came into the picture am I gonna go and all that you guys know all about that Smith & Wesson and Winchester worked together to perfect the 40 caliber round again they did not develop the 40 caliber round with all due respect to you guys this is not a disrespect or a shot at Smith & Wesson or a Winchester it's just that people have this misconception that these guys invented and work this thing all the way through research and development and they were the guys that invented this this wonderful new round they were not they they actually had access to all of width and Jeff Cooper's previous prototypes the rounds all their paperwork their engineering so it's not like they even started from scratch they simply took some work that was already being worked on the 40 of GNA and of course the 10 millimeter with Jeff Cooper and they they finished it they essentially finished what Witt and Jeff were working on to begin with and of course you know the story after that everybody got the 40 caliber or 40 Smith & Wesson and you know we know we know the story after that so the purpose of this video was pretty much the why in the house of the 48 Smith & Wesson it came along because somebody was looking for that performance of that that round that was a really good ballistically performing around in a 38 40 back in the day with John Browning and the old build revolver and rifle round so they did kind of achieve that coming up next our next video is going to be on the 45 ACP talk about an American round right there we're going to talk about that round and then what we'll do is we'll take all three of these rounds and we'll use ballistic gel we'll do some sheetrock we'll do some clothing tests will show felt recoil or illustrate some recoil and we'll do a few things that will actually you know I say open people's eyes you might learn to appreciate one of the other rounds a little bit more and you may realize that you know one of the other other rounds is not for you but what we're gonna do is work to try to put forth as much data and information to where you guys can make that decision on your own we're not like these guys out there that try to continuously tell you what you need and what you don't need that's up to you guys I always say that the best round and the best handgun is around in the handgun that you have on you at the time you're attacked that's the best one because it's whatever one you have access to when it hits the fan

Channel: Legally Armed America

Views: 170,363

Rating: 4.8869295 out of 5

Keywords: legally armed america, paul glasco, .40, 40, .40 S&W, smith and wesson, s&w, 9mm, history, 10mm, .45, acp, caliber, throwdown

Id: AHqcXPMVZnA

Length: 13min 52sec (832 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 02 2018