History of the .45 ACP

[Music] alright guys it's here it's time for us to talk about the 45 caliber we have our caliber throw down that we started off talking about the 9 millimeter and then the 40 caliber and now we're talking about the 45 caliber now we're still going to have our gel test and some other tests that we're gonna do comparing all three rounds later on I just wanted to give a little bit of historical background on each one of the rounds before we got into that not to disappoint but I don't think there's gonna be a whole lot of surprises with the 45 caliber as there might have been with the 9 and the 40 especially with the 14 noting that John Moses Browning was actually part of that very early on I don't have anything that's that interesting here although there is some interesting stuff with the 45 let's get right into it it was around 1900 the turn of the century now we had a lot of things that were being developed being industrialized and whatnot at that time the world was really advancing and weapons to weapons who had come a long way however medically we did not have penicillin now think about that at that time from a ballistics or a wound standpoint regarding guns every caliber was scary back then because if you got shot by a gun there was no penicillin you were likely to get an infection and die it didn't matter if it were a 22 or a 45 you were likely going to die so nobody wanted to get shot so caliber size was not a thing back then however Along Came penicillin and in terms of you could survive those smaller shots so suddenly larger calibers became more of an interest for people down the road now one of the things that definitely made it a caliber more of an issue was the Philippine insurrection remember the United States and the Spanish fought back of late 1800s and America pretty much won territorial dominance over places like Cuba the Philippines well in the Philippines we were still trying to I guess you could say colonize the island they didn't take too kindly to us being there well we fought them in the jungles and one of the things that we noticed was that the Morrow's and I hope I'm pronouncing this correctly mor OS the Morrow's did not want to be colonized to make things worse we were shooting them with lower caliber weapons and we were riddling them and they were still coming over burns and things like that with their machetes and still attacking our troops because the calibers were hitting them with was not enough to knock them down or to take them down I mean these people were it was like a modern-day meth head and get all jacked up and come at us with machetes so you better be splitting them in half or hitting them in the forehead or in vital parts or else these guys are going to keep coming at you that was a big thing that's whenever we really started noticing we need bigger hunks of lead to literally knock these people to the ground whenever we hit them now at the same time one of the things that made armies pretty effective back in the day who was a fast-moving cavalry so if you had a cavalry a mounted cavalry with horses of course they were able to sweep in fast and overwhelm opposing armies so there again calibers were important not because of the people riding the horses but for the horses because you take the horse down and the guy running is not near as effective as somebody riding on this huge beast coming at you which that can be a little intimidating to from a big round standpoint we we got to a point where we needed bigger hunks of leather again to knock the Morrow's down and to knock horses down in cavalry so that we could have dominance in that realm a lot of what was being used was 38 Colt revolvers that did not pack a punch we actually noticed with some of the folks out there mostly officers who had brought their own weapons into this Philippine conflict that they were bringing their own their their weapons that they owned 12-gauge with buckshot and a 45 long colt and that was knocking people down so it started to open up some eyes as far as bigger hunks of lead hitting people is something that we needed now of course every time there's something that involves anything revolutionary with a firearm historically speaking John Browning is gonna be a part of it just like he is here John Browning was working on another caliber and I believe I might have even covered this in my 40 caliber video but a 41 caliber was pretty much what he was working on and he was designing a firearm to go along with it well whenever everyone came calling and said hey colt hey mr. browning you know we need something with a bigger piece of lead and something to shoot it with because there were no guns to shoot those things with a bigger piece of lead they did not want the revolver like the the Colt revolvers as single-action armies they did not they didn't want any of that obvious but John Breaux browning was instrumental in that he basically retold everything on the pistol and I think it was the 1900 that he was working on at the time Jiri tooled that thing and rebuilt it to where he could invent the 45 using a 45 caliber piece of lead and invented the 45 ACP and built his 1911 gun as central as what it turned into around the 45 caliber now to back up a little bit in 1904 the Thompson lagarde tests these were tests I believe it was a medic and maybe an army guy was what Thompson and lagarde were maybe respectively or might have got it mixed up but these two guys were put in charge of finding that next caliber for the US military and these tests were pretty interesting suffice it to say that these tests would never be held today let me tell you why the tests were held at the Nelson Morris company Union stockyards in Chicago Illinois the calibers that were going to be tested were the 30 Luger the nine-millimeter the 38 Long Colt the 38 ACP the 45 colt the 476 Ely and the 455 Webley now that doesn't sound too controversial does it that wasn't a controversial part this test was done at a stockyard it was basically a facility for slaughtering cattle for a slaughtering livestock what they essentially did is they took 13 to 15 cattle alive and they shot them through the lungs to test these calibers yes that's it you heard me right they shot them alive they brought these live cattle in and in a couple of cases if the rumor has it that a couple of horses actually were used I guess they ran out of cows but 13 to 15 cows were brought in they shot them through the lung section that was day one they pretty much shot them all in the lung section to see what kind of damage they would do the second day of testing at the same stockyard they were shooting them through the lungs and they they essentially said alright we're gonna shoot the cows until they die or until we have ten rounds put into them and that's how they judge these rounds the effectiveness of these rounds on living tissue now another thing that wasn't quite so controversial but I guess in many cases it would be in today's world was the fact that they also took some cow carcasses and hung them and then they shot the carcasses and based on how much they moved after they were shot that was what they were looking at the hitting power of each round what kind of power it generated when it hit the carcass and rocket and then on top of that and again this is something that would never happen today they could they took human cadavers and hung them also by rope and shot them to see what kind of number one damage that it did to the tissue but again moving those targets and moving those cadavers how much power they had when they hit an actual human body so again this is testing you'll never see you around here again that's never gonna happen I'm not saying that I want it to I'm just saying this is testing mature you're certainly not gonna see today Thompson and Lagarde concluded that the 45 caliber was the winner they stated and I quote the board was of the opinion that a bullet which will have the shock effect and stopping effect at short ranges necessary for military pistol or revolver should have a caliber not less than 45 and that's where the 45 was pretty much born after that it was candy bar the door the 45 was it the 1911 was it and I mean you can look at all the renderings of 45s of course we've used other guns besides the 1911 in theatres of battle more notably the Thompson but you're gonna see that the 45 it was King for a very very long time and depending on who you ask it's King today up until 1985 that was our military sidearm 1985 is whenever the Beretta m9 came along and you asked a lot of people about that you're gonna have differing opinions on that but the five was king up until 1985 so and in fact I believe there's still some law enforcement agencies and military specialized units that are still using the 1911 and/or the 45 caliber 45 ACP now I've had people ask my personal opinion about the 45 and what I will tell you is I like the 45 I think the the felt recoil is more of a strong but soft soft pump in other words the 40 has more of a violent recall and we're going to show this than our comparisons of the three rounds later on whenever the shot side-by-side but my feeling is the 45 is a very manageable real fall it may be a little bit strong of a recall but it's not violent it doesn't make your pistol your handgun uncontrollable at that point so I like it but when I've been asked how do I compare that to say a nine-millimeter for instance you know shot placement is going to be keen I always believe that shot placement is going to be king but I look at it like this that's like comparing a tennis racket and a sledgehammer if I take a tennis racket and I hit you in the chest area pretty hard or as hard as I can it's going to hurt you it's gonna hurt a lot that's gonna make you mad too but it's gonna really hurt you but it's probably not gonna knock you down get might but it's probably not going to if I take a sledge hammer and also hit you in the same spot in the chest even if though it's slower moving sledge hammer it's going to hurt you but it will probably knock you down too I know that's a caveman way of looking at it but that's just the easiest way to simplify what you're dealing with with a slower moving round like the 45 but it's much heavier the downside probably one of the biggest downsides to a 45 is it is a close quarter around you're not going to get long-range things out of this this thing is gonna die out as it goes out there it's slow and it's big big fat tongue Colet and it's slowing down pretty quick whenever it's leaving your muzzle so you're not gonna make real long-range shots with us so that's probably the biggest downside again I don't find that recoil is a huge thing on it guys I want you to definitely hang around for this this series next up we're going to get into some really cool stuff I got to tell you we're gonna be doing some things here with legally or in America that nobody has done before and I mean that the reason why is because I know no one has done it because some of these technologies have not been around we're gonna be mixing some really old cool proven technology what's a really cool new unproven technology but very let's just say scientific and the technology itself is proven it just hasn't been used in this means what I mean by that is we're going to be using a ransom rest maker of the only good read rest out there since the 1960s they're the go-to name I mean anybody else is Chinese stuff I mean I'm talking about american-made stuff that's proven over decades these guys have been doing it plus there's a company named mantis mantis and I talked a while back about some things with the accelerometers that they were using in in correlation with the products that they have on their guns that are measuring shot accuracy and things like that it's a really cool app based thing well what I'm going to be doing is taking the ransom rest I'm going to use in mantises new product that's coming out of shot show 2019 and it actually helps measure recall on X Y and I think z-axis - I'm not 100% sure because I haven't had the unit in my hand a very cool process and we're going to be taking the human element completely out of it so that we can show you recoil and accuracy from these three rounds it's gonna be a really cool video I'm very excited to do it can't wait to do it guys thank you for joining us please subscribe to us if you haven't already here on YouTube and follow us on Twitter gun district prove it not video Instagram all those other places out there Facebook whatever so we will see you guys soon if you have any questions any comments please email me at Paul at legally owned America comm we will see you next time [Music]

Channel: Legally Armed America

Views: 172,756

Rating: 4.8874578 out of 5

Keywords: legally armed america, paul glasco, .45, ACP, 45, 45 acp, .45 ACP, 9mm, .40, S&W, caliber, ransom rest, mantis, comparison, whats the best round, whats the best caliber, handgun, pistol

Id: YfC-WgZAqnY

Length: 13min 17sec (797 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 01 2019