..."And his opinion of Webley revolvers isn't simply a matter of national pride. Webleys were robust. True the frames and cylinders wouldn't handle most modern full power cartridges, but it didn't need to be; the .455 Webley round fired a big heavy bullet at the sedate velocity of 650 fps. The Webleys were more than strong enough to handle this cartridge, and the lockwork had a reputation for being very rugged and standing up to even the harshest treatment."...
not trying to start a rant. i think you missed my point. if you change out "webley" for "schofield" in your posting, i think you'll see what i mean. the schofield was used by the army as late as the spanish american war, and the phillipine insurection. they were issued in 1875...
i own a delicate S&W new century "triple lock". the frame dates almost a century ago. it still shoots .45 (long) colt standard velocity ammunition without problems...
..."The S&Ws were considered too light weight and prone to being put out of action in the mud of the trenches. The heavier New Service was favored. "...
i think the above mentioned colts were excellent revolvers also. but how exactly would a heavier frame prevent contamination?
It doesn't, but a lot of what people "know" about guns is simply perception, and may not reflect reality 100%. Take another example: the supposed impetus behind the 1911 and the .45ACP. Story goes that the .38 Colt was found so lacking in stopping power against the Moros, that old .45 SAAs were brought out of inventory, and cured the problem. Except that's not quite true. It is true that .38 experienced failures to stop against the Moros. But then again, so did the .45 SAAs, and so, for that matter, did the .30-40 Krag rifles (Reportedly Winchester 1897s did well though). But the perception that the .38 was almost totally ineffective, and the .45, when used in it's place "knocked the Moros clean off their feet" became established. It's more perception than reality, and this perception was probably born out of the feeling among the troops that the .38 was vastly inferior to the old .45 cartridge, and never should have been adopted. So, the troops "remembered" things according to their preconceived ideas.
I can see something of the same sort happening with the Triple Lock among the British. British troops used to the heavy, chunky, industrial-ugly Webley, and quite satisfied with its performance see this beatiful, sleek, shiny S&W, with its slender, gracile lines, and multiplicity of finely made parts, and figure it just
can't be as rugged. It's just too finely made. And so they become hypersensitive to any hiccup under service conditions, and may even predict problems that never happen. They then "remember" that the S&W was just not us rugged and durable -- especially if they were long-serving professional officers, and later saw a problem [admittedly an
easily corrected one] materialize that I have read about in more than one source relating British experience with the weapons:
some S&W revolver mainsprings taking on enough of a set, or weakening after many years of service, or even simply getting out of adjustment, so that it doesn't ignite the primer every time, which never seemed to happen in civilian service, but British military ammo had harder than usual primers, and demanded a harder strike. If they then saw anything like this happen, even years later, it could confirm a preconceived bias. And so, in British military circles, the S&W acquires a basically undeserved reputation for being too delicate.
And then along comes Mr. Boothroyd many years later, who wasn't born early enough to serve during WWI, but was born early enough to have become acquainted with men who had served in the trenches. They relate their experiences, and he reports them, not suspecting that what he's listening to is their biases, and slightly distorted memories speaking, rather than hard facts.
