45 gauge: yesterday, today, tomorrow

Is it possible to keep your name forever? Make a feat to grateful descendants put a monument? Or go to the pages of history? But after all the monuments are destroyed, and the history is rewritten. So is there really no such possibility? It turns out there are, even a few. The first is to become a hero of folk folklore, like, for example, Ilya Muromets, Ivan Susanin or Chapaev. The second possibility is that your own name should become a household name, such as cardan (named after the inventor Gerolamo Cardano) or Kalash (in honor of Mikhail Timofeevich Kalashnikov). So, the American inventor Samuel Colt was able to take advantage of these two possibilities. His name fell into the American popular saying, which, in a free translation, reads: "God created people different, and Colonel Colt scored chances." In addition, his name is called the system of revolvers, and most of the names of this pistol are written with a small letter and without quotes. But before talking about the invention of the American gunsmith, we will conduct a small educational program about calibres and hand-held melee weapons systems - pistols.

What is a caliber

Currently, there are several standards for the designation of weapons calibers, so it is not uncommon to try to compare the 45 caliber and 16 (with 45 for some reason less) or 5.45 and 3 lines (there is less than 5.45 here). In most European countries, in Russia in particular, the measurement of the caliber is carried out in the metric system. Metering is performed in millimeters along the diameter of the barrel. Accordingly, for a rifled weapon, the diameter of the cartridge will be slightly larger (at the depth of the cuts). In the USA, Great Britain and some other countries, mainly members of the British Commonwealth, the measurement of the caliber takes place in fractions of an inch, and in the United States in hundredths, and in the United Kingdom - in thousandths. Therefore, the 45 caliber of the United States is 450 Britain and 11.43 Russia. In this row stands smooth-bore hunting rifles. Their caliber means the number of round bullets that can be cast from one pound of lead. Accordingly, the smaller the diameter of the barrel, the more bullets will turn out. Also, there is another standard for caliber measurement, which TV nowadays hardly use. These are the lines. One line contains one tenth of an inch, respectively, at the Mosin rifle sample of 1893, the famous three-line, caliber 3x2.54 = 7.62 millimeters. Now let's move on to the construction of a melee weapon.

Systems

There are two main schemes: pistol and revolver. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage of modern pistols is the speed and ease of recharging, the possibility of automatic shooting (in some models, for example, the Stechkin pistol). The advantage of revolvers is high reliability, there is no need to send the cartridge into the barrel after reloading and there is no automatic extraction of the cartridge cases, which in some cases is good in terms of stealth, for example, when special units are operating.

45 caliber: self-defense pistol

In 1911, in the North American United States (that was the name of the United States), it was probably the most famous pistol in the world. It is about the "Colt M1911", which has 45 caliber. This semi-automatic pistol was recognized as the best weapon for self-defense due to the high stopping action of the bullet. His production with numerous upgrades lasted until 1982. He stood in the arsenal of the US Army until 1985, and among private owners is still popular. In total, about three million pistols of this model were produced. These pistols, except the United States, were in service with the army of Great Britain and the USSR (Lend-Lease), Norway, France, Nicaragua and El Salvador. In Estonia and Haiti, they have been in service to date.

Revolver Colt 45 caliber

The Kolt weapons company in 1872 presented its model of a revolver for a unitary pistol cartridge. This year was not chosen by chance, since it was exactly when the patent for a revolver with through-tubes, formerly owned by a competitor, Smith and Wesson, ended. In the following year, in 1873, a new model of a revolver was presented, which was adopted by the US Army. For 20 years, the American armed forces purchased about 37,000 copies of this weapon. The army revolver was 45 caliber, civil - 44. For long 60 years, the release of the army version was stopped, but in the early 50's, mainly due to the US film industry and the popularity of Westerns, the demand for the model "Colt-1873" grew so much that in 1956 Year their release was resumed and continues with small breaks until now.

Ammunition for Colt

In 1905 appeared the world's most popular pistol ammunition, which has 45 caliber. The cartridge is called 45 ACP, it was developed by the Frankfurian arsenal. This munition quickly became a success because of the very effective stopping action of the bullet. It was for this cartridge that such well-known weapons were designed, such as the Colt M1911 pistol and Thompson. Although this munition has a number of shortcomings (because of the low initial speed and high weight of the bullet, the trajectory of its flight is far from flat), its popularity has not fallen to the present. Moreover, for this cartridge new bullet patterns were developed, for example, expansive with controlled opening, which "unfolds" when penetrating to the optimal depth in the body of the victim. So for a long time these legendary samples of the company "Colt" will please the fans of weapons.