Musings of a History Buff

The Walker Colt

In the movies Clint Eastwood’s character Dirty Harry, proclaims the .44 magnum is the most powerful handgun ever made. Well… not exactly. If you split hairs which I intend to do, that is not historically correct. In Dirty Harry’s day it may have been the most powerful center fire cartridge in the world but there is another. A fully charge .44 caliber black powder, percussion cap Walker Colt remains the most powerful handgun of its day. Of course the .44 magnum center fire has been eclipsed by several new calibers including the .454 Casull, the .480 Ruger, and the .500 Smith and Wesson. The U.S. Calvary at Little Big Horn with Colonel Custer was using the Sharps .45-70. The .45 is the caliber and the 70 is the charge of black power, 70 grains. A fully chargedWalker Colt at 60 grains was only 10 grains shy of the Sharps. Of course modern handguns and modern propellants can reach much higher pressures, and a .357 is now capable of surpassing the relatively antique .44 black-powder. But in its day it was the most powerful handgun in the world. The reason the .44 Walker was invented was purely professional need. Texas Ranger Captain Samuel Hamilton Walker wanted a handgun capable of taking down a horse and rider at 100 yards. He went to the inventor of the Colt handgun the Rangers were using at the time, the early Paterson Holster Pistol (No. 5 model). That person was the American firearms inventor Samuel Colt. Texas had purchased a large number of the repeating Paterson Colts, in .36 caliber, 5 shot. But this was a close-in weapon. The Rangers had been fighting the Kiowa and Comanche tribes. They had repelled an incursion into Texas by a Mexican General in 1842, and their need for a long range multishot pistol was primary.

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