Colt Aircrew .38 Special

[Cosine26]

As a B47 AOB, SAC 310th Bomb Squadron (M/JET) I was issued a Colt Aircrew revolver S/N
C261136 and carried it on deployment to the UK in 1955. As I remember it, it was an all aluminum Detective Special. Anyone else remember these? It would be worth a lot of money to a collector I believe.

Design of the Aircrewman

Colt answered this call for a small and effective, but super lightweight handgun, with a modified version of their then-new Cobra line of snub-nosed revolvers. It was named the Aircrewman.

Colt Aircrewman
Colt Aircrewman.

The Cobra itself was a revamp of the company’s earlier 1927-era Detective Special. Both were ‘D-frame’ six shot .38-specials with small profile rounded butts and 2-inch barrels. To carve weight away from the Cobra, Colt used space age aluminum for the frame and cylinder instead of the normal ordanance grade steel. The Cobra already used an aluminum side plate, but to throw out all of the steel except in the barrel and replace it with the wondermetal was a bold step forward. To be safe, the Air Force used low-pressure rounds instead of commercial .38 SPL loads.

Whereas the Detective Special was 21-ounces and the Cobra was 16-ounces, the superlight Aircrewman tipped the scales at just 11-ounces with six rounds of 38-Special loaded. In comparison with the snubs of today, the 5-shot, S&W 637 Airweight comes in at 13.5. So yeah, the Aircrewman was about as light as you could get.

Colt made just 1189 of these guns in 1950-51. Records from Colt show that some 1,123 were shipped to the US Air Force from 12/21/1950- 4/23/1952. The largest lot of these, some 255 revolvers, was sent to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska in 1951. This is not unexpected as at the time Offutt was home to the bombers of the US Strategic Air Command, whose crews sat on constant ramp alert to scramble towards the Soviet Union with a cargo of atomic weapons.

Recall and destruction

Besides the Colts, between 1953-54, Smith and Wesson produced about 40,000 aluminum framed M-13 snub-nosed pistols to augment the small numbers of Aircrewmen in circulation. When stocks of M41 special ball, a low-powered round that pushed a

Colt Aircrewman at Springfield Armory Museum.
Colt Aircrewman at Springfield Armory Museum.

130-grain jacketed round nosed bullet grew scarce, users loaded their aluminum guns with full power stuff. This turned a couple of them into small hand grenades and kabooms were quickly reported. In October 1959, both the Colts and the Smiths were recalled to their depots and crushed, their frames deemed unsafe.

To quote the USAF order at the time, “Because of the peculiarities of the M13 revolver, i.e., requirement for special ammunition, limited use and potential danger if used for other than the purpose for which it was designed, all M13 revolvers excess to Air Force requirements will be mutilated to prevent further use as a weapon. Residue will be disposed of as scrap.”

Though most ended up demolished, a few guns, already in the hands of retired flight officers escaped the wholesale slaughter. Steel framed S&W 10s, 12s and 15s replaced them and kept aircrews company until as late as the 1990s.

Information

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