The .40 Smith & Wesson: this round came along at the right time in the right place.(AMMO)

New cartridges are the lifeblood of gunwriters like me. After awhile we run out of things to talk about otherwise. Of course it is really hard to say that anything is truly new in a technology that has been mature for a century or so, but when Smith & Wesson and Winchester teamed up to introduce the .40 S&W in 1990 their timing could not have been more opportune. And I was luckily involved almost from the outset.

The groundwork was really laid by the FBI's investigation of the 10mm Auto as a replacement for their issue handguns and the subsequent development of the S&W Model 1076. The 10mm Auto was introduced in 1983 and was a real hotrod with far too much recoil for practical law enforcement use. I had been experimenting with the 10 for IPSC competition and came to the conclusion that a 180-grain cast bullet at around 1,000 feet per second handily made major and was much easier to shoot. When the FBI began testing the 10mm they found the 180-grain bullet at 950 to 1,000 fps had great defensive potential as well.

There are conflicting claims over who did what and when. There had been some work done with shortened 10mm brass with the thought of using it in a smaller pistol platform, but both Winchester and Smith & Wesson executives told me that the project was begun with a blank sheet of paper and a handshake between presidents Jerry Bersett of Winchester and Steve Melvin of S&W. The ammo development at Winchester was a closely guarded secret program operating under the code name "Swordfish." The bottom-line intent was to make a cartridge that would work in S&W's 9mm frames, deliver a 180-grain bullet at 950 to 1,000 fps and do so within the 35,000 psi pressure limit already established for the 9mm. Amazing coincidence don't you think?

Although I was fortunate to be involved from the earliest days of the .40, what followed the public announcement amazed everyone, myself included. When it was unveiled at the 1989 SHOT Show, the .40 S&W generated interest far beyond all expectations. Winchester had ammo ready to ship, but it was roughly six months before S&W had guns. In one of the great ironies, Glock actually was shipping pistols first although they learned what slowed S&W down--you really just couldn't put a .40 barrel in a 9mm and be good to go. Some tweaking was required to manage the greater recoil.

The amazing part is, by the end of the year, all the major ammunition makers had offerings in .40 S&W and gun companies were hot on their heels. It was interesting to read the firearms press, for there were two distinct camps: Those who thought it made great sense and those who didn't. They were led by comments like, "not proven on the street" of "40 short and weak.'" I have relished--and do so again--telling the latter camp to enjoy their sizeable portion of crow.

Of course all was not entirely sweetness and light, for early accuracy results were not very good. The initial recoil impulse was very brisk, which likely contributed to both accuracy and function issues, but the simple fact is that the .40 S&W could not have come along at a more opportune time. The .40 was the beneficiary of all the interest generated by the FBI's ammunition testing program, so new bullet developments were applied to the .40 and some loading changes--primarily to slower powders--corrected the accuracy and function issues. While the first bullet weight was 180 grains, it was only a little while before we had 135-, 155-, 165- and, briefly, 200-grain loads.

By then the FBI's 10mm pistol program was also in trouble. The 1076 was effectively doomed by errors on both sides ...