B & R Photography

The Weekly Cartridge – .44 Russian

So, I likely won’t be doing this all year but my goal is to try and switch back and forth between handgun and rifle cartridges. Currently I am doing what I already have photos of as I recover but soon, I will take more photos and that will help me out.

This week we are talking about an American Made/Designed but for the Russians. Never thought those two would ever work together.

The .44 Russian which is also goes by the name .44 S&W Russian, was designed in 1870 as a black-powder center-fire cartridge for use in the Smith & Wesson Model 3 revolvers. The reason this came about was General Alexander Gorloff who was the military attache assigned to the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., approached Smioth & Wesson about purchasing a large number of revolvers for the Imperial Russian Army.

Gorloff had some concerns about adopting the .44 S&W American cartridge as he thought it would have reliability issues due to its design of having a externally lubricated heeled bullet similar to that of today’s 22lr cartridges. A requirement for the purchase of the Model 3 Revolvers by the Imperial Russian Army was to change this design so it was an internally lubricated bullet. One thing to note is that the .44 S&W American was the parent case to the .44 Russian.

Smith & Wesson eventually sold over 131,000 Model 3’s to Russia. The .44 Russian eventually became a notable cartridge in the Civilian market as well due to the redesign making more accurate and it went on to set records in its time.

A common load is a 246gr lead round nose projectile travelling at 750ft/s which created 310 ft-lbf of energy.

Today you can load the .44 Russian with both black powder and smokeless powder so long as you use a modern firearm designed to handle it.

As far as trajectory goes the when zeroed at 20 yards the .44 Russian does the following:

50 Yards: 2.55 Inches.

75 Yards: 9.31 Inches.

100 Yards: 20.20 Inches.

(Please note the above trajectory information was pulled from http://gundata.org/ballistic-calculator/ this was using modified .44 Special information as it is a modern .44 Russian)

Short Notes.

Official Name: .44 Russian (.44 S&W Russian.)

Year Designed: 1870.

Designed by: Smith & Wesson (With Influence from General Alexander Gorloff.)

Parent Case: .44 S&W American.

Rifling Twist Rate: 1 in 20.

I hope you enjoyed this brief overview of the .44 Russian and will return next week for our Cartridge of the Week series.

Please remember to always practice safe muzzle control when dealing with firearms and happy shooting.

B