Early Velocity Champions: The .250 Savage And The .220 Swift
Back in the days of black powder, it wasn’t easy to crank up any real velocity from a rifle or revolver cartridge. Black powder only burns at a certain rate, at low pressures, and it’s all a black powder cartridge can do to bust much past 1,500 feet per second (fps) no matter what you do. 2,000 fps, attained with the 450/400 3¼" Black Powder Express round, was about the max. That load punched out a 265-grain paper-patched bullet at the advertised 2,000 fps, if one loaded the case with the highest quality of powder.
The problem is the powder itself. Black powder has a fixed burn rate – and a slow one. Increasing the charge just ends up with the shooter blowing unburnt powder out the muzzle, where it doesn’t do any good for increasing velocity. I’ve done it myself; an overload of black powder in a robust, well-built front-stuffer can make for a pretty impressive light show if fired at night.
Smokeless powder changed all that. The new powders could be mixed up to a wide variety of burn rates, and that, combined with the newer bottlenecked rifle cartridges, enabled ammo makers to run higher-pressure rounds that shattered the old barriers.
Read More: Sunday Gun Day Vol. III Ep. LII - Winchester's Great T.C. Johnson
The early 20th century saw some dramatic increases in velocity, and in that world, two cartridges stand out as the early champions: The .250-3000 Savage, which was the first American rifle cartridge to break 3,000 fps, and the .220 Swift, the first to break 4,000 fps.
The History
The .250-3000, otherwise known as the .250 Savage, is generally regarded as the first American centerfire rifle cartridge to break 3,000 feet per second (fps). Designed by the famous Charles Newton in 1915, this round was brought out in a wide variety of rifles, including the famous Model 99 Savage lever gun. It was based on the same case as the .300 Savage, and Newton’s original loads put out a 100-grain bullet at 2,800 fps. Savage, though, wanted that 3,000 record in their hats, so they dropped the bullet weight to 87 grains, which put them over the top. The heavier bullets, though, give better performance on game animals, so you don’t see the 87-grain loads so much.
The .220 Swift has a very different origin. This round was developed by Winchester and introduced in 1935, chambered in the Model 54 Winchester, the predecessor of the famous Model 70. With a 40-grain Spitzer bullet, the new round broke well past the 4,000 fps line, with some measurements having that original load leaving the muzzle at over 4,200 fps. But the round had a reputation for being a barrel-burner, thanks to the cartridge being over capacity for the bore size; throat erosion was a problem until, in later years, improvements in metallurgy helped that, at least, to a certain degree. It was, though, a cartridge that punched above its weight, and was used successfully with heavier, sturdier bullets on animals as large as moose. I wouldn’t try that, but it was done.
The Cartridges
The .250 Savage came out, as mentioned, in the Savage 99 lever gun, which was also chambered in the .300 Savage. That was a great pairing of rifle and cartridge. The Savage lever gun’s rotary magazine allowed the use of spitzer bullets without the worry of a chain-fire, as you might see in a gun with a tubular magazine. That allowed the Savage lever gun to achieve performance that, at the time, was limited to bolt guns and single-shots. The round is still in use today and, with modern powders and bullets, gives nearly the performance of the .25-06 without the noise and recoil. It’s still a fine hunting round, especially for young people or people of small stature.
Read More: Sunday Gun Day Vol. III Ep. XLVIII - The Game-Changing Advent of Smokeless Powder
The .220 Swift is something of an oddball among modern rifle cartridges. It uses the 6mm Lee Navy case necked down to .22 caliber as its basis, and unlike most modern centerfire cartridges, which are rimless, the .220 Swift is described, like its parent case, as semi-rimmed. In fact, in commercial production, the .220’s rim was actually enlarged somewhat to work with a standard bolt head made for the .30-06 case head diameter.
In 1935, when it first came out, this cartridge was a screamer, being the first commercially produced round sending rounds downrange at in excess of 4,000 fps. That meant one could hold dead center out to 375 yards without worrying about the trajectory on your typically-sized varmint, like a coyote or an upright woodchuck or marmot.
Sadly, you can’t buy a new rifle in either round. There are reports that one can get a Savage 100 in the .250 Savage from their custom shop, but as for the .220 Swift, you’re looking at a full-up custom rig, although there are plenty of used rifles available in both rounds.
High velocity gives the shooter a lot of advantages, not the least of which is a flat trajectory, making easier the sometimes difficult task of doping out the range to a target in the field. Nowadays, with ever-more-refined modern propellants, these velocity benchmarks are even easier to achieve. I once won a bet with an elk-hunting buddy who was bragging about the blazing speeds his 7mm Remington Magnum achieved, until I proved to him with his brother’s chronograph that I was getting within 100 fps of his 7mm with my .30-06 loads, which punched out a 165-grain Barnes pill at 2,900 fps, and I’m getting over 2,700 fps with my usual .338 Win mag load, launching a 250-grain bullet. I don’t do much long-range shooting on big game these days, but that .338 will put three rounds in a grapefruit-sized target at 200 yards as fast as I can work the bolt, and that’s pretty durn good by any measure.
The designs of guns themselves haven’t changed much over the decades, other than improvements in the metallurgy and machining tolerances. My .338 is built on a DMW Mauser action that was built in 1910, and it still works just fine. The .30-06 I mentioned is made on a commercial 98 Mauser action, which is pretty much identical to an action made at Mauser-Werke Oberndorf in 1898.
But in ammo, the differences are huge, and the two rounds mentioned were on the crest of that wave. The other great advance was in sighting equipment, but that’s a story for another time.
Something new: I’m taking requests. If you have any particular arms, cartridges, or anything involving guns or gun-adjacent, let me know in the comments.
