As you may know, I am very fortunate to be one of the three historians who does the Factory Letters for the Smtih & Wesson Historical Foundation (S&WHF).
The nature of my work gives me access to the archives that are held by the S&WHF and I can tell you that spending time in the archives is an absolutely great way to spend ones time.
The obvious joy is getting to see where every Smith & Wesson went. That’s really keen and there is no two ways about that. However, the really interesting part is what one comes across while searching for that key piece of shipping data.
As an historian, my interest is more about the why than the where, although they are really complimentary to each other. Most folks want to know where their gun went; I want to know that and why it went there. My interest in that is because if we investigate the why, we can often learn things that might have slipped under the radar.
On one of the Smith & Wesson Forums, a fellow posted about an interesting revolver he had acquired:
In July of 2025 I was able to purchase a long-sought scarce revolver, a Model 11-4, to complete my collection of “teenage” Smith and Wesson 4” barreled revolvers, Models 10 through 19. At that time, I thought I understood exactly how scarce (rare?) Model-marked 11s were in the States. I’ve tried to read every Forum post I could find on these guns, as well as scouring the internet and other forums as well as SCSW to try to get a handle on how many might be known. If I exclude the number I found on these forums that that are known to be located in either South Africa or Australia (8), I came up with a rough tally of 34, + 2, Model marked guns. I thought I’d finally reached the bottom of the rabbit hole.
Life likes to throw you curveballs, sometimes. I just stumbled across (and purchased) a M&P that was in a factory box labeled as a Model 11-2, but it had me scratching my head, because it was a non-model marked 5- screw gun, with a serial of C247972 – definitely a 5 screw, fishhook hammer, short action with a 4” barrel marked “38 S&W CTG” (no dingbats or “178 GR” as found on the 11-4 guns, but the Bangor Punta Box with it has what I strongly believe to be an original factory label identifying it as a 11-2. One of the things I had done was to search completed Serial number look-up requests, and found that another member had experienced the same thing, a 4” 5-screw non-model marked, short action .38S&W with a box marked similarly. I contacted that member, and he graciously provided me with a copy of a letter he possessed dated 1971 from Smith & Wesson, signed by F.H. Miller, Sales Manager, identifying his gun and 3 others noted in the letter as “known as the Model 11”. The letter further states that “This is a weapon that was made for Canadian consumption and the few guns released were an overrun on this requirement”. One of the serial #s was in the c2505xx range, and the others were in the C2714xx range.
I’m familiar with the posts concerning the blued 4” 1905 pre-Victory models mentioned in various threads here on the Forum (I also own one), and agree with the cognoscenti here that these guns should not be called pre-Model 11s because of their long action and other features. In total, including my gun, the 4 from the 1971 letter, and a couple of other sources, puts the number of what I would call correct pre-Model 11s identified at 8, all of which are in the C24xxxx to C27xxxx range; that would seem to indicate that they may be even more scarce that Model-marked guns.
The fellow also included images of the gun and box and the box did have the gun labelled as a Model 11-2. What was so odd was that Model numbers did not start until 1957 yet this gun was in a box with a Model number, serial numbered to the gun and the guns serial number pre-dated 1957.
This was enough to pique my curiosity, so I pulled the shipping ledgers and looked at C247972; it fell into a very solid block of approximately 8,000 serial numbers that all shipped to the Transportation Office, Port of Staten Island ca. 1953. Typically, such an address that mentions a Port Transportation Office, Port of (named location) or Port of Embarkation indicates a military contract. The specific gun appeared to have been shipped to a dealer in NYC in 1970; a long time between manufacture and delivery, but not unheard of.
Model 11’s are chambered in .38 S&W cartridge and not .38 Special, which is an authorized military cartridge.
I ran through about 6,000 of the serial numbers and with the exception of about three dozen Open On Books (meaning no destination listed; entry left blank), there were only perhaps one dozen guns that went to dealers or non-military folks. Out of the 6,000 guns in that block of serial numbers 99.8% went to Uncle Sam; that’s a pretty solid block!
My immediate thought was that since this was a military contract, some extra guns were run off to cover any shortfalls or rejections and these extra guns just lounged in inventory until they were needed. Since this gun was in a relatively odd caliber, .38 S&W, I figured, quite reasonably I thought, that the gun stayed in inventory for a couple decades and was then pulled out and re-barreled and re-chambered to .38 S&W to fulfill a contract to a Commonwealth country. I figured, given the timing, it was probably a South African Police order, likely through Jonas Aircraft & Arms.
Not a particularly big deal. I was mildly curious about the order for military guns to Staten Island, so I decided to see if I could find out some more details.
This is where it started to get interesting.
First off, it’s quite a challenge to find documentation on military contracts. Not because the documentation isn’t in the archive (military shipment documents tend to be voluminous, particularly the WW2 ones), but because you don’t really know what to search under. Perhaps the Air Force ordered up 1,000 Model 36’s. The order was processed through the DCASR (Defense Contracts Administration Service Region) Boston office, who put the order through Springfield Ordnance District who piggybacked it onto an Army order for 5,000 Model 36’s. That’s a lot of digging!!
Eventually, I found the shipping invoice, and it was, indeed, an odd one:
Well, this is interesting! An order for 7,000 M&P’s in .38 S&W. Whats really wild though is that the order seems to suggest US military, although technically it just says Military with no specification of whose military!
This not an inconsequential contract; almost a quarter-million dollars for 7,000 guns against an ultimate order of 11,048.
There is a lot to be parsed from this invoice, and the most important item for me was that the shipment went through the Springfield Ordnance District in July 1953.
This gave me some clues to use in searching for the contract, which I did eventually turn up:
Quite a bit of information here. The most telling part is the Fiscal Control Number. That it starts with MDAP suggests that it may be tied to the Mutual Defense Assistance program. The contract number and other details are going to provide a pretty good starting point in trying to find out where these guns went.
Part of what makes these guns so interesting is that, to the best of my knowledge, none have turned up on the surplus market.
My thought was that the guns may have been for British Honduras, but the number seems excessive. Someone has put forth, with some supporting circumstantial evidence, that the guns were for Iran. There is some merit in this, as Iran was in the British sphere of influence, their military was patterned after the Brits and the quantity seems right. Iran was a key supplier of liquid dinosaur and that has always been a big point in making international friends and allies. The guns would have been relegated to secondary/reserve status as the Shah modernized in the 1960’s and 1970’s and after the Iranian revolution and the spectacularly vicious Iran/Iraq War, there would have been no real impetus or ability or demand to export them.
This is one of those little tidbits that I am going to throw onto my list of Weird Things To Investigate When I Get The Time™.
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