Model 36

8. .38 Chiefs Special (1950)
S&W had been making five-shot revolvers in .32 S&W Long (1896) and .38 S&W (1917) on its small I-Frame since the dawn of the hand-ejector era. The snubnose .38 S&W Terrier version introduced in 1936 was wildly popular with plainclothes police, but many wanted it chambered for the more powerful .38 Special. In 1949, as the company reorganized its production for the post-World War II era, new S&W president Carl Hellstrom instructed his engineers to design an improved small frame that could also handle the more powerful load. The very slightly larger final result (longer cylinder window, extended grip frame, larger trigger guard) was the two-inch J-Frame .38 Chiefs Special, named in honor of its place of introduction: the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) conference held in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in October 1950. (All the pre-existing models in the I-Frame line--like the .22/32 Kit Gun--were very quickly converted to J-Frame design.)

Later designated the "Model 36" when S&W began to assign modern model numbers in 1957, the .38 Chiefs Special was thus the first S&W J-Frame revolver, the first ultracompact .38 Special, and the ancestor of all the variant forms (from all makers) that followed--including the shrouded .38 Bodyguard, the hidden-hammer DAO Centennial series, and the aluminum-frame Airweights. Square butt and round butt, shorter and longer barrels, fixed or adjustable sights, stainless steel or blued--the Chiefs Special "family" of .38 Special (and today even .357 Magnum) revolvers remains one of the strongest-selling component of S&W's revolver production and a continuing format for some of its most striking recent innovations in fabrication materials. It also began a tradition of putting more power in smaller and smaller packages that continues today. (Incidentally, in 1952 the first-version .38 Special Airweight with an aluminum cylinder weighed only 9.9 ounces--actually less than today's titanium-cylinder AirLite models).

Model 19

9. .357 Combat Magnum (1955)
Before Hellstrom talked to U.S. Border Patrol shooting team member (and later Shooting Times Field Editor) Bill Jordan at the 1954 Camp Perry matches, no manufacturer had attempted to chamber the high-intensity .357 Magnum cartridge in anything but a large, heavy frame revolver. Jordan's idea for a "peace officer's dream" sidearm was a heavy-barreled four-inch K-Frame .357 Magnum with a shrouded barrel like the big-frame .357 and adjustable sights. After a year of experimentation with improved-strength steels and special heat-treat processes, the result was the .357 Combat Magnum (later designated Model 19), with the first serial-number gun (K260,000) presented to Jordan on November 15, 1955.

Jordan's dream gun would be the first of many different makes and models of medium-frame .357 Magnum revolvers from virtually every handgun manufacturer in the world. It began what would become an ongoing S&W tradition of applying advanced metallurgical technology and innovative fabrication materials to existing, proven handgun designs to dramatically increase their capabilities and the variety of their applications. The S&W .357 Combat Magnum was instantly a best-seller, and initial orders were so great that in the first six months of 1956 the factory used the entire serial number block it had set aside for the model.

Model 29 (top) Model 629 (bottom)

10. .44 Magnum (1956)
Hellstrom had also been listening to another shooter--an Idaho cowboy named Elmer Keith. Keith, who had earlier consulted with Col. Douglas Wesson in the early development of the .357 Magnum, was well known as a firearms writer and had visited S&W and Remington in late 1953. He argued for the introduction of a new, longer case .44-caliber cartridge and revolver that would duplicate the power and accuracy of the handloads he had developed for S&W .44 Hand Ejectors using .44 Special cases. It was, he knew, a Smith & Wesson tradition. Hellstrom talked with Remington, which provided case dimensions in late summer 1954, and prototype revolver tests were successfully completed about six months later in February 1955. The first Model NT-430 .44 Magnum revolver came out of the S&W production-assembly area on December 29, 1955. For the uninitiated, that official factory designation signified: "N" frame, "T" (for Target) configuration, and "430" for caliber (actually .429). Shipment began in January 1956. The next year the gun that would arguably become the most famous Smith & Wesson of all time would be designated the Model 29.

11. Double Action 9mm Pistol (1956)
The same month of the same year that saw shipment of the first S&W .44 Magnums also saw the introduction of the first DA autoloading pistol manufactured in the United States. The 9mm Double-Action, soon to be designated the Model 39, was another Hellstrom initiative. Aware of initial post-war U.S. military interest in the possibility of replacing the .45 ACP with the 9mm as a standard sidearm cartridge, Hellstrom tasked S&W engineer Joe Norman to develop a pistol with a DA first shot capability, similar to the European Walther pistols manufactured prior to the war. The design was finished in 1948. After back and forth interplay between S&W, the government, and the Springfield Armory, the aluminum-framed 9mm pistol finally went into the S&W commercial catalog in January 1956.

The Model 39 was ahead of its time. It sold slowly--only 426 units in 1957. When it was adopted as official sidearm of the Illinois State Police in 1968, it was the first 9mm double-action auto ever used by any U.S. state agency. By 1972, when S&W introduced the offshoot 14-round Model 59 (America's first high-capacity, double-stack 9mm pistol), things were changing. In the long term, S&W's view of autoloader needs was certainly prescient. Today, the progeny, offshoots, and imitators of these pioneering double-action, high-capacity S&W autoloaders have become the national standard for military/law enforcement sidearms--regardless of specific current make, model, or chambering.

12. Model 60 Chiefs Special Stainless (1965)
Completing this list is the world's first factory-production all stainless-steel firearm: the Model 60 Chiefs Special. Putting the same basic configuration on the list twice might raise some eyebrows, but the original Chiefs Special started a revolution in form factors while the Model 60 started a completely different revolution in handgun manufacturing materials.

Actually, the Model 60 was not the first all-stainless revolver S&W had sold. In 1959 Hellstrom had authorized a limited run of polished stainless-steel Model 15 Combat Masterpiece revolvers on special order for a law enforcement distributor in Chicago. Six years later, the Model 60 was an instant runaway best-seller, as were the other police-format stainless models introduced in quick succession afterward. And when S&W's sportsmen's stainless guns hit the shelves, in the form of the Model 63 stainless .22 Kit Gun, the six-inch version of the Model 66, and, spectacularly, the first stainless-steel .44 Magnum Model 629 (December 1978), the cake was fully iced. All other handgun manufacturers were in full pursuit, and today there are vastly more new handguns introduced in stainless steel with no blued counterparts than the reverse. (I have a personal attachment to the classic Model 629 as my report on it in the March 1979 issue of Shooting Times broke the story to the world. That write-up was my first cover story for ST.)

Model 386 AirLite Sc (top) Model 396 AirLite Ti (bottom)

13. Baker's Dozen?
The tradition of a "baker's dozen" stems from an ancient practice of tossing a thirteenth item into a box of pastry to ensure the customer gets a full 12 in case of a hurried miscount. I have certainly not hurried this list. (In fact, I've been considering it for nearly a year--since S&W's Ken Jorgensen casually posed the question of what I might think were S&W's all-time greatest firearms.) But I'll exercise my option to include the thirteenth breadstick: the Model 360 AirLite Sc .357 Magnum.

Yes, another Chiefs Special. (I could have chosen one of the other models in the AirLite series, but historians have a weakness for symmetry.) Why? In late 1999, at the IACP Convention in Salt Lake City, S&W turned the handgun world on its ear with the AirLite Ti series of aluminum-frame, titanium-cylinder small- and medium-frame .38 Special and .44 Special revolvers, which substantially reduced the carrying weight of previous steel-component versions of these models and sparked immediate follow-up by competing manufacturers.

The AirLite Sc series, embodied by the Model 360 and companion models introduced in 2000, takes the same concept to yet a higher level with an aluminum/scandium alloy frame that allows the same amount of weight reduction to small- and medium-frame .357 Magnum revolvers. Historic? Well, a workable and reliable five-shot small-frame .357 Magnum revolver weighing only 12 ounces is a long way down the road from the original three-pound N-Frame .357 Magnum of 1935.

Will the AirLite Ti and AirLite Sc family of revolvers have the same resonance and stand the test of time as well as my other selections have? Will Smith & Wesson produce other great design innovators like founder Daniel Wesson and his son Joseph or attract to its employ more engineering geniuses like Carl Hellstrom? Only history can answer.