Imperial No. 2 Revolver

[Desdichado]

Has anyone got a photograph or other details on the Imperial No. 2 1915 revolver. I don't think it was an army-issued sidearm but it was carried by some officers. I believe it fired a .32 calibre round and held either 5 or 6 bullets.

Regards,

Des

[TonyE]

I cannot help you with any revolver called the Imperial No.2. It is unlikely, but not impossible that officers would carry a .32 calibre revolver as they were supposed to buy weapons of service calibre. Some General Officers carried .32 and .38 Colt semi autos and some were also issued though.

The only possible connection I can think of is the Spanish Old Pattern revolver No.2 Mark I which were purchased by the British in 1915/16 as there were insufficient Webley, Colts and S & W revolvers available. These were .455 calibre however.

Do you have any more details?

Regards

TonyE

[Pete1052]

A Google search turned up a few sites that say Imperial was a trade name used by Hopkins & Allen of Connecticut, a maker of cheap guns. A description I found said, ".32 short r.f. caliber, 5 shot single action revolver, spur trigger, solid frame, 2 1/4" round barrel, fluted cylinder, birdhead grips, marked IMPERIAL No. 2." That revolver might well have been the choice of someone who didn't want to spend a lot of money on a sidearm.

[Desdichado]

A Google search turned up a few sites that say Imperial was a trade name used by Hopkins & Allen of Connecticut, a maker of cheap guns. A description I found said, ".32 short r.f. caliber, 5 shot single action revolver, spur trigger, solid frame, 2 1/4" round barrel, fluted cylinder, birdhead grips, marked IMPERIAL No. 2." That revolver might well have been the choice of someone who didn't want to spend a lot of money on a sidearm.

That sounds like the gun I'm interested in. I didn't make the Hopkins & Allen connection though; in fact I'd never heard of them before. So the Imperial No. 2 was an early "Saturday night special."

[Pete1052]

I first heard the term "Saturday Night Special" in the mid-sixties. In earlier days they were called "Suicide Specials." In the late 19th and early 20th centuries many people couldn't afford name brands like Colt or Smith and Wesson. Cowboy movies and TV have misled us into believing that every American in the Wild West had a Colt .45 and a Winchester carbine and that gunfights in the street were an everyday affair.

[MikB]

I first heard the term "Saturday Night Special" in the mid-sixties. In earlier days they were called "Suicide Specials."

Quite a few Hopkins & Allen products eminently deserve that name. A soldier who bought one of those either

a.) had no idea what conditions he'd meet at the front, or

b.) had no idea what a good revolver was like.

I can't imagine an experienced soldier choosing to go into action with any .32" RF - less than half as powerful even as a .32" ACP - least of all a Hopkins & Allen...

Regards,

MikB

[Desdichado]

Quite a few Hopkins & Allen products eminently deserve that name. A soldier who bought one of those either

a.) had no idea what conditions he'd meet at the front, or

b.) had no idea what a good revolver was like.

I can't imagine an experienced soldier choosing to go into action with any .32" RF - less than half as powerful even as a .32" ACP - least of all a Hopkins & Allen...

Regards,

MikB

Yes, it didn't have a lot of power. The man I'm researching shot someone with the Imperial from a range of six feet and the bullet stayed in the vicitim's body. It hit an artery otherwise he would have survived the wound.

I have a friend in the NYPD and it was he who first told me about the Saturday Night Special - the mugger's choice as he called it.

[Pete1052]

I'm not certain that all the Imperial No. 2s were chambered in .32 rimfire or had the short barrels. They may have come in other calibers, barrel lengths, etc. The description I posted appears to be based on a specimen that is in someone's possession. Suicide Specials and Saturday Night Specials do not have much collector interest and to my knowledge nobody has published an authoritative book on them. Therefore we're still groping around in the dark in knowing just what this revolver was because there are few reference books.

[TonyE]

I very much doubt that the Imperial was in .32 rimfire. It would almost certainly have been chambered for the normal .32 revolver round which was centrefire.

Also, although Hopkins and Allen were not in the same league as Colt or S & W, they were still well made guns and not really of the "Saturday Night Special" type. H & A made some quite decent pistols.

I have had a quick look in Zhuk but did not spot an Imperial No.2 but will search again.

Whatever the calibre, I still cannot see this as having been purchased as a British Officers service pistol.

Regards

TonyE

[Pete1052]

The early Hopkins and Allen handguns in the 19th century are described in Flayderman's Guide, the bible for American arms collectors in the U.S. The Imperial comes later than the timeframe covered by that book. However, the information I've posted here is based on Google searches, that alone, and we all know how unreliable information on the net can be. I'll stand by my previous statement--we still don't know exactly what an Imperial No. 2 was, although some oblique traces of it are to be found on the net. These Brand X guns just don't excite the interest of collectors and historians. Hopefully Desdichado could inform us of who this person was who took an Imperial revolver to war.

[MikB]

I very much doubt that the Imperial was in .32 rimfire. It would almost certainly have been chambered for the normal .32 revolver round which was centrefire.

Also, although Hopkins and Allen were not in the same league as Colt or S & W, they were still well made guns and not really of the "Saturday Night Special" type. H & A made some quite decent pistols.

Regards

TonyE

I would agree that .32 RF seems too ancient, and that .32 S&W Short or .32 Short Colt (both CF) are more likely calibres.

I had a chance to examine a H&A back in the '60s (I have no idea what model, other than that it was a solid frame .32 D/A), and it certainly was a poor specimen of a revolver - the thing that stuck in my young mind was a very sloppy lockup, varying between chambers and enough to shave at a guess 20-30 thou from the bullet on the worst of them.

It's hard to imagine how it could have fired enough thousands of rounds to get into that state by fair wear and tear. Additionally it had a broken firing pin and hammer spring. Plenty of Colts and S&Ws have survived from the same era in good serviceable condition.

Regards,

MikB

[Desdichado]

MikB, that's interesting. Did you have a chance to examine the safety mechanism? I'm curious to know if it would have been easy to disengage accidentally, for example if the revolver was being withdrawn from a tunic pocket.

[MikB]

MikB, that's interesting. Did you have a chance to examine the safety mechanism? I'm curious to know if it would have been easy to disengage accidentally, for example if the revolver was being withdrawn from a tunic pocket.

I'm uncertain of my memory on that point except that it certainly had no safety catch as such - which are unusual and not really much use on revolvers anyway - but I've an idea it had a rebounding hammer, and I'd guess a half-cock position.

It was nowhere near as good as another .32 pocket revolver in similar peeling nickel plate I saw around the same time, by Iver Johnson of Massachsetts. That had an internal hammer that struck the firing pin via a transfer bar (also unfortunately broken, possibly by lots of dry firing) raised by the trigger, so would've been very safe in the pocket. The whole assembly was shrouded like the more modern .38 Special 'hammerless' offerings from S&W, which presumably use a similar mechanism.

But that was also a break-top ejector, whereas the H&A had to be unloaded and loaded via a cutout in the cylinder shield or by withdrawing the cylinder pin and removing the cylinder - I wouldn't have wanted to do that if I was up to my neck in muck'n'bullets.

Regards,

MikB

[Doc2]

I certainly agree that Hopkins and Allen were not the quality of standard US and UK service weapons, but let's put this in perspective. When you need it, any gun is better than none (assuming it will fire). There have been lots of people killed throughout the years with H&As, and in fact they are far from the worst available at the turn of the century. I don't know about the "Imperial" Model, but such "cheap" pistols were made by Iver Johnson, H&A, Merwin &Hulbert, and numerous other companies-- many were sold mail-order by Sears and Roebuck. There are many documented stories of such pistols being carried in combat starting in the American Civil War, by people who could not get or afford a "better" gun-- I would argue that they were probably at least as effective as the Smith and Wesson #1 carried in the Civil War (which was a .22) or the German and French substitute standard .32 automatics (Ruby, Unique, Star, etc) used in WW2. I would agree that .32 Smith and Wesson or something similar was a more likely caliber at this time period than a .32 rimfire. Bottom line-- not the best of guns, though certainly not the worst, and proven effective over many years. It's at least the quality of the "RG" German pistols sold in the US through the 1960s, and other than caliber I would argue that it was probably better than many of them (Yes, I have both RG's and H&A's). It's quite possible. Doc2