Home Forums Reloading Reloading Software 220 Swift ackley improved

Has any one had experience with this cal.what are the pros and cons?

The "Rocket" did not flop, it was replaced by the belted 224 Weatherby Magnum which is a nice little cartridge.

Apparently because the manufacturer (Weatherby) chose to switch to a belted case in his 224 (as all other calibers were/are) you have made the leap that the Rocket flopped.

Nope believe Roy Weatherby said that himself. This will come to light in a minute.

Insofar as I know all Rockets were built when Weatherby was using FN actions for everything except the 378 which was built on a Schultz & Larsen M54.

This not entirely true. The 220 rocket was his first wildcat, and at the time he was using mod 70, remmys, FN, and any other customer supplied action. Quote from 40 Years of Weatherby.

"In those first years, immediately after the war, there were no actions available so a Weatherby Magnum rifle was based on whatever suitable actions Roy could scavenge from existing guns or those the customer furnished--Mausers, Springfields, '17 Enfields, Model 54 and 70 Winchesters, and Remington Model 30s. Strictly speaking, there was no definitive Weatherby rifle; the chambering made it so."

"It wasn't until 1949 when Roy made a deal to import the new FN commercial Mauser with his name on it that the Weatherby rifle acquired a uniformity of components. For the first couple of years Roy Bought most of his barrels from Parker Ackley and did the chambering, fitting and stocking in his ever-growing South Gate store/shop. By the time he made the action deal with FN, Roy had his own broach type rifling machine so he now controlled the entire production. "

Same book about the Rocket

" By the time Weatherby fire-formed his first wildcat case in 1942, the .270 Winchester and the .220 Swift were already punctuating in spades whatever statements were being made on behalf of high velocity. So Roy sure didn't have any monopoly on the concept of sending out a relatively small bullet at high speed; he was just a guy who picked up the idea and was to run further with it than anyone else. A lot further!

Roy's early experiments were with the .220 Swift. Already the high velocity champ in its factory form, Roy wanted to see if the Swift could be improved upon by . . . well, "improving" it, i.e., fire-forming a case in a new chamber having less body taper, a shorter neck and a sharper shoulder and by so doing increasing its powder capacity. The result of Roy's first wildcatting experiment was the .220 Weatherby Rocket, an improved .220 Swift that ". . . really didn't perform any better than the original" says Roy candidly. Apparently the practical limit on case capacity had already been reached. "


I rather doubt you have any sales figures on the FN Rockets, but I imagine few were made. Nor can you apparently produce any contemporary expert analysis that faults the cartridge.

You are probably right on the few part as Weatherby had already given up on the 220 Rocket by then, so if he did build them they were custom ordered.

The case dimensions have nothing to do with its success of a cartridge. It's all about marketing, hype, buying off gun writers and the general ability of the public to understand interior or exterior ballistics at all.

Again this is somewhat correct, but what also didn't help as in the case of the 224 Weatherby Magnum, the rifle was almost twice the cost of a Winchester 70 in 225 Winchester which replaced the Swift in 1963, and more than twice the cost of a Remington in 22.250.
Another thing that didn't help is the fact that Norma was the only supplier of brass and loaded ammunition which almost doubled the cost of that also. Plus the fact that it didn't offer anything more than the 22.250 or 225 ballistics wise.
As an aside the 225, and the 224 Weatherby lost out to the 22.250 and are considered obsolete. The 220 Swift isn't obsolete yet, but its got a lot of nails in its coffin as only 2 makers now chamber it in a factory rifle. You can still get brass for the 224 Mag at times, Norma only @ 2.10 apiece, or loaded ammunition again Norma @ 64.00 a 20. Not economical to shoot nowadays, where the Swift isn't quite that bad.


Want a flop ? The 7mmWSM which is in all ways superior to it 270 and 300 twins. Just a victim of "hate anything metric" bias. Of course the inconvenient fact that any of the WSMs won't do anything "regular magnums" will is ignored by the guys who are 20 pounds overweight, will never hunt Dall Sheep but have to save 10 ounces on rifle weight.

This maybe true, but I don't shoot em so I don't know. Never had the need for a magnum, and never thought about Dall sheep either.


At the risk of repeating myself, most Ackley and Gibbs cartridges will not achieve and meaningful gain over their regular versions when tested with today's equipment rather than the SWAGs they did back in the day.

They had fun and a lot of people built rifles based on false promises with no resale value.


A 22-250, 220 Swift, 224 Weatherby, 220 Rocket or the ancient 22-06 loaded with a modern mono metal bullet and twisted correctly will kill any medium game just as dead as any of the others. Dead is dead and that is all that counts.

These are probably the only totally true statements you have made. Next time try engaging in a constructive discussion instead of being a testy jerk.