Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Express Rifles and Big Bores Only The great 458 Winchester. Everyone should own one at least once

A review of the Layne Simpson article in the September 2021 SHOOTING TIMES follows.

The article is grandiosely entitled .458 WINCHESTER MAGNUM -- THE COMPLETE STORY.
HA !!!
It comprises 3-1/2 pages of the page range 36 to 42, with 3-1/2 pages of advertising included in that range too.
No two consecutive pages are devoted to the .458 Winchester Magnum.
Not a single double-page spread to show respect for the magnificent war horse !

There are multiple inaccuracies in the first two sentences to quibble over.
The .450 Nitro Express 3-1/4" was not immaculately conceived and named "back in 1898."
The first one survived proof as a Rigby double rifle in November 1897
after years of development of brass cases and barrel steels, by John Rigby.
Many sets of barrels were destroyed in proof before the correct steel and contours were found.
The case that John Rigby loaded 70.0 grains of cordite into was not the "old .450 Black Powder Express" case.
It was internally a new and stronger case.
It was originally called the ".450 Special Rigby" and it took several years for the "Nitro Express" moniker to catch on
for the entire class of big game cartridges that followed John Rigby's lead.
True, W. Jackman Jeffery had a single barrel .400 S. Jeffery shooting a few months before the .450 S. Rigby,
but it was also several years before it came to be called the 450/400 Nitro Express 3".
I also think Jeffery developed his new and stronger brass from industrial espionage findings regarding John Rigby's "Special" developments.
At least the author recognizes the basic ballistics first proving adequate for anything worldwide,
but doesn't every Tom, Dick and Harry start his article similarly, if not so pompously inaccurately ?

The second paragraph quotes John Taylor's praise of the .450 Nitro Express 3-1/4".

The third paragraph beats the bush about interest in African safari by Americans and the Winchester M70 .375 H&H circa 1937.

The fourth paragraph:
"During the 1940s, Alaska school teacher James Watts began planning a lengthy safari in Rhodesia and decided to duplicate the performance of the .450 Nitro Express 3-1/4" by necking up the .375 H&H Magnum for .458-inch 480-grain bullets made by Kynoch and fireforming the case to straight taper with no shoulder. He called it the .450 Watts, and obtaining a rifle was as easy as switching barrels on a Winchester Model 70 in .375 H&H. Except for being 0.050 inch longer, the .450 Watts case is identical to the .458 Lott introduced about 30 years later."

I spewed my coffee when I read that paragraph, it is so comical.
The "complete story" deserves better.
To be continued.