THE COUSINS IN THE .485 STABLE
The .458 family – powerful and diverse!
JOHAN VAN WYK
The world of big game hunting changed irrevocably when Rigby introduced their .450 Nitro Express in 1898. The .450 NE fired a jacketed bullet (in either full metal-jacketed or expanding format) of .458” diameter at 2 100fps with the help of 70 grains of cordite – the standard British propellant back then and one of the first so-called “smokeless” propellants. This recipe produced 5 000ft/lbs of energy at the muzzle and it quickly became the standard by which hunters judged all dangerous game “stoppers”.
Although the .450 NE was the first Nitro-powered .458” cartridge introduced by the British, it was by no means their first experiment with a bullet of .458” diameter. The .450 Black Powder Express (BPE) had been in regular use since the early days of breech-loading firearms and just about any gunmaker of importance in Britain, as well as a host of other European gunmakers chambered rifles for the .450 BPE in various guises at some point.
The original .450 NE was quickly joined by the .500/450 NE (introduced by Holland &
Holland) as well as the .450 No 2 NE (a development by ammunition manufacturer Eley) and even though they used different cases their ballistic performance was for all intents and purposes identical. In 1905 politics dealt all of the .450 NEs a nasty blow when they were outlawed in India and parts of Africa. Rebellion was brewing in these British colonies and being afraid that .450 rifles and ammunition might fall into the wrong hands, Her Majesty’s government reacted by banning all of the .450s. That resulted in a host of new cartridges being introduced to replace the hitherto very popular .450s.
In spite of the ban, the .450 NE cartridges did not die and Kynoch, the British ammunition manufacturer, continued to load ammunition for them until they (Kynoch) ceased production of all centrefire rifle ammunition in 1963. By this time the .458 Winchester Magnum, introduced by Winchester in 1956, was for all intents and purposes the only other alternative for big game hunters heading for Africa. The .458 Winchester, however, quickly earned a bad reputation – it lacked penetration and the use of the long, 500gr bullet limited case capacity. The .458 Winchester’s perceived problems resulted in the development of a bunch of new wildcat cartridges and even the resurrection of a few older ones in an effort to invent a better mousetrap.
DEVELOPMENTOF NEW CARTRIDGES
As far as I could ascertain one of the first individuals to carry out extensive experimentation with various .458” wildcats was James Watts from Washington State in the USA. He developed two different .458” wildcat cartridges; the first used a fulllength, blown-out .375 H&H case and could launch 500gr bullets at 2 400fps. The second version used a shortened 2.5” case and was for all intents and purposes identical to the .458 Winchester Magnum.
Noted gunsmith and experimenter PO Ackley helped Watts to develop load data for the two cartridges and as Ackley was never a man to shy away from boosting a cartridge’s horsepower, it is probably fair to assume that both versions were loaded to the proverbial gills to produce the published muzzle velocities. To this day, a 500gr bullet launched at 2 400fps is powerful enough for anything on earth and many writers over the years have insisted that the longer version of the .450 Watts was the cartridge that Winchester actually wanted to introduce instead of the .458 Winchester Magnum.
After a nasty incident, during which Jack Lott’s .458 Winchester Magnum and professional hunter Wally Johnson’s .375 H&H failed to stop a wounded buffalo, Jack developed the .458 Lott. Like the .450 Watts, the Lott makes use of a full-length, blown-out .375 H&H case necked up to .458”-calibre and it is therefore no surprise that the ballistic performances of the two are identical. Over the years many have criticised Jack Lott for merely copying what James Watts have done and giving the calibre a new name, but the fact of the matter is that the .458 Lott was commercialised by the A-Square Co in 1989 with rifles, cases and loaded ammunition being manufactured for it. As a result the .458 Lott is alive and well today while James Watts’s cartridge has largely been consigned to a footnote in the history of cartridge development. Today rifles and ammunition for the .458 Lott is available from various manufacturers and the cartridge is one of the popular .458s on the market.
I have mentioned PO Ackley earlier in connection with the development of the .450 Watts. Not to be outdone, Ackley introduced his own .450 Ackley Magnum in 1960, also based on a full-length .375 H&H case. The Ackley differs in one notable respect though in that it »
» has a noticeable shoulder instead of the ghost shoulder of the Watts or the Lott cartridge. Ackley claimed 2 400fps for a 500gr bullet from his creation and while there is no doubt that he was able to get such performance, it is doubtful whether the pressure was anywhere near what could be considered safe for everyday use.
Noted Canadian gun writer Terry Wieland is a big fan of the .450 Ackley Magnum and he told me that he considered it one of the easiest large-bore cartridges to load for. His loads develop just shy of 2 200fps with 500gr bullets and Terry has shot numerous buffalo with this combination with no problems whatsoever.
THE .460 G&A WILDCAT
Possibly the most interesting (to me at least) .458” wildcat is the .460 G&A (for Guns & Ammo, the well-known American gun magazine). The .460 G&A was developed at the behest of Tom Siatos, long-time publisher of Guns & Ammo and a very keen African hunter. Siatos wanted more power than what the .458 Winchester could deliver but preferred a beltless cartridge case as part of the deal, which ruled out the .460 Weatherby. Jack Lott had a hand in the .460 G&A’s early development, as did two South Africans, the late Hennie Oosthuizen and Swannie Swanepoel, two keen wildcatters who helped out with initial load and rifle development. The new round was created by necking up the .404 Jeffery case to .458”, blowing out the case slightly and moving the shoulder forward. The result was a smooth-feeding cartridge that could safely launch 500gr bullets at 2 400fps and fit in a standard-length M98 Mauser action – albeit with a custom magazine box.
My dad was a keen reader of Guns & Ammo and I well remember reading about the .460 G&A as a youngster. I also remember an advertisement for Rolex watches which Guns & Ammo ran many years ago. It featured Tom Siatos posing next to a big black rhino bull he took with his .460 G&A in Kenya in the early 1970s. The Rolex was eminently visible in the ad, but so was the rifle! How times have changed!
A shorter version of the .460 G&A, called the .450 G&A Short, was developed by Jack Lott for Ken Elliott, another Guns & Ammo stalwart, for use in Elliott’s standard Ruger Model 77 (originally chambered for the .458 Winchester cartridge). As the name suggests, it is a slightly shorter version of the .460 G&A and easily delivers 2 200fps with a 500gr bullet. Bjinse Visser, designer and manufacturer of the excellent Dzombo monometal solid bullet, uses a .450 G&A Short, built on a standard-length M98 action, as his stopping rifle.
When all is said and done, I reckon both the .460 G&A and the .450 G&A Short have a lot going for them. They are practical designs that deliver excellent ballistic performance and don’t require magnum-length actions. I think both rightfully deserve to be adopted as factory cartridges instead of languishing as wildcats, but alas, it will probably never happen.
THE NEW WEATHERBY CARTRIDGE
The .460 Weatherby Magnum, introduced just two years after the .458 Winchester Magnum in 1958, is an entirely different kettle of fish! Roy Weatherby created it because the Kenyan authorities decided during the late 1950s that .40-calibre cartridges would henceforth be the minimum for use on dangerous game such as buffalo, lion, rhino and elephant. At the time Weatherby already offered the .378 Weatherby Magnum, based on a blownout .416 Rigby case but with a belt added.
The new Kenyan laws rendered the .378 Weatherby obsolete in that country for the animals mentioned and sent the Weatherby engineers back to the drawing board – thus the .460 Weatherby was born. This new dangerous game stopper was merely a .378 Weatherby case necked up to .458” and firing a 500gr bullet at an advertised 2 700fps. It developed in excess of 7 000ft/lbs of muzzle energy and made the .460 Weatherby the most powerful rifle cartridge in the world. But all that power came at a price. Recoil was severe and the softnose .458” bullets of the day (being manufactured with .458 Win Mag velocities in mind) were too fragile to handle the increase in muzzle velocity.
The advent of modern controlled-expansion bullets has given the .460 Weatherby a new lease on life. Advertised muzzle velocity of Weatherby factory ammunition (loaded by Norma) was lowered to 2 600fps and »
The .460 Weatherby Magnum, introduced just two years after the .458 Winchester Magnum in 1958, is an entirely different kettle of fish!
» premium-grade bullets such as the Barnes TSX (available in factory loads) have elevated the .460 Weatherby into a different class. Some people do not like the Weatherby Mark V rifle and its action but a fair number of custom and semi-custom rifles have been chambered for the .460 Weatherby over the years. I have also seen a number of converted Brno 602 and CZ 550 rifles here in South Africa that have been rechambered from .458 Winchester to .460 Weatherby. It is thus safe to assume that this Weatherby cartridge has a small but loyal band of local followers.
RIGBY’S STOPPING POWER
The .450 Rigby Rimless (not to be confused with the .450 Nitro Express, also introduced by Rigby) was introduced in 1994 specifically to provide more stopping power than what the .416 Rigby could offer (especially for use on elephant). It is nothing but a .416 Rigby case necked up to .458” and just like the .416, it requires a long, magnum-length action and magazine box. Initial ballistics was a 480gr Woodleigh soft and solid at 2 450fps but as handloaders soon found out, the .450’s large case capacity made it eminently suitable for use with heavier bullets of 500, 550 and 600 grains.
A good friend of mine regularly has to conduct problem animal control duty in Big Five country and his weapon of choice for many years was a custom .450 Rigby Rimless on a Brno 602 action. He loaded 600gr Dzombo solids to 2 200fps with the help of CCI 250 magnum primers and S365 propellant and reported numerous cases where the bullets fully penetrated big elephant bulls when frontal or going-away body shots were taken.
It took a while for the .450 Rigby Rimless to gain a foothold but it is steadily gaining in popularity. Cases are available from a number of sources but can easily be made from .416 Rigby cases if need be and .458” bullets are plentiful and usually very reasonably priced compared to those of some of the more obscure large-bore cartridges.
LOCAL CONTRIBUTERS
A number of South Africans have also contributed their bit to the .458” stable over the years. The .458 (3”) Express was developed by the late Koos Badenhorst and is basically the .458 Lott with a case-length of 3” instead of 2.85” – to make better use of South African propellants. Pierre van der Walt developed the .458 African, based on the .404 Jeffery case, and like the .460 G&A (which it resembles) it can fit into a standard-length M98 action. The .450 Majoor was developed by the late Mauritz Coetzee and is based on a shortened .416 Rigby case necked up to .458”. It too will fit into a standard-length action – Mauritz’s rifle was built around an ex-military M98 action. The .458 Sabi is based on a necked-down .500 Jeffery case and is the brainchild of Eugene Combrinck of Nelspruit in Mpumalanga. I have never laid eyes on either a .458 Sabi cartridge or a rifle chambered for it, so my knowledge of this calibre is very limited, although it certainly seems like a fine cartridge from the info I gathered.
In an article like this it is unfortunately not possible to discuss each and every .458” cartridge in existence. From a South African perspective, I suspect that the good old .458 Winchester is still the most popular .458 out there, closely followed by the .458 Lott and with the .450 Rigby Rimless gaining ground. Other contenders like the .450 Dakota and .460 Short A-Square are unfortunately rarely encountered locally and are therefore only mentioned in passing.
What is clear though, is that we certainly do not have a shortage of .458”-calibre cartridges. In fact, the big game hunter looking for a new .458” “stopper” is spoiled for choice.