Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "1974 attempt to kidnap Princess Anne." video.

  1. The PPK was notorious for jamming with ammunition the feed system didn't like, and it took some shooting to determine what type of ammunition was reliable. Even then, it was easy for an inexperienced shooter to get his finger on the side of the slide as a round was trying to eject, causing the gun to jam. It's one reason why many protection agencies in 1974 carried revolvers rather than semi automatic pistols. The Secret Service, for example, carried .357 magnum Smith & Wesson revolvers before switching over to the Sig Sauer P228 9mm pistol in 1992.
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  2. Even assuming the PPK was a reliable gun, the two most common versions, in .32 ACP and .380, were just not powerful enough rounds to have sufficient stopping power for police use. I don't know why British police continued use them for so long. The .32 has a muzzle energy of just 133 ft pounds while the .380 has 200 ft pounds. By comparison, the .38 special, the standard police round for decades in the US, has 249 ft pounds of energy, while the .357 magnum has a whopping 624 ft pounds. I carried a gun for 27 years as a police officer and felt the switch from .357 revolvers to 9mm semiautos was a giant step backwards.
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  3. Lordsummerisle87, I thought I had already replied but now I don't see my comment. I know some plainclothes types were using S&W and Colt snub nose .38 special in the 60's and 70's. I think a fair number of uniformed armed police were still using Webley 38/200 revolvers, and some had started adopting the Browning Hi-Power 9mm by 1970. Colin, I think these were the same as the Browning Hi-Power, and I think the armed police started using them right after the military got them. Almost anything was better than a .7.65mm PPK.
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  4. No doubt, the PPK survives on cultural fame. The .32 ACP version is probably the worst for failure to feed/failure to eject problems and it takes some work and money to go through enough different kinds of ammo to make the gun run. The worst part is the ammo the works in one PPK may not work in the next gun.
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