Smith & Wesson Model 3

The Smith & Wesson Model 3 is a single-action, cartridge-firing, top-break revolver produced by Smith & Wesson (S&W) from around 1870 to 1915, and was recently again offered as a reproduction by Smith & Wesson and Uberti.

It was produced in several variations and subvariations, including both the "Russian" model, so named because it was supplied to the military of the Russian Empire (41,000 No. 3s were ordered in .44 caliber by the Imperial Russian Army in 1871), and the "Schofield" model, named after Major George W. Schofield, who made his own modifications to the Model 3 to meet his perceptions of the cavalry's needs. S&W incorporated these modifications into an 1875 design they named after the major, planning to obtain significant military contracts for the new revolver.

The Model 3 was originally chambered for the .44 S&W American and .44 Russian cartridges, and typically did not have the cartridge information stamped on the gun (as is standard practice for most commercial firearms). Model 3 revolvers were later produced in an assortment of calibers, including .44 Henry Rimfire, .44-40, .32-44, .38-44, and .45 Schofield. The design influenced the smaller S&W .38 Single Action that is retroactively referred to as the Model 2.

Smith & Wesson produced large numbers of the Model 3, in three distinct models, for the Russian Empire by special order. The first was the 1st Model Russian (the original order design), with the Russian Ordnance Inspector mandating a number of improvements to the design, resulting in the 2nd Model Russian, with a final revision to the Russian design being known as the 3rd Model Russian.

The U.S. Army adopted the .44 S&W American caliber Model 3 revolver in 1870, making it the first standard-issue, cartridge-firing revolver in U.S. service. Most military pistols until that point were black powder cap-and-ball revolvers, which were (by comparison) slow, complicated, and susceptible to the effects of wet weather.

In 1875, the U.S. Ordnance Board granted S&W a contract to outfit the military with Model 3 revolvers incorporating the design improvements of Major George W. Schofield (the so-called "Schofield revolvers"), providing that they could make the revolvers fire the .45 Colt (or ".45 Long Colt") ammunition already in use by the US military. S&W instead developed their own, slightly shorter .45 caliber round, the .45 Schofield, otherwise known as the .45 S&W.

When it became obvious in the field that the two cartridges would not work interchangeably in the Schofield (although they both worked in the Colt), the U.S. government adopted the shorter .45 Schofield cartridge as the standard cartridge. Despite the change, old stocks of the longer .45 Colt rounds in the supply line caused the Army to drop most of the Schofields and continue with the Colt. Major Schofield had patented his locking system and earned a payment on each gun that S&W sold; and at the time, his older brother, John M. Schofield, was the head of the Army Ordnance Board, so this conflict-of-interest may have been the main reason for the adoption of the .45 Schofield.

Many of the Model 3 Schofield revolvers served in the Indian Wars, with reports of them in use as late as the Spanish–American War and Philippine–American War. Like the other Model 3s, they were also reportedly popular with lawmen and outlaws in the American West and were reportedly used by Jesse James, Bob Ford (who used one to kill James), John Wesley Hardin, Pat Garrett, Theodore Roosevelt, Virgil Earp, Billy the Kid, and many others. The S&W No. 3 revolver was famously used by Wyatt Earp during the gunfight at the O.K. Corral with the Clanton Gang.