The Heavyweight .358 Norma

On June 26, 1959, Sweden’s Ingemar Johansson demolished Floyd Patterson in the third round of their first heavyweight title fight in New York. Johansson’s main weapon – in fact, his only one – was a devastating right hand that boxing writers called the “Hammer of Thor.”

- Terry Wieland

By coincidence, in that same year, Norma Projektilfabrik of Sweden introduced its own heavyweight champion, the .358 Norma Magnum. For the next year, comparisons were inevitable between Johansson’s “Hammer of Thor” and the .358’s powerful 250-grain bullet. As it turned out, having a great punch was not enough for either one. There’s more to success than merely landing a good one on the chin.

In Johansson’s case, disdain for serious training left him vulnerable when the superbly conditioned Patterson came back a year later, gave him a dazzling boxing lesson and reclaimed the title. Meanwhile, the .358 Norma fizzled, for lack of a better term, because rifles were not readily available, ammunition was expensive and hard to get, and it found itself in direct competition with one of the great American cartridges of the twentieth century, Winchester’s .338 Magnum. In cartridges, as in boxing, what goes on behind the scenes often determines the outcome.

It’s now almost 60 years since the .358 Norma Magnum came on the scene – 60 years in which one writer after another has sung its praises and bemoaned its fate. It hangs on, having established itself in various small niches (the moose-hunting Yukon Territory, for example) and with a handful of devotees, but without ever gaining the status of a standard like the .375 H&H or .338 Winchester Magnum – its two main competitors through the years.

A MAGNUM CARTRIDGE THAT PULLS NO PUNCH