LDBennitt has a compelling argument when he refers to metal fatigue. Having worked on the maintenance side of industry, gradual metal fatigue is a reality. Equipment used everyday 24/7 are susceptible to breakage you could not believe if you didn't see it first hand. Repairs have to be robust, equipment has to be robust. To keep things running you need to do extreme things you wouldn't dream of in everyday use. Predictive maintenance techniques include oil analysis, vibration analysis, thermal imaging, xrays and studies in harmonics.
We have two camps here on RFC as I see it, target/ benchrest shooters and hunters/plinkers. The former group will put more rounds down range in a couple years than the latter group may do in a life time. IMO that is where some of this sv vs hv misunderstanding comes form. They are high use shooters and want to keep the stresses at a minimum. They also misunderstand IMO how much ammo some of us plinkers shoot. I use all my firearms to hunt/plink and on average shoot 50 to 100 rounds a day. In my younger years I went through three bricks of Minimags a week two thirds through a Browning Belgium sa the other third through a model 41. Both are still in 95 percent condition. The only standard velocity I ever shot before joining this site was two hunting rounds, Eley and RWS subsonic HP. Now that I'm on this site Lee has me shooting CCI blue box SV. Not exclusively mind you but it is very accurate ammo for the money and pleasant to shoot. I currently have three bricks of it.
If you Google S&W model 41 cracked frame you will not find one example. I still stand by my former posts in this thread that the 41 is designed for ALL SAAMI spec ammo. And with all due respect you'll have to explain to me how S&W knows a cracked sear was the result of high velocity ammo, and that the same thing wouldn't have happened with sv.
Let talk about centerfires for a minute. Some calibers will shoot themselves out in less than a 1000 rounds if full spec ammo is used. That is clearly spelled out in their manufactures manuals ascertained through their failure analysis studies. Either no such study was performed on the 41 or there is no concern from S&W. I have researched this extensively many times through many forums and for everyone that says use sv only you will find someone else who says hv is all they use. For everyone who "says' they talked to someone from S&W on what to shoot the result is the same, mixed. One armorer on S&W forum claims to have spoken to some of the " few" that build these pistols and he said and I quote: (Minimags are fine to shoot). I also learned from this research that S&W uses CCI sv to test their pistol. If you go to S&W's site and click on ammunition recommendation they say the same as the manual all SAAMI spec ammo and refer you to ammunition manufactures links for more info. One of those is CCI. In there centerfire line they call out what is +P and +P+ rated.
So will high velocity ammo wear out your model 41 sooner than SV? Probably, but will it be you, your kids, your grandkids, I don't know. From what I have read no one has done it yet.