1911
Welcome back to Tales of a Gun, folks. If this is your first time here, you might be interested in my earlier posts, about the S&W Model 14, AKA the Target Masterpiece, and the S&W Model 10(-6), AKA the original Military and Police.
This post will be a little bit different, as unlike those classic revolvers that have been with me since early days, I've been through a lot of 1911s. The two I have now are the latest, and in one case the greatest, but it makes for a departure in my history with the guns.
First, let's talk a little bit about the 1911 itself. What is it? Why is it still relevant, if it is?
The 1911 was the culmination of a long series of iterations by John Moses Browning on the semi-automatic handgun. The US Army had a brief and disappointing fling with small caliber sidearms in the Colt M1892, in .38 Long Colt. The gun itself, the first double action, swing out cylinder revolver issued by the US military, worked well enough, but the cartridge did not.
Legend has it that the Moro tribesmen, whom US soldiers encountered during the Philippine-American War, were either too fanatical, (or possibly under the influence of some informal pharmaceutical,) to be easily dealt with by the small caliber. The military hurriedly reissued stocks of the old Colt Single Action Army of Indian Wars and cowboy fame. As its .45 Colt cartridge had been designed to enable a cavalryman to deal with either opposing troopers or opposing horses, it elicited few complaints of under-performance.
The old cowboy gun had other limitations in the rapidly evolving world of the turn of the century. It was dreadfully slow to load, requiring something like 40 separate actions to unload and reload with a mere five fresh rounds. It needed to be cocked again for each shot. Its single action trigger did permit very fine shooting, and with the hammer down wasn't prone to accidental discharge, if a trooper happened to clutch it repeatedly while paying attention to something else, like a bucking horse.
The military looked at some of the European developments in auto-pistols, such as the Borschardt and the Luger, and decided to hold trials in 1907 to select a new service pistol, in the preferred horse-killing .45 caliber.
Among the contenders were an enlarged, .45 caliber Luger, the 1907 Savage, the Webley-Fosberry Automatic Revolver (sic,) 1907 Bergman pistol, the John Browning-designed Colt 1907, and double action revolvers from both Colt and Smith & Wesson to act as controls.
The guns were not only fired for accuracy and reliability, but also tested for corrosion resistance. "The mechanism will be thoroughly cleansed of grease by boiling in a solution of soda, the ends of the barrel tightly corked, and the pistol then placed in a saturated solution of sal-ammoniac for five minutes." (That sounds smelly to this author.)
Even though it won the trials, the Colt 1907 was merely deemed worthy of further development, not adopted on the spot. Even in those days, military acquisitions were a lengthy process. The thumb safety, which blocks the sear, and grip safety, which blocks the trigger unless the shooter has a firm grip on the gun, were both added at this stage, along with tweaks to the grip angle, and other changes.
Adopted in 1911, the military got what it wanted. The Automatic Pistol, Caliber .45, M1911 was a spiritual successor to the SAA. It was a reliable, large-bore handgun, with a good trigger, and safety features to disable that trigger. The box magazine made reloading a snap. It now required only three or four actions, rather than the 40 or more of the SAA.
That was only the beginning of the storied history of the M1911, and later M1911A1. It served through the two World Wars, then in Korea and Vietnam as well. It was the US military standard issue sidearm for an astonishing 75 years, before it was replaced with the Beretta M9, a 9MM DA/SA pistol, with an aluminum frame and fifteen round magazine.
Just about the time it was being phased out of military service, the old warhorse found a second life as a civilian defensive pistol. At first, this was largely a result of the earliest trainers and systematizers, like Colonel Jeff Cooper, being products of the US military, and thus more familiar with Ol' Slabsides than with competing designs.
Soon, however, it started to be recognized for its own virtues. Although it's a big, powerful pistol and at 40 oz., not light to carry around, it is also one of the most shootable .45s. That excellent trigger, which slides straight back, instead of pivoting at the top like every other trigger on the market accounts for a lot of that. The mass of steel also helps to control the recoil. The slim, single stack design, with a narrow, curved top slide makes it surprisingly easy to carry inside a waistband, especially compared to the much bulkier Beretta and the blocky Glock, which was just beginning to come on the scene in the late 1980s.
And thus began several of the great controversies of the gun world: single stack vs double, 1911 vs Glock, and continued one that had been raging for nearly a century, 9MM vs .45. It seems strange from the vantage point of a quarter of the way through the 21st Century, when the 1911 is mercilessly mocked as the Fudd's pistol of choice, but it was a very viable choice. Its initial success was further enhanced by the Clintons' gun legislation in the early 90s. For about ten years, the higher capacity of the more modern designs was very nearly a moot point. If one could not purchase 15, 17, 20 round magazines, then why bother carrying the much fatter pistol designed for them? The 1911 got yet another transfusion, keeping it alive and kicking into the new century.
Many of the folks reading this are probably well aware of the history of the 1911, and likely in more detail than the broad strokes I've laid out here. If that's the case, then I thank you for sticking around.
The part I wanted to elucidate was the parallels between the the Colt .45 of the 19th Century, the Colt Single Action Army, and the Colt .45 of the 20th, the 1911. (And, no, sorry, malt liquor doesn't really enter into the comparison. I wasn't even selling that stuff anymore, by the time I shifted gears from S&W revolvers to 1911s.)
So how did I make that switch? It's a two part process, I suppose. Part one was that I was on an internet gun forum called The High Road. Unlike, for example, Glocktalk or Arfcom, there was a significant proportion of older or at least more traditionally minded shooters there. (Also a surprising number of shooters of a literary disposition. Larry Corriea was a moderator. OldNFO and LawDog were significant members, along with several others. I'm only the latest alumnus of that august body to start selling scribblings.) Quite a number of those folks were 1911 aficionados.
The other half was that I had managed to get myself involved in Cowboy Action Shooting. (Unfortunately, that will be much glossed over in these pages, as the early days of "married money," led to selling most match guns, so I don't have many pretty pictures to show.)
The real point is that although I "grew up with guns," I somehow never really learned how to shoot them. That was the conclusion I reached after my first Cowboy match. An awful lot of practice later, and I had finally learned to shoot, but only a fairly obsolete gun. The SAA. I still couldn't shoot double action, and striker fired was… well, meh.
Thus it was that I sought out the "modern" heir to the SAA, the 1911. More to come about my particular 1911s, next time
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