Post by hunter on Dec 9, 2019 22:59:16 GMT
History’s Best Handgun Stopped Attackers Cold
Paul Huard
The M1911 killed bad guys, made history
The history of the M1911 begins in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War, when U.S. soldiers and Marines found themselves locked in fierce combat with the Moro, a knife-wielding native insurgency that combined religious zeal and potent drug use.
Much of the fighting was close-quarters battle and the hopped-up Moros took round after round from U.S. .38-caliber pistols while they continued to hack away at Americans.
If anything positive came from the bloody 15-year guerrilla war, it was the realization that the U.S. military needed a better pistol.
A look back at an older weapon pointed the way to a solution. In desperation, the Army had issued Colt Model 1873 .45-caliber revolvers—dating back to the Plains Indian Wars—to soldiers fighting the Moros. [Some early 1911's were deployed against the Moros as the Army combat art shows]
The heavier round began to turn the tide. It often took just one well-placed shot from the .45-caliber pistol to kill a Moro.
In 1906, Gen. William Crozier of the U.S. Army Ordinance Department began evaluating several pistol designs along with the suitability of a new cartridge designated the .45-caliber Automatic Colt Pistol, or .45 ACP.
The weapons Crozier examined were the then-new semi-automatic self-loading design that’s so common today.
One man who would eventually offer a pistol for consideration was John Moses Browning, the most innovative and successful weapons designer in American history.
The M45A1 Close Quarter Battle Pistol. Colt photo. At top—Defense Department photo
Browning created the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle, the M1917 .30-caliber machine gun, M1919 .30-caliber machine gun, the M2 .50-caliber Browning machine gun and the Browning Hi-Power pistol, the first successful high-capacity semi-automatic pistol that became the mostly widely used military sidearm in the world.
Based on the short recoil principle of operation, the Browning-designed Colt for the Army pistol trials was a magazine fed, single-action semi-automatic pistol with both manual and grip safeties.
The pistol was rugged, simple to field strip, and claimed to possess utter dependability.
Those claims were put to a torture test in 1910 when a prototype Colt M1911 fired 6,000 rounds during two days. Browning’s sample pistol became so hot that he dunked in a pail of water to cool it for further firing—and yet it passed the test with no malfunctions. The nearest competition suffered 37 jams….The Marine Corps in particular was reluctant to give up the M1911. Dave Dotterrer, a retired Marine Corps colonel, told War is Boring he trusted the pistol completely.
“It is a great weapon because of its stopping power,” he said. “It instilled confidence in you because the .45-caliber round is a substantial round. It is meant to be a ‘close in’ weapon.”
“I was in a Marine infantry unit that swapped out the pistols for the new nine-millimeter pistols,” said Dotterrer, who retired in 2001. “There was a lot talk along lines of ‘What the heck? What’s wrong with what we had?’”
He said if had to return to the Marine Corps today and choose between the M9 or the M1911, his choice would be easy.
“The M1911 is the greatest pistol ever invented,” Dotterrer said.”
Paul Huard
The M1911 killed bad guys, made history
The history of the M1911 begins in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War, when U.S. soldiers and Marines found themselves locked in fierce combat with the Moro, a knife-wielding native insurgency that combined religious zeal and potent drug use.
Much of the fighting was close-quarters battle and the hopped-up Moros took round after round from U.S. .38-caliber pistols while they continued to hack away at Americans.
If anything positive came from the bloody 15-year guerrilla war, it was the realization that the U.S. military needed a better pistol.
A look back at an older weapon pointed the way to a solution. In desperation, the Army had issued Colt Model 1873 .45-caliber revolvers—dating back to the Plains Indian Wars—to soldiers fighting the Moros. [Some early 1911's were deployed against the Moros as the Army combat art shows]
The heavier round began to turn the tide. It often took just one well-placed shot from the .45-caliber pistol to kill a Moro.
In 1906, Gen. William Crozier of the U.S. Army Ordinance Department began evaluating several pistol designs along with the suitability of a new cartridge designated the .45-caliber Automatic Colt Pistol, or .45 ACP.
The weapons Crozier examined were the then-new semi-automatic self-loading design that’s so common today.
One man who would eventually offer a pistol for consideration was John Moses Browning, the most innovative and successful weapons designer in American history.
Browning created the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle, the M1917 .30-caliber machine gun, M1919 .30-caliber machine gun, the M2 .50-caliber Browning machine gun and the Browning Hi-Power pistol, the first successful high-capacity semi-automatic pistol that became the mostly widely used military sidearm in the world.
Based on the short recoil principle of operation, the Browning-designed Colt for the Army pistol trials was a magazine fed, single-action semi-automatic pistol with both manual and grip safeties.
The pistol was rugged, simple to field strip, and claimed to possess utter dependability.
Those claims were put to a torture test in 1910 when a prototype Colt M1911 fired 6,000 rounds during two days. Browning’s sample pistol became so hot that he dunked in a pail of water to cool it for further firing—and yet it passed the test with no malfunctions. The nearest competition suffered 37 jams….The Marine Corps in particular was reluctant to give up the M1911. Dave Dotterrer, a retired Marine Corps colonel, told War is Boring he trusted the pistol completely.
“It is a great weapon because of its stopping power,” he said. “It instilled confidence in you because the .45-caliber round is a substantial round. It is meant to be a ‘close in’ weapon.”
“I was in a Marine infantry unit that swapped out the pistols for the new nine-millimeter pistols,” said Dotterrer, who retired in 2001. “There was a lot talk along lines of ‘What the heck? What’s wrong with what we had?’”
He said if had to return to the Marine Corps today and choose between the M9 or the M1911, his choice would be easy.
“The M1911 is the greatest pistol ever invented,” Dotterrer said.”