During the early years of the Twentieth Century, the US Army was equipped with a Colt 1900 pistol that fired a 0.38in cartridge. When US forces became engaged in counter-insurgency operations in the Philippines, however, the soldiers began to express dissatisfaction with the 0.38in cartridge. Against a determined enemy, it did not possess the stopping power necessary for close-range actions.

 

Colt had purchased four designs from Browning in the 1896 and, when service trials for a new weapon were called for in 1907, Colt began working on a 0.45in caliber automatic gun. The result was the Military Model 1911, a watershed in the development of semi-automatic pistols. The US Army was so impressed with its performance that the M1911 was adopted for service use during World War I. Combat experience during the Great War led to a number of modifications, including redesign of the grip, an improved manual safety catch and a new mainspring housing. The M1911 A1 emerged from these adaptations as one of the most powerful and mechanically reliable handguns ever produced.

 

Whereas most contemporary pistols employed a receiver stop to arrest the backward motion of the receiver slide, the M1911 A1 incorporated a more effective locking system based on interlocking lugs on the barrel and the slide. This enabled the spent case to be ejected and the loading cycle to continue with the minimum of error. By 1941, the M1911 A1 was still a standard weapon in the US armed services. The colt was not without its faults, however, and it had a love-hate relationship with some of the troops. Although the Colt gave 100% stopping power in combat, it had a fierce twisting recoil that often unnerved those unused to handling such a powerful weapon. For many of the wartime troops, the hefty recoil of the Colt made accuracy difficult beyond ranges of 20 yards.

 

Despite the introduction of the 7.62mm M1 Garand carbine as a frontline weapon, the M1911 A1 was used extensively during the Korean War, and remained the firm favorite of officers and Special Forces during the Vietnam War. Its performance was held in particular regard by the Tunnel Rats, men who understood the value of heavy firepower in small, confined spaces underground. The usual cartridges for the Colt pistol were the 0.45in ball M1911, the blank M9 and the tracer M26. To these was added the High Density Shot M261, a round that was loaded with steel-shot projectiles and packed a heavy punch.

 

Although the last M1911 A1 came off the production line as far back as 1942, soldiers continued to prefer the Colt over 9mm Parabellum cartridge pistols such as the Browning High Power GP 35. A recent survey revealed that, of the 418,000 M1911 A1s still in the US armory, every last one has been either overhauled extensively or rebuilt at least three times.