Republished from rockisland.blogspot.com:
When America decided to enter World War II after the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor it was “all hands on deck.” Everyone in the nation was contributing through whatever means necessary: rationing of goods, rubber drives, saving fats, Victory gardens, nylon drives, tin can collection, carpooling, blackouts, women joining the workforce en masse, and hundreds of thousands of War Bonds were sold. However, John and Jane Q. Public were not the only ones to contribute to the war effort. Corporations across America were tooling up to help meet war needs and to beat back the Axis powers . . .
The Kaiser Corporation, which had seen great growth in the 1930s building dams under federal contracts, began building ships, planes, and other vehicles. Ford Motor Company had been producing airplane engines for the British before America entered the war, but soon switched over to full-time military production making B-24 Liberators, superchargers, generators, military gliders, tanks, armored cars, jeeps, grenades, bombs, landing crafts and more. Chrysler made tanks, anti-aircraft guns, the Martin B-26 bomber and B-29 Superfortress, fuses, shells and more. Countless companies dropped what they were doing before the war, refocused, and turned the full industrial might of a nation on toward the war effort.
The 1911A1 was not immune to this boost in production from multiple sources. Part of this precipitated thanks to the War Department not allowing many contractors to finish their World War I contracts. By canceling those productions, the United States found itself short of sidearms, much like it did at the beginning of World War I. This lack of produced firearms was exacerbated by the slashed military funding after WWI. Since soldiers were not needed in their WWI quantities, the government limited the Army 144,000 officers and men. If that’s the limit they placed on personnel, you can imagine the financial restrictions placed on munitions, arms, parts, repairs, and other military essentials. The shortage of military funding that led to the most desirable of all 1911A1s: the Singer.
Singer
The Army’s cash shortage was notable. Then Captain George S. Patton is said to have used his own funds to pay for parts to keep his successful tank brigade up and running. The M1 Garand, while still adopted, had to compromise and be made in the existing .30-06 cartridge instead of the superior .276 Pedersen round. The new round would have taken massive funds to be developed and produced as well as required the conversions of vast amounts of the Army’s machine guns. To help its financial burden the Army had to get creative as is best described in Patrick Sweeney’s book 1911: The First 100 Years.
Despite this situation, the Army was able to make some progress in the late 1930s and early 1940s before Pearl Harbor. They were able to issue “educational contracts” to manufacturers, contracts that paid for the costs of setting up to make small arms, and to produce a small run as proof of performance. One such contract went to the Singer Sewing Machine Company in April of 1940. Singer was able to produce the 500 test pistols required. but with delivery of the 500 right at Pearl Harbor time, the government’s contract offering of 15,000 more pistols was turned down, Singer’s board of directors feeling that their company’s skills, knowledge, and factory were better put to use manufacturing ship and artillery fire control directors. So the 1911A1 tolling was boxed off to Remington Rand. Those 500 Singer 1911A1s are the perhaps the Holy Grail of 1911 collecting.
Those original 500 pistols were distributed to Air Force personnel
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| Rare World War II U.S. Singer Manufacturing Company Model 1911A1 Semi-Automatic Pistol |
Remington Rand
Remington was so busy making rifles that they really didn’t have a lot of time to dedicate to side arms. This despite the fact that they had already made about 22,000 pistols during WWI before the government shut down its production line, due to interchangibility issues with the pistols made by Colt and Springfield (however, it was this issue that led to Colt producing a new set of production specs in 1936 which would greatly aid production in WWII).
Perhaps it was a still a sour taste in their mouth from that previous wrist-slapping that led Remington-UMC to send their government contract to their subsidiary formed in 1886, Remington Typewriter. The spin-off’s merger with Rand Kardex and Powers Accounting in 1927 left it renamed Remington Rand, but they soon began manufacturing 1911A1s in addition to the glut of typewriters that were also needed for the war. After some brief production issues that required the attention of President James Rand, Jr. to fix, Remington Rand manufactured slightly less than 878,000 1911A1 pistols between the years 1942 and 1945, making them the leading wartime manufacturer of the pistol.
[Side note: Remington Rand received part of their tooling from Singer, who declined their government contract, but they also received tooling from Harrison & Richardson. H&R at that time was going through a bankruptcy was only able to produce 20 pistols, not even enough for a successful “test batch” as Singer had produced. None of H&R’s 20 pistols were accepted and the government rescinded their contract in June 1942. Some of the 1911 tooling at H&R went to Remington Rand, but most of it went to our next 1911 manufacturer.]
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| Unique Very Early Production Second Contract U.S. Remington-Rand Model 1911A1 Semi-Automatic Pistol without FJA and Ordnance Proof |
Ithaca
Despite their financial troubles in the late 1960s, Ithaca Gun Company was a prominent firearms manufacturer when America became involved in WWII. The government didn’t require many of their popular shotguns (yet did ask them to make several thousand 12-gauge riot shotguns with M1917 bayonet attachments) but Uncle Sam did offer Ithaca a contract to produce 60,000 1911A1s in 1942.
After receiving some of the necessary tooling from Harrington & Richardson, Ithaca began rapidly producing the desperately-needed pistols – even going as far as to assemble pistols from parts shipped to them by other manufacturers. Some of these parts were from surplus WWI production, including about 6,000 Colt receivers! Soon Ithaca would have all the manufacturing equipment in-house and would ramp up production to total 335,000 – 340,000 pistols between late 1943 until the end of the war. Ithaca could have produced many more of these pistols had the government not cancelled the contract in its post-war fund cutting.
[Ithaca was invited to produce a “test batch” of pistols in the Army’s fund raising efforts, but the Army discontinued the program before they could submit a batch.]
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| Excellent U.S. Ithaca Model 1911A1 Semi-Automatic Pistol |
Colt
Colt’s story of WWII production 1911A1 pistols is a little different than every other manufacturer here for the simple fact that they were assembling them readily before WWII. In fact, once the government contracts increased due to war, Colt discontinued making their Government Model 1911 pistols (which is what Colt called the 1911 made for the civilian market) in 1942 so they could focus all of their pistol manufacturing efforts toward military sidearms. They even took 6,575 existing, unsold Government Model guns, re-stamped, and Parkerized them for the Army. The parts for these civilian guns were also used to satisfy military contracts.
In the story of 1911A1 pistols, Colt is more often mentioned as a reference for all the other companies that were contracted to also make the pistols. Colt was often helping provide technical assistance (as was Springfield), to these newly contracted manufacturers. One would think that between providing all this help and its status as one the government’s primary machine gun producers, Colt could have used the same excuse as Remington and said it had “no time” to make the 1911 pistols that it already knew so well how to produce. However, it still turned out around 629,000 1911A1 pistols, making it the second leading producer of the beloved sidearm in addition to having a mandated priority of producing the United States’ machine guns (M1919, M1919A6, & M2HB).
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| World War II U.S. Army Colt Model 1911A1 Pistol |
Union Switch & Signal
Union Switch and Signal, referred to more commonly as just “Switch & Signal” was the last company to be offered a M1911A1 contract. As one can infer from the name, this subsidiary of Westinghouse Air Brake Company was accustomed to making railroad equipment. In 1942 they received their first contract and began producing, but just after they had begun, the government realized they had ordered too many pistols and asked US&S to make M1 carbine parts instead. The next month their contract for pistols was officially cut from 200,000 to 30,000. US&S agreed to make the M1 parts and just when they almost finished with the initial slashed order of pistols and were to begin manufacturing the carbine parts, the government reneged again and instead increased their original M911A1 order by 25,000. US&S ended up producing 55,000 pistols for their indecisive client.
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| U.S. Union Switch & Signal Model 1911A1 Semi-Automatic Pistol |
The 1911, despite being firmly entrenched in the hearts of American collectors, suffered after World War II. Colt was actually losing money toward the end of the war and with thousands of veterans returning home with guns, they didn’t have as many people looking to buy. In fact, no M1911 or M1911A1 pistols have been produced after 1945. Even with the Korean War providing a new source of income, Colt had to sell in 1955 to the Penn-Texas Corporation, setting in motion a long string of mismanagement and apathy. In 1985, the the Beretta 92F was officially adopted and replaced the M1911A1 as the sidearm of the Army. 1911 pistols are not without their detractors, but they have served the United States longer than any other military arm, thus cementing themselves and their inventor into the history and lore of this country.
Rock Island Auction Company’s May 2014 Premiere Firearms Auction will feature 1911s from all five major manufacturers, as will many of the U.S. military arms, Class III firearms, and an extraordinary collection of German WWII military items known simply as The Von Norden Collection.
Should have been a DGU
They want to eliminate violence. they just picked an easy target for the problem they want to address.
Put 3 two year old’s in a room and see how long it takes before some violence occurs.
It is a training problem and they trained there kids wrong.
The freedom to choose is the scarry part for the moms & mayors. They have to take away gun choice freedom so other freedoms can be suspended. Yes, they hate the freedom that our founders wanted for us. They are jim jones followers that can’t wait to have every aspect of their lives controlled. So, choose your masters folks, dem or repub, because real freedom is not in the future. I’ll be a slave to the repubs, because I don’t want to hear “he was doing nothing wrong” ever again. Hint, the quilt was not for the attorney that was recently killed.
No, they’re just desperately seeking attention and relevance.
Their shtick is all about playing on heart strings, trying to feel they’re doing something, *anything*, worth being noticed and remembered for. They’re channelling their inner Norma Rae character and hoping someone like Sally Field will play them in the movie.
Surely their own mothers taught them that it’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice. These people just focus, to our detriment and their own embarrassment, incessantly on the former.
The name should be “Moms Demand Money.”
Shannon would make you proud if you knew how she hooked her hubby from wife #1.
I have just recently finished reading ‘1984’ again and I cannot believe how many parallels there are to the current state of affairs. This guy is a great example. “Lt. Vance argues that a law is constitutional if the Supreme Court says it is.” That rings of the same kind of logic ‘Big Brother’ uses to enslave the masses. If the party says it is, then it always has been. Yet if they are ever wrong, they were never wrong, they have always been right.
This trooper and the men following him need to search their souls and decide if they are just going to follow orders or if they will think for themselves, possibly be fired, and stand up for the document they have sworn to uphold.
Another unfortunate revolution to this and other stories across the country, is that the ground work has already been laid for law enforcement to use the potential, possibility, that a home owner has a firearm to illegally enter said home and do whatever they feel they must. No probable cause, not even articulable suspicion, simply a gun sticker on your car, or a NICS record from years ago. That’s all they will need to execute there searches and take your property and your freedom.
Now the real kicker to my long winded rant. Are you guilty of murder if one were to open fire on the thugs breaking down the door to illegally take your property and potentially your freedom or even your life (yes, life). If I were to enter any of your homes without your consent by gunpoint, and attempt to take any of your belongings, I hope i would be met with some form of high velocity lead interception (insert your caliber). If a State Trooper entering your home at gunpoint, attempting to take your property unjustly, that is without a warrant, or the like, is he not too committing the same crime I have? Note the key word here is unjustly. Simply because a court says it is legal, does not mean it is. If say later, the gun confiscation were deemed wholly illegal would one have a knockdown airtight lawsuit? Would any acts perpetrated during the commission of an illegal search be then justified?
Remember, there is the law of men, there is the law of nature, and there is the law of god. We are stuck somewhere is the middle trying to juggle all three into one comprehensible guideline. I hope at least to of them will prevail, and soon.
Its my understanding International Business Machines ( IBM ) AKA Big Blue also re-tooled and made firearms during this period which are very collectible today.
How many bobbins does the mag hold?
BTW, this blog topic is a very interesting thread.
The only way to avoid being hit by this .45 was to Zig Zag.
I’m done.
Thank you for the update Aaron.
I was also looking at this with a large amount of skepticism. Nice to see that my opinion is somewhat accurate.
I thought the phrase “to protect and serve” was for the people not for the politicians .
“Del-ton” sounds so Fifties. It would be cool if they listen to Doo-Wop at the factory.
1) She is running for governor eventually
2) Free publicity
3) She is being sued over the approved gun list so the writing is on the wall
4) She is trying to run out the clock long enough for Barry to appoint her to a cushy lifetime judgeship
5) Although I don’t think she swings this way, I’d take her over Shannon
5) WTF Really?
Have you seen that hag?
Who are you and what have you done with Dirk?
You must not be talking about Dianne Frankenstein My bad( real bad).
I guess Cali AG Harris’ note about her stand to block concealed and all its “dangers” got lost on the teletype machine, huh?
I can’t wait for her to run for governor. I hope she gets publicly humilated on cable television
Gratz to Texas on becoming a state, I guess. The amount of ‘Texas f*x yea!’ in this article is mind boggling, especially given how many of you are f*cking yankee transplants to begin with. The texas government is only slightly less oppressive than most New England states, but you people wave the flag like it’s the last bastion of liberty on the planet. Get real, and eat less, every time I’m Texas I’m stunned by the number of grotesquely fat people you house.
I’d say that pic is pretty incendiary–but not necessarily because of the firearms…
They got the govt they voted for.
I now must research silenced-involved shootings. 2011 saw around 300 rifle murders, and that’s rifles of any kind, not just scary black ones with things that go up. Same year about 600 people died from falling out of bed. I propose height restrictions on beds, and a safety course before purchase of a bed. I’ve heard you can buy a bed frame, then get a box spring and mattress and build your own. Some get all tactical with headboards, footboards, and a bunch of pillows, but it all comes down to how well you sleep and lots of practice.
MA report: good supplies of 5.56 NATO, 7.62 NATO and .40 cal at prices fom 0% to 15% above pre-Newtown. Surplus 7.62X54R abundant at pre-Newtown prices. 9mm spotty, sometimes 50% or higher than pre-Newtown. I’m holding on to the 9mm range ammo and SD ammo that I’ve laid down as if it was fine wine or something.
Sightings of .22LR less common than verified close encounters with Bigfoot. I’m not running out because I’m not shooting it.
OK here is my half of a cent
This Is the first time I have ever tried to post something online butt I can’t see how a government is going to come in and take my guns.
United States Constitution has given us the right to bear arms that’s not just own guns butt to carry guns.
The way I see it if you take guns out of the population then only criminals are going to be carrying the guns.
I agree the Health Care system in the United States is messed up but I don’t think a government-run healthcare is going to be any better.
For example look at the VA here in the United States.
Also I agree that we need to work on the education department in the United States.
If you go through school all way through college you may end up owing $ 120000 that you won’t be able to pay back for 20 years.
I know it’s an old thread, but I’ll add my 2 cents worth anyway… People often seem to want to know what these somewhat rare 1911s from WW2 are worth today. Here’s my story:
Around 1995 I received a gift from a girlfriend of an Ithaca 1911 in its original box including two magazines. It had very minor box wear, and looked like it had never been fired. I did some internet research and based on the serial number it was apparently delivered to the San Francisco Naval Shipyard in (if I remember correctly) 1943. That was pretty interesting!
My relationship with the girlfriend who gave it to me didn’t pan out, very regrettably, but we remained friends. I had other friends who would try to talk me out of the gun many times, but because I had an emotional attachment to it, I hated the idea of parting with it. The girlfriend passed away in 2014 and I finally sold the Ithaca to a friend in March 2016 for $2,000.00 He tells me it will sit in his safe until he gives it to his son. (I still have the girlfriend’s Nickel Plated S&W J-frame that she carried CCW, that will be even harder to part with.)
The 1911 served as the standard-issue sidearm for the United States Armed Forces from 1911 to 1986 — 75 years! I love them and have four right now, one in 9mm, which is really, really fun to shoot. I never shot the Ithaca because I didn’t want to diminish its value as a collector piece. Having other 1911s to shoot allowed me to keep the Ithaca pristine without regrets.
I have 1911s in .22, .22TCM, Super .38, 9MM and of course .45ACP. Love ’em all. Shoot ’em all.
What years were the World War II U.S. Army Colt Model 1911A1 Pistol made?
Actually there was another rare Canadian made 1911 that the article failed to mention. Its name was North American Arms and they only made 500 pistols for the U.S. but did make a few for commercial sale also.
All in all the 1911 was really a piss pore combat pistol. I know Jethro waving his U.S. Flag will go bonkers over that statement but that is because of his ignorance as to the problems of this pistol and its piss poor cartridge.
In 1945 the U.S. Military (see Clive’s book “The Inglis Diamond”) tested the .45 acp v/s the 9×19 and found much too their horror that the .45 acp actually bounced off a military helmet at a scant 35 yards while the 9×19 penetrated it at an astonishing 125 yards and may have done so even farther but no one could hit the helmet at a farther distance.
The 9mm held more cartridges (especially in the High Power Pistol), the 9mm penetrated more, shot flatter, had less recoil and most WWII 9×19 pistols were way more accurate that the sloppily made 1911 that had abysmal accuracy and a poor trigger pull as well. The slides on the 1911 were also soft and did not last very long as people who bought surplus pistols in the 1950’s found out that when accurized the slides locking lug recesses went south very quickly when used in bulls-eye competition.
As long ago as 1900 it was found bullet diameter had little if any advantage in killing power rather it was bullet placement and penetration that was the key to the taking of big game animals with the 6.5mm rifle class every bit as deadly as the much bigger elephant calibers that often got professional hunters killed because of their lack of adequate penetration. This was verified by the early 1900’s tests by Col. Thompson (who tried to claim the opposite in spite of his own testing). A copy of the tests was printed years ago in the Gun Digest and how he lied to the ordinance board about the results. Also in the 1980’s Pistolero Magazine went to Mexico and shot live pigs that anatomically are similar to human anatomically (except of course pigs are much better behaved) and they found the same results i.e. that caliber had nothing to do with incapacitation as the 9×19, 38 special and .357 Mag killed very bit as good as the .45acp did.
So much for the flag waving non-sense about the mythical 1911 who people still believe to this very day will knock a man down, or spin him around like a top or make him disappear in a red puff of mist.
Its no accident that the most sought after pistol of WWII in both the European theater and the Far East was the high capacity Browning FN High Power in 9×19.
just picked up a ithaca 1911a1 the serial number on frame its a 43 built but the slide has no stamp stating that is a 1911a1 and the slide has a taller front sight and a target sight on the rear im wondering if the slide was the standard slide or if its been changed with a newer slide from a ithaca that was built in 73