The history of Elizabethport Works' participation in World War II starts as early as 1925 - 1926 when Elizabethport engineers, acting at the request of the Ordnance Department, made an exhaustive study of the possibilities of producing large quantities of the Colt .45 caliber automatic pistol at Elizabethport. In June of 1926 a full report was submitted and accepted by the War Department, this report covering complete details of existing production facilities, personnel, procurement and production methods as well as estimates of additional machinery and space required to produce 25,000 pistols per month in two 8 hour shifts per day.
On April 17, 1940 educational order No. W-ORD-396 was placed calling for the preparation of one complete set of tools, fixtures and gauges and the manufacture of 500 complete pistols, plus spare parts. The purpose of this contract was primarily to provide tools which would be available for further larger production orders and to familiarize the Elizabethport personnel with pistol manufacture.
A major part of this educational contract required the preparation of complete production data, including machine, tool and gauge drawings, detailed descriptions, photographs and time study information for more than 1,000 operations on the fifty-four different parts of the pistol. Plans were detailed for new construction, for the purchase of machinery, and the hiring of personnel, all based on a manufacturing schedule of 100 automatic pistols per hour. This information was all carefully compiled and tabulated and although Elizabethport Factory never actually engaged in this large scale pistol manufacture, the information proved to be extremely useful to other manufacturers undertaking pistol production.
Upon the completion of the production of the 500 pistols called for in the educational contract, the Ordnance Department instructed Elizabethport to deliver the tooling and all other material and production information to another company which has subsequently used the Elizabethport tools in the manufacture of large quantities of excellent pistols. The 500 pistols of Elizabethport manufacture were used as models. The purpose of this arrangement was to relieve the Elizabethport Plant of the pistol work in order to place a highly important fire control instrument in production there. Serial numbers for the pistols are S800001-S800500.
