Popularity of anemic calibers and late popularity of the .45 1911...

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I'll stand in front of your kitty cat if you'll stand in front of my Pony. I call first shot, then we'll alternate till someone cries uncle.

Complaints from end users that the slide was too hard to cycle aren't the equivalent of defective. That's like me telling Walter their .380 is defective 'cause it disappears in my hand. Plenty of guys rediscovering the benefits of a square bottom firing pin stop.

As to the question put forth by the OP I think there were so many factors involved, most of which have been noted, that to separate them would be impossible. As a side note I can still recall when shooting more than one full cylinder of .38 SPL was a treat and every shot was important.
 
Lockbreech... do you mean Eugene M. Stoner? I can't seem to find any references to a Richard Stoner that was associated with AR development.

Insofar as the square firing pin stop is concerned, I know I'm not the only 1911 user out there that has swapped their radiused FPS for a squared one.

Back on topic...... I think the"badge of authority" argument holds some water, even though the US Army went to .45 caliber sidearms in a big way after the War Between The States. In most armies, officers were issued sidearms so they'd look like officers; there was little in the way of tactical pistol training afforded along with those pistols beyond "Load it like this, point it thataway and don't shoot your horse." Of course, there was little in the way of tactical pistol philosophy floating around out there, either. The pistol just wasn't trusted as a "stopping" weapon, and wasn't treated as one.

The story of how the .38 Colt cartridge "wouldn't stop the Juramentados" has been told to death, and has a lot of fact to support it. What's less well-related is how US soldiers learned to shoot the fanatical, drug-empowered Juramentados until the they stopped moving, regardless of what firearm was being employed. Today's IDF is said to hold to the same doctrine, so I figure there's some value in it. Still, the IDF doesn't carry .32s, insofar as I'm aware.
 
The first 500 guns Colt ever produced caused sever consternation and failure in field application and were promptly returned for modification and repairs.
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Yeah, Lockbreech, you are a funny dude. If you care to look at almost any NEW DEVELOPMENT firearm that the armed forces have adopted, almost all have required modifications to the original design. The Stoner M16 design that you mentioned had problems and was modified, as was the M1 Garand and many other military military firearms. For the armed forces of a country to keep issuing a firearm that was not a "good auto-loading pistol" and "was a maintenance nightmare", defies logic. In MHO, you are just trolling here with outlandish statements that are designed to get negative responses.

Don
 
Just My Opinion Guys

The 1911 was meant to kill horses with in 1911 when they were still riding horses into battle back in 1911. I only wish I had a dime for every plunger tube that I had to stake back on or ejector I had to re-stake for my unit in Vietnam. Not to mention all the stripped grip screws and bushings or broken barrel link pins. Then the rusted main springs in the back strap that caused a fail to fire. Then there was that nice kid from Nebraska that lost an eye to a safety plunger pin that hit him because of a lifted plunger tube. I could go on and on.

It is my conclusion that the 1911A1 is a POS and useless as a dependable small arm from my personal experience as a military armorer for several years and apparently the Joint Chiefs felt the same way when they junked it. Thank GOD!

From what I just read, the US Military will stop issuing M9 Beretta pistols as they have been proven worthless also and issue only M4 carbines in 5.56 NATO.....hey that's 22 caliber. What about that!

Now all you 1911 guys just throw some cold water on yourselves and calm down. No need to get all lathered up because someone said the 1911 is a POS. There are plenty of us out here trust me.

By the way, flat cut firing pin stops will throw off the complete timing for lock breech extraction if the barrel link is not lengthened to compensate for it.
 
I love the M1911. It has good ergonomics and a great trigger. My Springfield Armory 1990's era GI model is the most accurate centerfire handgun that I own. All that said, the M1911 is best used by those who have a lot of experience with firearms. For new shooters who may be a little recoil sensitive its not the best choice. I only trust it with thirty dollar aftermarket Wilson mags and I still distrust hollowpoints out of it.
 
By the way, flat cut firing pin stops will throw off the complete timing for lock breech extraction if the barrel link is not lengthened to compensate for it.
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You need schoolin'. Allow me to embiggen your understanding.

First...the timing isn't dependent on the speed of the cycle. You're confusing timing with time. Time is a function of speed and distance. Timing is mechanically fixed, and only changes with wear or breakage.

The only functions that are timed are the barrel engagement and disengagement with the slide, and the cartridge release from the magazine. All else is a function of time...speed and distance.

Second...the link's only job is disengaging the barrel from the slide. Changing the on-center length affects the timing of that function...but has naught to do with extraction or the speed of same.

Third...the small radius on the bottom of the firing pin stop was the original design. Changing the radius (smaller) affects the rearward speed of the slide in recoil by reducing the mechanical advantage in overcoming the mainspring's load before the hammer is cocked. Once the hammer is cocked, it has no further effect.

Note that the hammer doesn't cock smoothly and remain in contact with the slide during the cocking function. It gets slammed back and rebounds off the grip safety tang...so the firing pin stop's effect only lasts for a very brief instant...long enough to add a little to the delay, but having no further effect. More important is that the bullet exits earlier relative to the slide's position, which tends to send the bullet on its way to the target with less movement of the barrel...which is a good thing for accuracy.

Going in the other direction and making it larger increases the mechanical advantage, making it easier to cock the hammer. Sometimes done for using "powderpuff" loads that result in short cycle.
 
Americans just have never made a good auto-loading pistol ever. The 1911 was a maintenance nightmare and junked by our military for a proven Italian design, Beretta 92FS, many years ago.
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The 1911 was "junked" because most of the inventoried pistols were worn out, and it was cheaper to contract for another existing design than to replace and/or rebuild the ones they had. The 9mm decision came from NATO pressure to adopt a common caliber. A simple matter of economics, and probably politics...and very likely a little cash kickback was involved as well.

"Your equipment is brought to you compliments of the lowest bidder, private. Now, don't that just warm the cockles of your little heart?"

The first 500 guns Colt ever produced caused sever consternation and failure in field application and were promptly returned for modification and repairs.
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All guns in the developmental stages have problems in the initial testing phases, and are subject to modification and re-engineering. That's what engineering is. Problem solving...and they work these things out before they send them to war.

And it wasn't 500. It was the first two, and when the first 8 pistols were submitted for testing in 1910...before there were any "In the Field"...the only modification that the Army Ordnance Board asked for was the manual safety. You know it as the thumb safety.

If the 1911 was such a logistics nightmare...why did the government give contracts to five different companies for hundreds of thousands of pistols at the outset of WW2? Seems to me that they'd have learned their lesson with the first run of clunkers. No?

Let is also be known that Remington Rand manufactured almost four times as many 1911 pistols than all the other 4 manufactures.
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Anyone who's studied the history of 1911 production knows that Remington Rand produced more pistols that all the others combined...but it wasn't four times as many.

It's also the studied opinion of many experts and historians that by mid-1944, Rand was delivering a better pistol than Colt for about 5 bucks cheaper per copy...but it wasn't vastly superior. Note also that Remington Rand had its share of problems early on, and was forced to halt production and correct those problems. Meanwhile, Colt was chugging along, delivering functional, reliable pistols.

Finally...It's Eugene Stoner...not Richard...and his middle name was Morrison. He may have had a brother named Richard, but if he did, he didn't do anything notable.

You should get your facts straight.
 
Personally I've never fired a 1911 that wasn't ammo picky but hey thats just me. The 92 is far from perfect though and has problems with slides cracking after a few thousand rounds from what I've read and seen online.
 
Its a combination of things.
One is that Americans loved revolvers and yes a lot of that came from westerns. We have a subforum here still about revolvers. The first handgun I bought was a revolver, S&W Model 66 in .357. It was reliable, really reliable and came in a very good caliber.

I also agree there really was not a great automatic other than 1911s that came in any kind of comparable caliber and they did not have much of an ammo capacity advantage. 7 in .45 and 6 in .357. Keep in mind, those were ball .45s vs hollow point .357. S&W was making a dent with the 39 but 9mm was not a good caliber if its ball and back then it was ball. The 80s were a bad time for 1911s. Once you bought one you could expect to spend a lot more to get it reliable and want to shoot hollow points.

Also we were a lot more rural, particularly gun owners and we hunted a lot more, again particularly gun owners. .357 is a great gun to be carrying in the woods.

We owned less guns per person. Most people could only afford a few guns and if they owned a pistol at all it was probably just one so you wanted it to do a lot of things well, .357 in a wheel gun does a lot of things really well.
 
Beretta has been making auto-loaders since the 15th century, 1526 if memory serves me correctly!
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Suh-weet! Do you have a picture of one? That would be really awesome to see!
 
Many of the "anemic caliber revolvers" were loaded to much higher chamber pressures in the "old days" compared to the downloaded off the shelf ammo we use today.This was especially true of the .38 special carried by many departments as well as the FBI.
 
you have joe blow on the street that needs something to keep the BG off his back; then you have the combat trooper out here fighting a war. believe me thats when my street ccw 380 becomes a 1911A1 45 cal. pistol. when my rifle stops working in combat; that is when i want one of the big boy pistols for back up. azrn
 
Europe for years was fine with smaller calibers due to the simple fact that they don't view handguns as the primary weapon of their police force. The only officers who carry just a handgun are usually traffic police, or units that were class A formal uniforms to look pretty for the tourists etc. Take a look at France or Italy, their working cops carry SMG's or assault rifles.

Quote: Thats why so many of our spec-ops guys in the "Stans carry 1911s.

Having been in a class with a gentleman headed over to Afghanistan the next day, been instructed buy a gentleman who teaches those same folks, and working with a gentleman who is one of those folks and headed over there again sometime soon (Reserves) Glocks are much preferred for field duty. A 1911 doesn't handle the grit and junk in the field all that well, and a Glock holds a lot more rounds if it really hits the fan. On the other hand the 1911 is primarily used for CQB/Hostage Rescue stuff due to it's superb trigger and precision (when tuned right). The Beretta is the choice of guys who aren't really into guns and just shoot what they get handed (believe me there are more then you think in our military even those HSLD units).

Quote: I just wonder how many of you 1911 gun snobs would be willing to get in front of my Beretta Bob Cat 21a .22 lr pistol loaded with a batch of CCI Stingers.

If you were going to do something to me and mine, I'd much prefer you tried it with your Bob Cat then a 1911 or a Beretta 92 FS. I don't want to be shot period, but I'd take a .22lr hit over a .45 ACP or 9mm hit any day of week.
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Sorry Jenrick, you're wrong here. I assume you have been to Europe, but it's just not the way you say.

I am an active duty LE officer, and EVERY police officer here carries a sidearm on duty, regardless of what agency they work for. As in France or Italy, we have two national-level police forces that operate alongside, with different assignments and deployments, and at least here in Spain, the difference is that one force uses Beretta 92FS (mine) and the other HK USP Compact. Local Police forces (municipalities) use different semiautos o .38 revolvers (seldom seen nowadays). Use of long arms such as SMGs, shotguns or assault rifles is usually seen when there's a need for an static guard duty (monuments, government property or buildings, etc...) or during operations that require so.

This applies to every country in Europe, with the British exception, together with Norway and Ireland (not sure of Ireland though). The norwegians are armed but do not carry on them. Instead, the pistols are in a locked compartment inside the vehicle, ala British "armed response teams". And yes, 9mm is the standard here, and a correct choice IMHO.
 
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I think the North Hollywood bank robbery shootout, back in Feb. of 1997, was an eye opener for law enforcement. It showed on film that two determined bad guys with homemade body armor and superior firepower could easily dominate lawmen armed with 38 spec. and 9mm. It's perhaps the most important single event to promote the increase in firepower for law enforcement in many years.
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And what did LAPD do? Well, they upgraded their SWAT sidearms to Kimber .45 acp 1911 pattern pistols and didn't change street officer sidearms significantly. Of course, having the .45 acp firepower would have changed absolutely nothing given that the .45 acp was even less likely to penetrate body armor than the 9mm rounds being used.

Beretta has been making auto-loaders since the 15th century, 1526 if memory serves me correctly!
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I believe your memory serves you incorrectly unless Beretta's first pistol was an autoloader, and it wasn't. Beretta was found in 1526 when a contract to make Arquebus barrels of signed. I have to wonder that without cartridges, just how an early autoloader would function. I believe you are about 350 years premature with the date.
 
"why did the government give contracts to five different companies for hundreds of thousands of pistols at the outset of WW2?"

So they'd have plenty of worn out 1911s with mismatched parts to send to Viet Nam decades later? :) Who says the government can't plan ahead.
 
JohnBT...you are aware that the WW2-era pistols' specs and dimensions were tweaked to allow complete, drop-in interchangeability of parts, regardless of the contractor.

The testing was done like so:

2 pistols were selected at random from all five contractors...disassembled...parts tossed into a bin...and reassembled without concern over correct mating of parts. All 10 had to function correctly, and they all had to meet accuracy requirements. The test was repeated with the same demands. All 10 pistols passed...twice.

Then, parts from various vendors who didn't build complete pistols were dropped in and tested. All pistols functioned.
 
I hate 1911 junk!

I seem to have stirred up a hornets nest with my dislike for the 1911 POS!

No amount of chiding or scolding will make me like the junker any more or less. They are a primitive and crude design failure and belong in the hall of shame along with the folding drop back seat that turned into a bed in the 1956 Nash Rambler, the Chrysler Fluid Drive transmission and Raybestos brake linings. They were unreliable horse killers in 1911 for Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders and tightening up the tolerances and forging them out of Brazilian pig iron has not made them any better over the years.

Now I did confuse the names Eugene and Richard but I have a brother who is named Richard Eugene and I have done that for years..LOL. Besides I am old!

No it is not magazines that cause FTF, it is the stupid design on putting the feed ramp on the static frame and the barrel throat on the moving barrel that causes feed failures.

Americans just don't make good auto loading pistols. They came close with the S&W 39 and subsequent spin offs but the true American Classic is still the Revolver thought up by Samuel Colt then perfected by Smith and Wesson.. I carried a Model 10 in Vietnam and actually got a change to save my butt with it a few times.

The Europeans have always made the best auto loaders Luger, Walther, Makarov and of course Kalashnikov. Our boys feared the German machine guns worse than the devil himself.

I am sorry if I can not share your admiration for the Browning mistake our military got swindled into buying. After working on hundreds of them personally I still classify them as just primitive crude junk!

By the way I own one from every one of the manufacturers that sold them to us.....well Singer never did really sell us any, but they tried. I do like their 8 land and groove rifling better than the 6 that Colt used.
 
1911 was a good year but Beretta has been making auto-loaders since the 15th century, 1526 if memory serves me correctly!
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I think your memory could use some help there. Your posts are pretty entertaining though, keep them coming.

The matchlock or serpentine lock would have been all the rage for hand carried firearms in the 14th to 15th centuries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beretta_M_1934

Armi Beretta SpA of Gardone Val Trompia has a history in firearms manufacturing reaching back to 1526, when they were established as a maker of barrels. But it was not until 1915 that, responding to the needs of the military during World War I, they produced their first pistol, the model 1915. Beretta has become one of the world's largest pistol makers and the model 1934 (M1934) was their most numerous product in the pre-World War II era.
 
You do have to admit though, that little Beretta 1934 is an absolute thing of beauty, along with the 1911, that lockbreech loves to loathe.

2 beauties, one for your pocket and one for the hip! :)
 
My memory might be weak but my disdain for that damn 1911 POS is still strong! LOL! It was an American mistake that we should never hang our hat on with any pride. Kimber seems to prove my point on a daily basis, I refuse to even work on them anymore.
Now far be it from me to keep you boys from spending thousands on junk toys. It has been said many times that fools and their money are soon parted. Have you figured it out that I don't like the 1911 design by now. Even Justin Moon designed a better handgun for Pete's sake. But like everyone else they all are still in hot pursuit of the world changing Glock! Now there is a design masterpiece for military application second to none. Interestingly enough not one Browning design concept was used or copied by Glock to completely change the handgun world as we know it. Europeans just design and make better guns in my book!
 
lockbreech wrote,
They were unreliable horse killers in 1911 for Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders and tightening up the tolerances and forging them out of Brazilian pig iron has not made them any better over the years.
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I don't know what the connection between the 1911 pistol and Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders is. Mr. Roosevelt and the Rough Riders were participants in the Spanish American War that ended in 1902. Since the 1911 didn't come into service until, well, 1911, it's unlikely the pistol was used by the Rough Riders to shoot horses or anything for that matter.

I'm sorry to see you back lockbreech. Your posts under previous THR screen names such as shortround360, isabella, DonRon, thehootman, hooterman, and possibly many others provide nothing of value to the discussion on this forum.
 
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