A Legend And So Much More
By Will Dabbs, MD
Photos By Sarah Dabbs
How do you write about something like the Colt 1911 handgun? Terms like iconic, venerable and Old Slabsides have been exercised to the point of
tedium. Trying to describe the 1911 is like offering an overview of the American flag, a beginner’s treatise on baseball or an introductory essay on the Statue of Liberty.
There is always the option of descending into minutiae. This is akin to describing the chemical origins of the indigo blue dye that composes the backdrop to the stars on Old Glory or offering a thesis on the origins of the cord used to stitch baseballs. A comparably gauche observer might even speculate as to the nature of Lady Liberty’s underwear. None of this seems adequate to the gravitas of the subject material, however.
I will therefore opt for philosophy in my quest to investigate the institution known as the 1911. What is the 1911 handgun? Perhaps more so than any other physical object, John Moses Browning’s 1911 is the very embodiment of America.
The gun is big, loud and heavy, just like we are. When the rest of the planet seemed satisfied with a military handgun cartridge pushing a bullet weighing 115 grains, Mr. Browning simply doubled it. The 1911 has half a pound on Georg Luger’s P08 Parabellum and Lieutenant General Kijiru Nambu’s esoterically similar Japanese shooter. While the debate over the effectiveness of lightweight but fast military handgun rounds has raged apace for more than a century, nobody disputes that the reality of nearly half an inch of 230-grain, red-blooded American butt-whooping means not having to say you’re sorry.
The Browning-designed 1911A1 strips easily without tools.
The gun is robust and easily maintained in the field.
Real World
I had a friend who killed a man with a 1911. He has since passed on but he was a combat engineer in World War II. He won the Silver Star for emplacing a minefield in the dark within earshot of German positions. At one point he was wandering through the ravaged shell of a nameless European city just looking around, the deleterious effects of curiosity not being exclusively limited to felines. He pushed into a burned-out edifice and surprised another young man not altogether unlike himself. The primary difference between my friend and his new acquaintance is this young gentleman wore field gray and carried a Kar 98k at sling arms.
Both youngsters desperately scrambled for their weapons, a pathetic and heart-wrenching little footnote in a planetary conflict already saturated in blood. My friend was faster and the 1911A1 he carried performed as advertised. This microcosmic drama, played out at bad-breath range, irrevocably scarred my buddy. Movie depictions, video games and the evening news notwithstanding, normal people really don’t come from the factory designed to take human life, particularly not up close. The resulting emotional wounds seldom ever truly heal.
My wife’s grandfather is named Eddie and he was a paratrooper in World War II. He eventually fought the Germans in North Africa, Sicily, and all the way up the Italian peninsula. Eddie missed the first three years of his oldest daughter’s life serving overseas and fighting for the cause of liberty. I think of his sacrifice often when I feel inconvenienced having to get up a little early on Election Day to go vote.
Eddie loved his young bride as do most new husbands and the separation ached like a suppurating wound. He once happened upon a German Fiesler Storch observation plane brought down by Allied ground fire. He took his combat knife and salvaged a bit of plexiglass from the windscreen. As military service, even in a war zone, frequently involves hours of tedium he carefully and meticulously fashioned a new pair of transparent grips for his service pistol out of the Fiesler plastic.
He then sandwiched a picture of his gorgeous new wife underneath each grip, her beaming smile reaching across the decades to conjure a tear even today. He had an issue shoulder holster he had salvaged from a pile of bloody discarded gear at a field hospital, the officer who owned it previously no longer having use for the rig. The Colt 1911A1 he carried through literally countless fights leading up to the liberation of the Italian peninsula served as an intimate reminder of who really held the deed to his heart.
The 1911A1 service pistol is big, loud and powerful, just like the nation that
produced it. Designed by a Mormon gunmaker born before the American Civil War,
this iconic handgun carried U.S. servicemen through two World Wars and beyond.
When the rest of the world seemed satisfied with a military handgun that pushed
a 115-grain bullet, John Browning simply doubled it. From right to left, the
German 9mm Parabellum, the American .45 ACP and the Russian 7.62x25mm.
Origins
John Moses Browning, the father of the 1911, is as much an embodiment of the American mythos as is the handgun he designed. His family was Mormon and they fled to Utah in the second half of the 19th century to escape religious persecution in a nation founded upon the concept of avoiding such foolishness. Maturing in a family who built guns, John built his first firearm, a falling block rifle, at 13. The young man observed how the grass would lay down from the muzzle blast of a rifle being discharged and had the idea he might be able to harness this wasted energy to cycle a mechanical action and automatically reload a gun. One hundred twenty-eight patents later, Mr. Browning was arguably the most influential gun designer in human history.
The 1911 had a troubled genesis. American troops battling the Moro tribesmen in the Philippines in the first 13 years of the 20th century carried .38-caliber revolvers. Fanatical Muslims sporting a jihadist death wish such as these Moros were novel at the time, such behavior not being yet so commonplace then as is the case today. “Civilize ’em with a Krag” became a common military catch phrase in reference to the powerful Krag-Jorgensen service rifle of the day.
For more intimate work US forces found themselves mightily displeased with the capacity of the .38-caliber handgun cartridge to deflate the charging Moros when they got fully spooled up.
John Browning first designed a new cartridge. The .45 Automatic Colt Pistol (ACP) round came into being in 1904 based loosely upon a .41-caliber cartridge Browning was then drafting for Colt. After a little tweaking the .45 ACP was standardized pushing a 230-grain round-nosed bullet at 850 fps from a typical handgun barrel.
Firearms selection for military use a century ago was not the political and economic quagmire it is today, so after a fairly straightforward competition the field of competitors was thinned to just three contenders. Savage submitted an original design while Colt offered what would eventually become the 1911. Interestingly, the third contender came from the German firm Deutshe Waffen und Munitionsfabriken or DWM and was nothing more than Georg Luger’s P08 Parabellum chambered for .45 ACP. During testing, the first Luger offering, Serial Number 1 was destroyed. The second example, Serial Number 2, is arguably the most desirable collectible firearm on the planet. For reasons lost to history DWM eventually pulled out of the competition.
During the course of extensive testing the Savage gun suffered 37 failures in either parts or function against the Colt’s none. After a few minor design changes the 1911 was type-classified and fielded to establish an unmatched service record already familiar to anyone reading this. In 1924 Colt tweaked the design to yield the 1911A1 serving, all the way up
to 1985.
A survey of World War II combat handguns shows the 1911A1 to be in a class of its own.
From left to right, the German P08 Parabellum, the Belgian P35 Hi-Power, the British
Webley Mk IV, the American 1911A1, the Russian TT33 Tokarev, and the Walther P38.
Practical Tactical
I was issued a 1911A1 early on in my professional relationship with Uncle Sam. Our iterations of Browning’s old warhorse were older than we were by several multiples, having first rolled off the lines during World War II. All of these guns sported worn finishes, sloppy tolerances and at least a trip or three through the military refurbishment process. Regardless, I never had a failure on the range.
The standard GI-issue 1911A1 fills the hand like no other pistol. The gun is a bit front-heavy but the single-stack, 7-round magazine makes for a grip amenable to all but the most ridiculously large or pitifully small. The standard military sights suck but everybody’s sights sucked back then. If you ever find yourself grousing about the size and effectiveness of the sights on the 1911, snatch up a Luger or Type 94 Nambu and stop feeling sorry for yourself. The sights on the British Webley revolver are perhaps a bit more practical but just try reloading a Webley in the dark with sweaty hands and then try not to come running back to Mr. Browning’s magnificent piece of iron.
I’m a pretty normal-sized guy who shoots a lot and the .45 ACP in a stock 1911 platform is still a handful. It is not painful or unpleasant but for pure unfiltered shooting pleasure the .45 ACP can’t contend with the 9mm or, for that matter, a .22 LR. For a military handgun, however, shooting comfort should never be the primary factor when accuracy, downrange energy and reliability also fold into the mix.
On the range the standard 1911A1 seems to benefit most from its inimitable single-action trigger. All the controls are configured for right-handed shooters, (left-handed people apparently not having been invented until the 1970’s) but the ergonomics are arguably perfect. Magazines fall free easily on every example I have ever seen, and the modest slide serrations are more than adequate to do the job.
Condition 1 carry AKA “Cocked and Locked”—with the hammer cocked and safety on is the norm today. When I carried the 1911 back in the day as a young Army recruit we were told to keep the chamber empty and rack the slide on the draw. The original full-flap leather holster was not really designed for quick access anyway so the salient aspects of this practice never seemed like a big deal. The buddy I referenced previously who had the unfortunate encounter with his German counterpart did just fine racking the slide on the draw. A great many armed Israelis I met in their native country carry in this manner even with today’s modern offerings.
With a stock 1911 I find I have the best results if I don’t fight the gun too vigorously. I let recoil do its thing and the natural pointability, brings the muzzle back on target in less time than it takes to think about it. Seven rounds at a brisk cadence are gone fairly quickly but it’s still one more shot than a standard revolver brings to the fight. Controls stick out just right and magazine changes set the standard for everything else.
Unlike more modern high-capacity pistols, the 1911 is big-boned but slim. With a proper piece of carry gear Mr. Browning’s most famous design will hide underneath most modest clothing.
The gun strips without a fuss. There are really two different ways to take the pistol apart but I shan’t bore you with the details. Chances are you’ve done it yourself a thousand times as well and if not there is always the miracle of YouTube.
The subsequent Browning Hi-Power dispensed with the 1911’s pivoting link.
Otherwise there was very little to be improved upon.
Customizing
The basic 1911 has been stretched out, scrunched up, cut down and customized in ways old John Moses might never have imagined. There is even an Italian company producing the most bizarre version wherein two 1911 actions are mounted side by side on the same frame such that they fire two rounds and eject in opposite directions with each pull of the trigger. A cottage industry orbits around aftermarket sights, magazines, controls, finishes and trigger jobs.
The high-speed shooters I met when I was a soldier back in the day typically carried high-capacity 1911 pistols. They would buy a stripped frame upon assessing into the unit and then the artisans who managed their arms room would trick it out as a race gun with all the bells and whistles. A zillion rounds later after they left the premiere counterterrorist unit on the planet they got to keep their service handgun. That always seemed cool to me.
The leather full flap holsters that carried the 1911 pistols did not lend
themselves to speed but still rendered proper service for generations
of American GI’s.
An Appreciation
For downrange horsepower with full metal jacket rounds nobody else is even in the same neighborhood. By way of example I attended an unfortunate young man in the ER one time who found his head on the receiving end of a .45 ACP bullet. The exit wound would have accommodated a mature tangerine and the ultimate outcome of the evening’s festivities was never really in question.
John Moses Browning was a visionary and his testosterone-drenched, big-bore handgun carved an inseparable part of the American ethos. As I type these words the announcement has just hit the streets the US Army is once again in the market for yet another handgun to replace the Beretta M9 9mm, a design that has itself soldiered on respectably in US service for nearly 30 years. I carried one of those professionally, too, and it remains one of my favorite recreational shooting platforms.
The 1911A1 service pistol is big, loud and powerful, just like the nation that
produced it. Designed by a Mormon gunmaker born before the American Civil War,
this iconic handgun carried U.S. servicemen through two World Wars and beyond.
The Benchmark
The new handgun trials, according to the press release, promise to leave every option on the table. Possible calibers include 9mm, .357 Sig, .40 S&W, the timeless .45 ACP and anything else the flower of American ingenuity might be able to conjure within the next year or so. The resulting handgun will undoubtedly be built from plastic, carry a zillion rounds and sprout rails aplenty. At the end of the day, however, mark my words, some geek like me will heft one of these newfangled guns still warm from the factory and scamper out to the range to be the first guy in the country to get a review in print. On that day the immutable standard against which this newfangled high-tech shooter will be judged will be a 100-year-old, recoil-operated service handgun designed by a Mormon gunmaker from Utah born six years before the American Civil War. On that day I just have to wonder how well the new gun will fare.
Special thanks to www.worldwarsupply.com for the military equipment used in the accompanying photos.
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