Colt .45 Combat Classic

American servicemen have fought with the Colt M1911 .45 pistol from World War I to the Gulf War. More than 80 years after its introduction, this classic handgun is still widely regarded as one of the best combat pisftols in the business.

The venerable Colt was recently replaced in US service by a version of the Beretta 92 9-mm pistol. But this new weapon, designated M9, has been dogged by problems, and deliveries were so far behind schedule that the Colt went to war once again in Operation Desert Storm.

The story behind the American love affair with the Colt .45 began with John Browning, who took out a number of patents covering possible methods of operating automatic pistols in 1897. Within a year he and the Colt company to whom he had licensed all the patents were demonstrating a .38 calibre automatic to the US Army.

When the Army fought fanatical tribesmen in the Philippines, American soldiers demanded a very powerful pistol cartridge which would be guaranteed to disable the most ferocious spearman .38s were not considered sufficiently powerful and in 1904 a series of tests was conducted by firing a varierty of different weapons against live animals jand human corpses. The Army concluded that only .45 calibre would do and Colt re-worked the design to accommodate this larger round.

Army tests in 1907 recommended that the Colt and a design by Savage should be given more extensive trials. These were completed in 1909 and both pistols sent back for some modifications. In fact Browning more or less completely redesigned the Colt, and by the spring of 1910 this new model was submitted. Army tests throughout 1910 caused the Savage to be eliminated, and more detail work to be done on the Colt, with the final result that on 29 March 1911 the Colt design was formally approved as the 'U.S. Pistol, Automatic, Caliber .45, Model 1911'.

Browning locking system

The Browning design is of classic simplicity, so classic and so simple that it is still appearing on new pistol designs to this day. The pistol consists of three major components, the frame, the barrel and the slide. The slide moves back and forth on rails in the frame, and the rear half of the slide is the breech block, carrying the firing pain and extractor.

The frame consists of the butt, holding the magazine, the trigger, the hammer, and a grip safety device which prevents the hammer going forward unless the butt is properly held and the grip compressed. The barrel is attached to the frame by a short link pinned underneath the barrel at its upper end and anchored to the frame by a cross-pin at its lower end; this acts as a sort of hinge around which the rear of the barrel can swing. The top of the barrel has two ribs machined on it, and these match two grooves in the inner surface of the slide top.

To fire the pistol you insert a magazine into the butt, pull back the slide against a spring which lies beneath the barrel, and release it. The slide runs forward and the edge of the freech block collects a cartridge and pushes it into the chamber of the barrel forward, and the 'swinging link' underneath it causes it to pivot forward and up. As it does so, the lugs on top move into place in the grooves inside the slide top and the barrel and slide are locked together.

Pull the trigger and the hammer drops, hits the firing pin, and fires the cartridge. The bullet goes down the barrel and the barrel recoils. In doing so it makes jthe slide recoil as well since the two are locked together, so the breech stays firmly closed until the bullet has left the muzzle and the powder pressure inside the barrel has dropped to a level where it is safe to begin opening the breech.

As the barrel moves back it pivots around the link until the lugs are pulled free from the slide recesses. At this point the barrel stops movi8ng, but the slide has been given sufficient momentum, by the recoil, to continue back, extracting the empty case and ejecting it and cocking the hammer by simply rolling over it. Recoil stops, the spring forces the slide back, the pistol reloads and the barrel and slide lock together again.

After experience with the pistol during World War I, the US army requested some small changes that improved the handling without changing the significant features, and the pistol then became known as the M1911A1 in 1926. No further improvements were made throughout its service life, and today Colt still manufacture to the same pattern for commercial sale.

Man's cartridge

Firing the Colt .45 is not a pasttime for dilettantes; it has a powerful cartridge and when you pull the trigger you are left in no doubt that you have just touched off a .45. Because of this it takes a good deal of time and a good deal of ammunition before you reach a competetent level of skill and a lot more of both before you become really expert. As a combat pistol it is highly regarded simply because of its reliability and its awesome stopping power; hit somebody with a .45 and he immediately loses interest in the argument.

The Colt does have its drawbacks especially in the 1990s when large magazine capacities are all the rage. The magazine only holds 7 rounds; it is a single action gun, which means that either you carry it unloaded and have to pull back the slide before going into action, or you load it, leave the hammer cocked and put on the safety. Some experts frown on both these concepts today; it's heavy and the sights are scarcely up to target standards.

Add that to the training problem and you see why the US Army is trying to adopt a modern double-action 9-mm pistol with a 15-shot magazine. But there are an awful lot of people in America who feel that a 9-mm bullet isn't going to stop arguments with anything as certain as the finality of a .45 slug.