PISTOLS AND REVOLVERS.
The American pistol was one of the great successes of the war. For
several years before the war came the Ordnance Department had been
collaborating with private manufacturers to develop the automatic
pistol; but none of our officers realized until the supreme test came
what an effective weapon the Colt .45 would be in the hand-to-hand
fighting of the trenches. In our isolation we had suspected, perhaps,
that the bayonet and such new weapons as the modern hand grenade had
encroached upon the field of the pistol and revolver. We were soon to
discover our mistake. In the hands of a determined American soldier the
pistol proved to be a weapon of great execution, and it was properly
feared by the German troops.
We had long been a nation of pistol shooters, we Americans, but not
until the year 1911 did we develop a pistol of the accuracy and
rapidity of fire demanded by our ordnance experts. The nations of
Europe had neglected this valuable arm almost altogether, regarding it
principally as a military ornament which only officers should carry.
The result of Europe's neglect was that the small-caliber revolvers of
the Germans and even of the French and English were toys in comparison
with the big Colts that armed the American soldiers.
America owed the Colt .45 to the experiences of our fighters in
the Philippines, and to the inventive genius of John Browning of
machine-gun fame. In the earlier Philippine campaigns our troops used
a .38-caliber pistol. Our soldiers observed that when the tough
tribesmen were hit with these bullets and even seriously wounded they
frequently kept on fighting for some time. What was needed was a hand
weapon that would put the adversary out of fighting the instant he
was hit, whether fatally or not. We therefore increased the caliber
of the automatic pistol to .45 and slowed down the bullet so that it
tore flesh instead of making a clean perforation. These improvements
gave the missile the impact of a sledge hammer, and a man hit went down
every time.
Moreover, in this development great improvement had been made in the
accuracy of the weapon, the 1911 Colt being the straightest-shooting
pistol ever produced in this country. Even the best of the older
automatics and revolvers were accurate only in the hands of expert
marksmen. But any average soldier with average training can hit what
he shoots at with a Colt. The improvements in the automatic features
brought it to the stage where it could be fired by a practiced man 21
times in 12 seconds. In this operation the recoil of each discharge
ejects the empty shell and loads in a fresh one.
Only a few men of each infantry regiment carried pistols when our
troops first went into the trenches. But in almost the first skirmish
this weapon proved its superior usefulness in trench fighting. Such
incidents as that of the single American soldier who dispersed or
killed a whole squad of German bayoneteers which had surrounded him
struck the enemy with fear of Yankee prowess with the pistol. The
"tenderfoot's gun," as the westerners loved to call it, had come to its
own.
By midsummer of 1917 the decision had been made to supply to the
infantry a much more extensive equipment of automatic pistols than had
previously been prescribed by regulations--to build them by hundreds of
thousands where we had been turning them out by thousands. In February,
with war in sight, realizing the limitations of our capacity then for
producing pistols, the Colt automatic being manufactured exclusively by
the Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Co. at Hartford, Conn., and
for a limited period by the Springfield Armory, we took up with the
Colt Co. the proposition of securing drawings and other engineering
data which would enable us to extend the production of this weapon to
other plants. This work was in progress when in April, 1917, it was
interrupted by the military necessity for calling upon every energy we
had in the production of rifles.
In order to supplement the pistol supply, although the Colt automatic
was the only weapon of this sort approved for the Army, the Secretary
of War authorized the Chief of Ordnance to secure other small arms,
particularly the double-action .45-caliber revolver as manufactured by
both the Colt Co. and the Smith & Wesson Co. These revolvers had been
designed to use the standard Army caliber-.45 pistol cartridges. The
revolver was not so effective a weapon as the automatic pistol, but
it was adopted in the emergency only to make it possible to provide
sufficient of these arms for the troops at the outset.
At the start of hostilities the Colt Co. indicated that it could tool
up to produce pistols at the rate of 6,000 per month by December, 1917,
and could also furnish 600 revolvers a week beginning in April. As soon
as funds were available we let a contract to the Colt Co. for 500,000
pistols and 100,000 revolvers, and to the Smith & Wesson Co. one for
100,000 revolvers. Although these contracts were not placed until
June 15, in the certainty that funds would eventually be available
both concerns had been working on the production of weapons on these
expected contracts for many weeks.
When the order came from France to increase the pistol equipment, in
addition to efforts to increase production at the plants of the two
existing contractors we made studies of numerous other concerns which
might undertake this class of manufacture. The proposal to
purchase .38-caliber revolvers as a supplementary supply was abandoned
for the reason that any expansion of this manufacture and of that for
the necessary ammunition would be at the expense of the ultimate output
of .45s and ammunition therefor.
In December, 1917, the Remington Arms-Union Metallic Cartridge Co. was
instructed to prepare for the manufacture of 150,000 automatics, Colt
model 1911, at a rate to reach a maximum production of 3,000 per day.
Considerable difficulty was experienced in obtaining the necessary
drawings and designs, because the manufacture of these pistols at
the Colt Co. plant had been largely in the hands of expert veteran
mechanics, who knew tricks of fitting and assembling not apparent in
the drawings. The result was that the drawings in existence were not
completely representative of the pistols. Finally complete plans were
drawn up that covered all details and gave interchangeability between
the parts of pistols produced by the Remington Co. and those by the
Colt Co., which was the goal sought.
During the summer of 1918 in order to fill the enormously increased
pistol requirements of the American Expeditionary Forces, contracts for
the Colt automatic were given to the National Cash Register Co., at
Dayton, Ohio; the North American Arms Co., Quebec; the Savage Arms Co.,
Utica, N. Y.; Caron Bros., Montreal; the Burroughs Adding Machine Co.,
Detroit, Mich.; the Winchester Repeating Arms Co., New Haven, Conn.;
the Lanston Monotype Co., Philadelphia, Pa.; and the Savage Munitions
Co., San Diego, Calif.
All of these concerns, none of which had ever before produced
the .45-caliber pistol, were proceeding energetically with their
preparations for manufacture when the armistice came to cancel their
contracts. No pistols were ever obtained from any except the Colt's
Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Co. and the Remington Arms-Union
Metallic Cartridge Co.
Difficulty was experienced in securing machinery to check the walnut
grip for the pistols, and to avoid delay in production the Ordnance
Department authorized the use of Bakelite for pistol grips in all the
new plants which were to manufacture the gun. Bakelite is a substitute
for hard rubber or amber, invented by the eminent chemist Dr. Baekeland.
At the outbreak of the war the Army owned approximately
75,000 .45-caliber automatic pistols. At the signing of the armistice
there had been produced and accepted since April 6, 1917, a total of
643,755 pistols and revolvers. The production of pistols was 375,404
and that of revolvers 268,351. In the four months prior to November
11, 1918, the average daily production of automatic pistols was 1,993
and of revolvers 1,233. This was at the yearly production rate of
approximately 600,000 pistols and 370,000 revolvers. These pistols were
produced at an approximate cost of $15 each.
_Production of pistols and revolvers to Dec. 31. 1918._
---------------+------------------------+-----------------------+-------
| Pistols. | Revolvers. |
+-------+-------+--------+-------+-------+-------+ Total
| | | | | | |pistols
| |Reming-| Total | |Smith &| Total | and
| Colt. | ton |pistols.| Colt. |Wesson.|revolv-|revolv-
| |U.M.C. | | | | ers. | ers.
---------------+-------+-------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------
Apr. 6 to Dec. | 58,500| | 58,500| 20,900| 9,513| 30,413| 88,913
29, 1917 | | | | | | |
January, 1918 | 11,000| | 11,000| 8,700| 7,500| 16,200| 27,200
February, 1918 | 14,500| | 14,500| 8,800| 8,550| 17,350| 31,850
March, 1918 | 21,300| | 21,300| 11,800| 12,400| 24,200| 45,500
April, 1918 | 22,400| | 22,400| 10,400| 10,650| 21,050| 43,450
May, 1918 | 35,000| | 35,000| 11,100| 12,150| 23,250| 58,250
June, 1918 | 37,800| | 37,800| 11,100| 14,250| 25,350| 63,150
July, 1918 | 39,800| | 39,800| 11,600| 11,555| 23,155| 62,955
August. 1918 | 40,400| | 40,400| 11,300| 13,358| 24,658| 65,058
September, 1918| 32,100| 640| 32,740| 11,100| 12,650| 23,750| 56,490
October, 1918 | 42,300| 3,881| 46,181| 13,500| 16,675| 30,175| 76,356
November, 1918 | 45,800| 4,102| 49,902| 11,900| 12,660| 24,560| 74,462
December, 1918 | 24,600| 4,529| 29,129| 9,500| 11,400| 20,900| 50,029
---------------+-------+-------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------
Total |425,500| 13,152| 438,652|151,700|153,311|305,011|743,663
---------------+-------+-------+--------+-------+-------+-------+-------