ORIGINAL: donnyone
this may get long so bare with me. recently my father inlaw gave me a small collection of relics that his father baught back from the war. one thing he gave me was a old military pistol, i wanted to dispose of it at first because im quite frankley not a gun person. ive never felt the need to have or be around guns. i joined another much smaller forum and asked for advice about the situation. ive sence descided to keep the old peice of history, even if i never use it,after all it is a faimly heirloom.
ive run in to a problem, im getting interested in the history of my father inlaws father and the war in general. idont know much about guns and seems like there was not alot of experts on the other board that i was on. i picked up on the fact that it is a 1911a1 but before that i did not even know what it was.could you all help me find out the history behind these guns. theframe says
"united states property m1911a1 U.S. ARMY No.1994XXX" it has some kind of round seal with cannons near the rear of the bottom part of the gun on the right side. its got a p under the release button,a j on the oppisite side on the trigger guard, and a FJA on the left side under the slide release.
the slide says
remington rand inc.
syracuse, n.y. u.s.a.
You have what appears to be an all original Remington Rand 1911A1 pistol. The "FJA" stands for Frank J Arnold who was the inspector chief at the time that pistol was produced and therefore bears his initials.
It's hard to tell from the photos if the finish is original or if it's been re-finished. If original you should see some discoloration at the slide stop notch as well as the front 1/3 of the slide. The steel in these areas was heat treated a little different than the rest of the pistol so that the metal would be harder thus withstand more abuse.
Here is a picture of my Remington Rand I just took, you can see what I'm talking about. I had to hold the pistol at a certain angle so you could see the discoloration.
Either way, it's a fantastic pistol and one you should hold on to. Below is some more information regarding Remington Rand pistols off the web for you to read about.
Remington Rand was awarded its first order on March 16th, 1942, for a total of 125,000 1911A1 pistols. The company had no experience building pistols at the time it was awarded the contract. Remington Rand formed a new division (Remington Rand "C" Division) to take charge of building the pistols. Remington Rand "C" Division converted a vacant plant into a modern pistol manufacturing facility. The plant was located on Dickerson street in Syracuse, N.Y and was once used for building typewriters,
Initially some manufacturing equipment was not available. This caused Remington Rand to acquire parts from other sources to complete the early pistols. They purchased barrels from High Standard, Colt, and Springfield Armory; Disconnectors from US&S; Grips safeties from Colt; and Slide stops from Colt and Springfield Armory (2,865 left over from WWI). Remington Rand "C" Division inherited much of the documentation, tooling, and machinery that originally was used by The Singer Manufacturing Co. in their Educational Order. Consequently some of the parts of the early pistols were made using Singer supplied tooling and fixtures. Careful examination of Early Remington Rand pistols will reveal striking similarities in some of the parts to Singer made parts such as the triggers and mainspring housings. The first 255 production pistols where accepted by ordinance inspectors in November of 1942.
Initial shipments appeared to perform satisfactorily, but subsequent tests performed by Ordnance Inspectors revealed serious problems with parts interchangeability. In March 1943 James Rand Jr., stopped production due to a high rate of Parts Interchangeability Test failures. Only after a change in management and a thorough review of the inspection and manufacturing operations was production finally resumed in May of 1943. Throughout production Remington Rand aggressively attempted to innovate and improve the production of 1911A1 pistols.
By March of 1945 they where building the lowest price pistol in the war effort and quality was considered second to none. By the end of the war Remington Rand had produced over 875,000 pistols.