ORIGINAL: hartshot101
Your dealing with a Springfield edition .45 caliber 1911. theese were used in WWII. After the army tried the .38 spc. The 38 was to much a low power caliber to stop the japanese and others they were fighting. Most of the enemy's were dopped up on drugs and anphedimines so they would feel little pain there for the soldiers would have to empty clips into the enemy before they would come down. So the army adopted the .45 round, it was a heavier caliber with better ballistics with better take down power than the smaller .38. But anyways your 1911 is in excellent shape. keep it oilled regularly and dont sell it.
hartshot, you have the events about right, but your description is way outof phase time-wise, and you have the enemy wrong! The revolver that didn't work was NOT a .38 Special, but a .38 Colt. There is quite a difference! The time was 1900-1903, NOT 1941-45, and the enemy that was hopped up on drugs were not Japs, but the Moro Juramentados of the southern Philippine Islands. And the war was called the "Philippine Insurrection". When the Army decided (didn't take long to figure out) that the recently adopted .38 Colt revolvers were ineffective against the Moros, they dug the old .45 Colt Single-action revolvers out of the warehouses and reissued them to the troops in the Philippines.
Later, the results of the Army's so-called Thompson-Lagarde tests of handgun stopping power once again convinced the Army that a pistol or revolver bullet had to be at least .45 caliber, and weigh over 200 grains. This decision lead to the adoption of the John M. Browning-designed Colt pistol, caliber .45, in 1911. This happenedWAY AFTER the Philippine Insurrection was over, WAY BEFORE we fought the Japs in WWII-and before we fought the Krauts in WWI, even!
This guy's pistol is the 1911-A1 version, a modification of the original design that was adopted in 1926. The modifications included an extended tang on the grip safety, an arched mainspring housing, cutouts on the sides of the frame behind the trigger with a shorter triggerso guys with shorter fingers could reach the trigger easier, and a larger notch in the rear sight along with a wider, higher front sight for better aiming. All in all, the A1 is a marked improivement over the plain early 1911's. I have shot both, and can attest to the fact that the M1911A1 is better!
These pistols were used in every war we fought in the 20th Century after 1911, including WWI, WWII, Korean War, and Vietnam, not to mention every other little scrape we got into between 1911 and 1985, when the current M9 Beretta 9mm popgun was adopted. We are just now beginning to find out this9mm was a mistake too, but perhaps not quite as bad a mistake as that damned .38 Colt!