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Colt’s Patent Firearms Manufacturing (1847-1947)(1955-1964) Colts Manufacturing Company (1947-1955) Colt’s inc. Firearms Division (1964-        )

The M1911 is a single-action, semi-automatic, magazine-fed, and recoil-operated handgun chambered for the .45 ACP cartridge. It was designed by John M. Browning, and was the standard-issue side arm for the United States armed forces from 1911 to 1985, and is still carried by some U.S. forces. It was widely used in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. Its formal designation as of 1940 was Automatic Pistol, Caliber .45, M1911 for the original Model of 1911 or Automatic Pistol, Caliber .45, M1911A1 for the M1911A1, adopted in 1924. The designation changed to Pistol, Caliber .45, Automatic, M1911A1 in the Vietnam era. In total, the United States procured around 2.7 million M1911 and M1911A1 pistols in military contracts during its service life.

The M1911 is the most well-known of John Browning's designs to use the short recoil principle in its basic design. They are semi-automatic pistols with a seven round, detachable magazine. There are a manual safety, a grip safety and a magazine safety on the M1911’s. The lock-up functions with grooves between the barrel and the slide. After firing the pistol, the Slide/barrel unit travel back on short recoil, while the rear of the barrel is being pulled down by a link to unlock the slide from the barrel. The slide can now travel rearward to eject the spent casing and add another round in the chamber.  

Besides the pistol being widely copied itself, this operating system rose to become the pre-eminent type of the 20th century and of nearly all modern centerfire pistols. It is popular with civilian shooters in competitive events such as IDPA, International Practical Shooting Confederation, and Bullseye shooting. It is also a popular civilian concealed carry option due to its slim width.

In 1970 the series 70 was introduced as an improvement of the M1911A1 and Gold Cup National Match, it differed from its predecessors primarily in the design of barrel and bushing, now incorporating a “spring bushing” to always hold tension on the barrel, and a slight swelling on the end of the barrel to increase tension. The basic action is M1911 with improvements to increase accuracy and reliability of the M1911A1 due to wear of the barrel bushing and lock-up grooves. 

In the 1980's Colt introduced a new series of all their models, with an additional safety device, namely a firing pin safety, which didn't allow the pistol to fire if the trigger wasn't pulled to the end of its travel. The guns produced after this, are called Colt MKIV - Series 80. This safety system, although it was deemed necessary in today's world of lawsuits, it is rumoured to have a bad effect on trigger pull. For this reason, it was never widely accepted by expert shooters who want a decent trigger pull on their firearms. 

During the 1990’s Colt announced their "Enhanced Series" of M-1911s, which were basically the Series 80 guns, with several modifications that most shooters would do on their pistols. Such modifications were a beavertail grip safety, beveled magazine well, flared ejection port, and a cut underneat the rear of the trigger guard, which allowed the pistol to sit lower in one's hand. 

This pistol was made in 1941 by Colt. (Ref. ‘The Colt d/a revolvers’ by J Kuhnhausen, ‘Pistols and revolvers’ by JE Smith, ‘Price guide for collector handguns’ by R H Balderson, ‘Pistols of the world’ by Hogg and Weeks p14/74, Blue book serialization.)
De Wilde Firearms
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