Interesting story on how the Singer 1911 was uniquely finished as bright blue when the usual government contract standard was Parkerizing. I wonder why the US Government is not attempting to recover this as stolen equipment as recorded in the documentation? Bet they didn’t play as fast and loose with the Norden bombsight in that crashed B-24.
They looked the other way on military arms being brought home by US soldiers after WWII. . . they did not want them abandoned in the war zones, and it was easier to allow US GIs to bring them back than to collect them and destroy them or ship them home. . . so let 'em bring them back as souvenirs. Exceptions were made for fully auto weapons. . . but even some of those got snuck in.