Posted on 08/18/2012 2:50:53 PM PDT by Jet Jaguar
HARTFORD, Conn. — The newest Colt .45-caliber pistol is touted for its durability and design.
It is tested to make sure it can be dropped in water, covered in mud, immersed in sand or ice, or left in a dust storm — and still be able to blast off a round when you pull the trigger.
"Virtually, it's indestructible," said Casimir Pawlowski, who works in international sales and technical sevices for Colt Defense LLC. "You can drive over these things with a Humvee and they're still gonna work. It's like a brick that shoots bullets."
An order last month of new M45 Close Quarter Battle Pistols for the Marines is the first purchase of any Colt handgun in almost three decades by any branch of the U.S. military, though .45-caliber Colts were a trusty sidearm of the Army and Marines for most of the 20th century.
Pawlowski started working at Colt Defense several years ago after a 30-year career as a Navy Corpsman. In 1977, he joined the medical corps serving the Navy and U.S. Marines who carried an earlier version of the Colt as their official sidearm — the Model 1911 .45-caliber automatic.
"We saw the .45s out there, and that's what the guys wanted," Pawlowski said.
Connecticut's historic gun manufacturer first sold its semi-automatic Model 1911, designed by John Moses Browning, to the U.S. military in 1911. At the turn of the 19th century, the military was looking for a stronger handgun than the .38-caliber revolvers used in close combat during the Phillipine-American War. The .45-caliber promised knock-down power — more likely to kill than injure — compared with the .38-caliber.
Browning's design was an impressive development from 19th century single-action Army revolvers that held six, individually loaded bullets. The Model 1911 was designed to have a spring-loaded magazine of bullets fit vertically inside the pistol grip. The Model 1911 features a sliding top which ejects a bullet casing, or shell, immediately after a bullet is fired while slipping another round into position for the next shot.
"It's been a brilliant design," Pawlowski said. "Browning was kind of like the Jimi Hendrix of the gun world at the time."
The Model 1911 Colt has been called the "most respected handgun" and was carried, mostly by U.S. military officers, during both World Wars, in Korea and Vietnam.
But in 1985, the federal government, switched to Italian-owned Beretta to provide 9-millimeter pistols as the new official sidearm for the military. The switch was controversial in the 1980s.
The argument in favor of changing to 9-millimeter cartridges was mostly to standardize the U.S. military with other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO. The U.S. General Accounting Office, however, said in 1982, leading up to the change, that substituting an existing inventory with 9-mm pistols would be costly. It wasn't clear if there was any advantage to a 9-mm round versus existing sidearms, the GAO report said.
In recent years, the Marine Corps has been building its own .45-caliber pistols at a facility in Quantico, Va., using parts from existing inventory of Model 1911 pistols and other commercial parts, said Barbara Hamby, spokeswoman for Marine Corps System Command, which orders guns for the Marines. The government, however, hadn't bought new handguns from Colt for decades. That changed this month with the first order of up to 12,000 Colt pistols, starting with 4,036 right away.
"The Colt pistol met or exceeded all requirements put forth in the solicitation and offered the best value to the government," Hamby said. "Colt Defense LLC successfully competed under a best value competitive source selection utilizing a performance specification. Any historical significance inferred from the selection of Colt's offered weapon is coincidental."
The West Hartford Colt manufacturing plant where the pistols are made, along with many other guns, is a spectacle of curiosities.
A computerized lathe about the size of an MRI machine sculpts gun barrels to the 1/10,000th of an inch.
In one room, a team of highly skilled engravers chisel designs on custom-made revolvers, making art on the firearm. They tap tiny, 24-karat-gold-wire strands into inlaid designs, including one pistol with a scrimshaw-scratched portrait of Samuel Colt on one side of the ivory handle.
Engraver Jan Gwinnell says he has been carving designs for Colt for 33 years. Master engraver George Spring said he's been with the company since 1975, though he started engraving earlier than that.
Colt even has a special sauce.
Deep inside the big-box factory is a square vat of chemicals that looks like a doughnut grease fryer, labeled "Activated Black Magic." Beside it are similar vats full of water. This is where polished, carbon steel pistols can be stained as azure as the deep ocean in Belize.
"That'll give you your royal blue finish on carbine steel," said Phil Hinkley, vice president of quality at Colt Defense LLC, said of the oxidizing chemical. "After they pull it out of here, they'll dip it into a cold water tank."
The color can be contrasted with inlaid gold, for example, for an exotic look to the expensive, custom-designed guns that are sold to collectors by the other Colt — the company under the same roof that makes consumer guns sold at WalMart, Cabela's, Bass Pro Shops and gun stores.
Colt gives a pair of customized guns to each standing president, though Bill Clinton was the only one not to accept the offer, Hinkley said.
In the back of the factory, the accuracy of guns is tested in an indoor shooting range. In addition to paper targets, a series of microphones use acoustics to track the bullets.
"They pick up the acoustics of the round going by, and they'll chart what the group size is," Hinkley said. The microphones also measure the number of rounds fired per minute and the gun's muzzle velocity.
Two companies share the 310,000-square-foot facility on New Park Avenue in a commercial and industrial strip next to BJ's Wholesale Club.
Colt Defense LLC was spun off from its parent company Colt's Manufacturing Company LLC in 2002 to protect the military-contract business from lawsuits against gun makers. Colt Defense sells to U.S. and allied militaries in 90 nations around the world as well as to law enforcement agencies. Colt's Manufacturing makes guns for regular customers, such as collectors, hunters and target shooters.
While the military hasn't bought Colt handguns in 27 years, the federal government has purchased other Colt firearms all along. Since the M4 carbine was introduced in 1993, the U.S. Army has been a major customer, buying 19,000 the next year for the Army and Special Forces. Colt sells machine guns to the military, too.
Throughout the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the military bought a steady supply of the M4 — a short, lightweight rifle, which is a successor to the M-16 that the government bought from the Vietnam era until 1988.
The drawdown of troops a few years ago contributed to a financial slump at Colt Defense as net sales dropped from $270 million to $175 million between 2009 and 2010. Last year, sales were up to $208 million. The company also recovered from an $11.3 million net loss in 2010 to report net income of $5.2 million last year.
The Marines' contract to buy up to 12,000 pistols for $22.5 million over five years means it accounts for about 2 percent of Colt Defense's annual sales. That's not enough to drive the success of the company. But the historic return to Colt sidearms is significant and it's a morale boost within the company.
"I call it in the category of 'cool,'" said Gerry Dinkel, CEO and president of Colt Defense.
"It just has a lot of ring to it when you have something that's this long lived," Dinkel said of the Model 1911.
The return to West Hartford-made Colts from Italian-owned Beretta also carries some patriotic pride.
Dinkel said, "A lot of people have said it's great to go back to an American supplier."
Damn! Other than Sportsman’s, you seem to be right.
Color me shocked!
Must be a local favorite around me.
Caspar Weinberger, pressured by Lord Carrington, Secretary General of NATO.
I agree DA/SA is a solution to a nonexistent problem. There is very likely no one here who has sent as many .45 down the pipe as I have. I haven’t had a contaminated primer yet in my life, but the man who can fire the first shot DA, then the second one in .3 seconds SA accurately is a special 1 person indeed. I have shot about about 200 rounds a week through a .45 ACP since about 1974, winning lots of speed events, mostly with an Ed Brown modified Series 70. typically the second shot is going to go off before you’re ready, then you are so rattled the third is a waste as well. I can shoot a DA revolver, so would much rather have DA only, a Glock type action or SA only. You don’t need anything else on your mind in a fire fight. In that rare 1 in 50,000 rounds bad primer, the military won’t train you to pull the trigger again, and wonder whether it will fire, work the slide and get it out of there and take your chance on the next one. By the way, I have serious doubts if a primer is oil contaminated, that another strike is going to do a damn thing, except get you shot when it doesn’t go off. Clear your weapon and fire a fresh round.
I believe that one should carry a weapon that they trust. If Sig works for you than rock on, sir! And this IS a great country, isn’t it? The greatest in fact, regardless of a certain Kenyan’s opinion.
My wife’s grandfather was in the Spanish American War and i’ve never heard it refered to as anything else.
The modern generation of idiots suck!
Holy Cow! Some of those gunbroker prices are insane.
Elite Ammunition is a boutique dealer that has some of their own brand, but it’s specialty SD loads that are WAY too expensive for plinking around.
I did eventually have decent sights installed and a good trigger, and bobbed the hammer a little.
Still, I have a lot of handguns now, and the only one that is so soft to shoot combined with tackdriver accuracy is a des-69 22 competition gun.
Don’t try to stand in front of the pop gun 9mm, loaded with Hornady critical defense load, when it goes off.
I don’t think that the result will be much different from getting hit with a .45 ACP.
In both cases you will say “ouch”.
“I’ll get flamed for this, but the 1911 in its original form is obsolete.”
I’ll keep my origional military issue 1911 thank you!!!
Yes there was a Spanish American War which was focused on Cuba but we did attack the Spanish Fleet in Manila Bay, totally destroying or capturing the Spanish Navy.
When the war ended, Spain had ceded a lot of territory to the U.S. That included the Philippines.
After we took over some of the locals thought it was time to be independent and fought the U.S. for several years. As someone else said, there was also an uprising by Muslims who were known as Moros.
We treated the Filipinos so well that we pacified most of the Islands but the Moros who would typically take drugs and get themself into a rage before attacking, were hard to stop with the puny .38 Army and Navy D.A. revolvers. These were even less powerful than the .38 special. They would eventually die but often not before killing or severely injuring American soldiers. That is why we went back to the .45.
The Moros were mainly on the Southern big Island of Mindanao. That is the one which lasted much longer tho we eventually subdued them too.
As my little girl would say: "that's about a million, billion, thousand, five thousand!"
“carbine steel”
LOL!
Be that as it may, and this is coming from a guy who does NOT normally carry a .45, my prison guard buddy tells me there are scads of cons in the joint walking around with 9mm holes in them. .4+, not so much....
Correction it was the Philippine Insurrection were the regulars were equipped with .38 caliber revolvers, but the Phillipine constabulary were issued .45 Colt Peacemakers. These ( the .45 revolvers) were considered obsolete by the Army .
It was in fighting with the guerrillas that the Army realized that against a fanatic enemy at close quarters the .38 revolver cartridge ( NOT the .38 Special) just didn’t cut it.
The “War Department “ then came out with a “request for an improved sidearm”. The Browning design was an improvement on an earlier Browning pistol in the same cartridge.
Just thought you would like to know. 8*)
Size does matter and I want it protecting our best.
And we have a winner! Yup.
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