.45 in combat

.in the movie FURY, Brad Pitt (Wardaddy) carried an S&W 1917 in .45 ACP in a shoulder rig. I wonder how common this actually was other than movie stuff.
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It depends on the unit and the rank of the soldier. In that book I mentioned above, one of the things that surprised me was the difference in both training and issued equipment between units that existed before the start of WWII and those units that were created later.

Units that existed between the wars had a lot of old WWI (and sometimes earlier) equipment in their possession. Some NCOs and officers chose to keep these older weapons that they were more familiar with rather than the newer stuff that they would have available later. The older units also had much more autonomy in their training. Recruits (usually locals within their state) that were added to these units to bring them up to full strength were often brought in green and given "boot camp" type training right in the unit, so these units developed their own way of doing things. Of course, we started the war with a very small army and later on so many new units were created, the old school units became the minority.
 
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There are documented instances of MANY .45 slugs in a single bad guy not putting them down and there are many instances of a single or double dropping somebody DRT. The two that come readily to mind are the cop with the G21 that emptied all his ammo into an assailant and he didn’t stop fighting until a head shot I believe. The other end of the spectrum was the GA gun store robbery a couple years back that was caught on video where the clerk/owner drew and put a couple quick shots from a 1911 into one of the robbers and it was like he used a remote control and hit the guys off button.
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Pistol calibers are pistol calibers. From 9mm to 45, they are all pretty much equal. Shot placement is what matters. That and a bit of luck.

That officer making the felony stop (story here) put 17 rds of 45ACP into the bad guy and was down to his last few rounds. Some of his rounds were heart and lung shots. He finally got prone behind a tree and made careful slowfire shots at the bad guys head while the felon was hiding behind the patrol car. (shot under the car IIRC) After this incident, he went to a Glock 17 and now carries over 100rds. Statistical, he'll likely never need it again.

The guy defending himself in the shop just got luckier. Both good guys made good center of mass hits.

Sometimes felons have a determined survival mindset too.
 
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I grew up with men who had served in all 3 wars we had where the 1911 pattern pistol served, plus several other "interventions" we had along the way. Most had nothing but a few incidents with the "45", but we got a few stories from my uncle who was in the 1st Marine Division at Chosin during Korea and my grandfather who was a SeaBee in the Pacific in WW2. Also a friend of my father's who was in ETO during WW2 had an amusing story about Soviet soldiers in Berlin trying to hijack American supplies and being deterred by a 45. Mostly good feedback about the pistols except the usual "loud and obnoxious". I believed my uncle when he said a 45 will drop a man where he stands if you hit them in the upper torso, and my grandfather who said a 45 was very comforting at night on Pacific islands when the Japanese were often fairly close. Most troops didn't get to carry a 1911 unless they were MPs or tankers or Jeep drivers or something similar, they were most often carried by officers and staff NCOs.

Most veterans don't talk about their experiences much, and even then they focus on the amusing stories over the bad ones.
 
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A customer of mine, when I showed him some of my favorite 1911's, made the comment that they were very inaccurate. I said mine weren't and handed him my Dan Wesson, which he shook and the stared at it with wonder, seems the 1911 a1 he had in Viet Nam rattled like a can with rocks in it. I helped him fit up a longslide in 9MM which he says now is his favorite handgun.

Anyway, he said the first 1911 he was issued in Viet Nam (He was an infantry Lieutenant) failed to feed at the range when he tried to get used to it. He turned it in and they issued another rattletrap to him which he went into the bush with. In one firefight his group had he saw two NVA riflemen just a few feet away just as they saw him, he pulled his 1911 and shot it twice and they both dropped.
He said the guns issued were in poor condition and assumed all those years since that all 1911's were like that, I'm happy to have changed his mind on that, but one thing he did not fault the 1911 for was any lack of effectiveness of the .45 ACP when the enemy was hit by one. He said they both went down like sacks of potatoes.
 
I have a close personal friend who was an officer in Vietnam, issued a 1911A1. His unit was in a number of firefights, including a couple ambushes. He has told me several times he used the 45 ACP "to good effect" on more than one occasion. I believe him.

Dave
 
HisSoldier said:
A customer of mine, when I showed him some of my favorite 1911's, made the comment that they were very inaccurate. I said mine weren't and handed him my Dan Wesson, which he shook and the stared at it with wonder, seems the 1911 a1 he had in Viet Nam rattled like a can with rocks in it. I helped him fit up a longslide in 9MM which he says now is his favorite handgun.

Anyway, he said the first 1911 he was issued in Viet Nam (He was an infantry Lieutenant) failed to feed at the range when he tried to get used to it. He turned it in and they issued another rattletrap to him which he went into the bush with. In one firefight his group had he saw two NVA riflemen just a few feet away just as they saw him, he pulled his 1911 and shot it twice and they both dropped.
He said the guns issued were in poor condition and assumed all those years since that all 1911's were like that, I'm happy to have changed his mind on that, but one thing he did not fault the 1911 for was any lack of effectiveness of the .45 ACP when the enemy was hit by one. He said they both went down like sacks of potatoes.
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You raise a good point about weapon condition. A little off topic but I got my 16 out of a junk pile and magazines, too, and many of our weapons were in various stages of disrepair such as bloopers w/o sights--not really necessary sure but indicative of the conditions of weapons that were handed out. Most of my 782 gear came via the pile to go through after KIA or medvacs. I actually watched an "armorer" hammer on the bolt face of my 16 before just pulling one out of another and replacing it when I told him 'never mind I will find another'. I got to fire 5 rounds with it before off to the bush.
 
The idea that a .45 will drop a man in his tracks is a myth. Has it happened? Of course. but a .22 LR has also "dropped a man in his tracks with a torso hit."

In actual use on the street, the .45 ACP is no more effective than a .40 or 9MM.
 
gbclarkson said:
I, too, am curious. 1000 inches? 1000 inches is just over 25 meters.
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1,000 inch indoor ranges were common in the military 50-60 years ago. They were even used with reduced targets for M-1 carbine training. There were outdoor 1000 inch ranges, but the ones I am familar with were indoor.
 
Yea, father in Korea. He said the best best thing about it is it was heavy so you could throw it at the enemy if you needed it. Not kidding, they were not in love with it. LOL
 
OK, I carried a 1911 in Vietnam for awhile. I worked in aviation on the flight line with mechanics. To me I hated the 1911, most inaccurate gun I ever shot. Never jammed and was reliable, but I don't think I could hit anyone with it if my life depended on it.

When I started flying I turned it in and was issued a .38 Spl S&W revolver. This was accurate. Those that flew in the helicopters, pilots, co-pilots and observers were issued .38 Spl revolvers. Crew chiefs and door gunners used M16s or M60s.

The 1911 I had in the service was so inaccurate that I would not even look at one from 1970 to 2002. No complaint about the cartridge just the guns. What I was issued while in the service was horrible.

Wasn't till 2002 when a friend let me shoot his Kimber Pro Carry II that my opinion of the 1911 changed.
 
The US military took its last large delivery of 1911A1 pistols in 1945, and canceled unfilled contracts for more.

SO, by the time you get to Viet Nam, the very newest of them had been in service for 20+ years and a few were still on "active duty" since the day they entered service, possibly even before WW I!

As one of the guys who was responsible for doing Direct Support and General Support level maintenance on those guns in the 70s, I can assure you that accuracy was not any consideration in determining if the gun was serviceable or not. SO lots of guys in the 60s and 70s met the 1911 as old, worn guns, that had been issued for decades (at the least) and many had seen actual combat during WWII and or Korea. Guns that had been field stripped or more, probably hundreds of thousands of times, in addition to being fired every once in a while.

Now here's something interesting, despite having been through a couple wars, and police actions and being older than the average troop carrying them (and sometimes twice as old) and the reports of horrible accuracy and all the other things said about them, during my enlistment I inspected hundreds if not thousands, only 3 1911A1s ever came to my shop for repair (and one of them was an actual 1911, not an A1). And all 3 for exactly the same repair.

Replacement of the rear sight because someone had dropped the gun and the sight got bashed. That ought to tell you something.
 
I had 6 uncles and 4 close cousins that fought in WWII. I never heard any stories about the guns. They all made it back, although one cousin spent 14 months recovering in a hospital as a result of Normandy.

One cousin gave his WWII relic to my Dad, and my Dad gave it to me. I do not know how it was acquired. The cousin was murdered at age 93 about 7 years ago and I never had a chance to question him.

I nicknamed it "Frankie" because it was a mix of parts. The frame was Ithaca with a date traced to 1942. The slide was stamped Remington Rand.

It is loose and is a lot easier to rack the slide than any of my Series 70 Government Models.

It will shoot 3-4" at 25 yds and has never failed to operate. I don't shoot it but maybe once per year and then maybe 25-50 shots with cast bullets.

It is a relic to me, and I will continue to treat it as such.
 
I'm not surprised the 1911's were in bad shape when I was in the service. From my experience they were very inaccurate and the fit of the parts was sloppy. After exiting the service someone offered to sell me a Colt 1911 a few years later. I laughed and told him I wouldn't own junk.

I was a revolver guy until I fired a Kimber. I bought that one in 2002 and still have it today. It was the first auto I ever liked and it was as accurate as any revolver I owned. The person that sold me the Kimber explained how mil-spec was not made for accuracy and what was needed to accurize a 1911. Today I'm a big fan of the 1911 and the .45 acp.
 
44 AMP said:
Guns that had been field stripped or more, probably hundreds of thousands of times, in addition to being fired every once in a while.
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Typo perhaps? Hundreds or Thousands? Certainly not hundreds of thousands. Once a day over 60+ years would amount to less than 25K.
 
Once a day over 60+ years would amount to less than 25K.
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ok, tis a typo.. or is it? :rolleyes:

For a single individual gun, sure its way too high, but thousands might not be, some guns served their entire careers and probably barely got touched. Other's "went to the wars" and got a lot of use.

Field stripped "once a day"? I have no idea how it averages out, but over a service life of 70+ years, and how many pistols? Some only get touched maybe once a week others? different. I've had days when I did a dozen before lunch...

My point is that the guns were taken apart and put back together A LOT. Probably more than any other weapon we've ever used. AND done by guys ranging from quality mechanics to guys who make Bubba's chop shop look like skilled professionals.

Part of the genius of Browning's design is that it allowed for that and generally survived as functional, well beyond anyone's expectations.

While not entirely true, it was close enough to true that we used to say "the main reason a Browning designed weapon stops firing is that it has run out of ammo..."
 
Note the 1911 pistol in 45 ACP or 38 AMU replaced the revolver in outdoor pistol matches in the early 1960's because it was more accurate properly refitted. The S&W 52 was it's only rival.
 
A friend of my parents was in the South Pacific during WWII. He said his unit had a casualty rate of about 2/3. As others have said, he didn't talk much about what he did in combat. He talked a lot about making friends of Japanese and taking care of orphaned children during the immediate post-war phase, though.

He did tell one story about his pistol. He said they were in the habit of sleeping with their pistols close, usually in a hammock. They had killed a cobra in camp that day, and when he put his feet down under the blanket he felt a snake and thought, "Those clowns put that dead snake in my hammock. I'm not going to give them the satisfaction of reacting." Then he felt something move and saw the blanket start to rise up between his feet. He slowly reached for his pistol, and he had enough moonlight to see where the peak of the blanket was, so he estimated where the head was and took his shot. Scared the bejeebers out of his buddies, but he made the shot.

He loved to tell stories about other stuff, but that was the only one he would tell about using a firearm during the war.
 
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