colt hammerless semi auto 1908

Jim, I agree, that key hole spring serves no obvious purpose. , but then again I see no purpose of disabling the safety. The safety lever is small, flat and tight, if left off, I can see very little chances of someone engaging it by accident. But hey, what do I know:D
 
It looks like the round eye police bosses simply did not trust the native police. They had to have them (as a practical matter, they couldn't impose foreign police) but they had little trust in the locals' honesty, skill or technical ability. So they made sure the local cops couldn't take the pistol down, made sure they couldn't steal ammo, made sure they didn't carry the pistol in a "ready" condition, etc.

It looks to me like that pistol pretty well sums up the whole history of colonialism.

Jim
 
I read somewhere or another that the SMP watch coming on duty would line ip for inspection. The sergeant would walk down behind the line pulling magazines to check for proper loading. With only six rounds, according to that piece.
 
The barrel spring was intended to correct a problem with the .380s whereby the empties sometimes struck the ejector (which was a part in common with the .32s) too far forward causing a stovepipe. The spring pushed the barrel to the right just as the slide approached the end of its travel curing the condition. This was done by the Shanghai Police armourers, who sent a report to Colt about the problem, and the final Shanghai Police order has this spring put in at the factory. Nobody else seems to have noticed this unreliability, probably because few users ever shot their pistols that much. In 1945 the U.S. Navy discovered (or rediscovered) the same problem, which Colt had decided to ignore unless the customer was big enough to be worth appeasing, and sent all as-yet unissued .380s back to Colt for correction. Colt’s engineers came up with a better solution than the Shanghai one, designing a gauge to measure whether the empties would hit the ejector at the right point and then grinding it down until it worked properly. Magazines were also altered as some of the lips were too narrow. It is not known whether the special SMP magazines were an attempt to address this problem.
Guns and magazines which received these modifications were stamped with a M (prefix to the serial in the case of the gun).
About half the US military .380s received this treatment.
 
Last edited:
Interesting. I have thought that most .380s were kind of kluges on .32 frames, like early .40s on 9mm actions. Except for the Remington, that is.
 
Nobody else seems to have noticed this unreliability, probably because few users ever shot their pistols that much.
Click to expand...

Yeah, very interesting. How much do you have to shoot it to notice it? Does it happen when the gun gets dirty? My Hammerless .380 is a dream to shoot and never hiccups. I tend to baby it with lighter loads.
 
That spring seems like an odd way to fix that problem, but Mk VII's info appears to be correct. Pate mentions the problems in a general way, and the use of the M to indicate the modification, but does not go into specifics. Given the way that ejector is designed, it would seem possible that jams might be caused by slight variations in the case rim diameter.

(One writer says that the M indicates a separate serial number series for military contract pistols; that is obviously incorrect.)

Jim
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top