On the initial testing and development of the 1911...
By the turn of the century it was known that the U.S. military was looking for a semi-automatic pistol. So a whole number of companies and inventors, foreign and domestic, submitted guns and prototypes for testing and trials. The earliest guns were not in 45 acp because the military didn't settle on that till a bit after they began a search.
The guns were submitted from:
Mr. Lafe Pence Jr. from San Francisco, ca. Pence submitted a blow forward design. Didn't last long.
Mr. C. Ceston submitted a prototype pistol. It went in and out the door. Not much is known about it, it seems.
Savage Arms Co., They first submitted a gun in 1904. It went through trials and they kept improving it. It went head to head with the 1911 till the latter won in 1911. It went on to be sold commercially for awhile. A sleek looking gun.
Mr. W.B. Knoble of Tacoma, Washington. Entered his pistol (the Knoble Automatic pistol in 45 acp) in 1906 in the trials. It was a toggle action. It washed out in less than a year as being too crudely made.
The White-Merrill Pistol, designed by Joseph C. White and Samuel Merrill of Mass. Loaded via a clip from the top. Didn't last long.
The Pierce-Hawkins Pistol Developed by Major W.S. Pierce and Lt. Wilford J. Hawkins of the U.S. Army Ordnance Dept. and built at Springfield Armory. Submitted in 1907. It was out within a few months.
Mr. Arthur T. Ward of Pennsylvania submitted submitted a drawing with notes in 1907. The Army asked him to submit a working model but he didn't get it done.
Mr. Henry H. Talbot of St. Louis submitted drawings in 1907 and nothing else. Aw well...
Same thing with a few others...drawings but no gun or working prototype.
Capt. W.A. Philips of U.S. Army Ordnance, submitted a gas operated pistol designed by himself and built at Franklin Armory. It did not last in the trials.
Trabue Pistol by the Trabue Firearms Co. of New York City. It was designed and built but did not do well in experimental firing and not submitted by the co. It had a frame shaped like a revolver.
The Reifgraber Pistol built by a machinist from St. Louis, Joseph Reifgraber. It featured a stationary barrel and a locked breech. Looked very much like a Ruger .22 caliber pistol but in 45 acp. In writing about his gun Reifgraber wrote:
"The more or less manually operated so called "safeties" are more dangerous than protective, for more than one reason...The gun must be a one-hand arm in the fullest sense of the word, and such a one hand arm, to really be "safe", must be so without attention of the user to any kind of manually operated "safety"; it must aim naturally without the use of sights if needs be, (in the dark for instance), and it must function properly and without fail no matter what position it may be held in."
He built a few prototypes but by the time he was ready to submit guns to the trials the Colt had been adopted.
The list of foreign entrants was also long. Mauser, Borchardt, Mannlicher, Bergmann, Frommer, Krag, Ross-Styer, Campo-Giro and others were considered, tested. But of those only the Luger lasted. The Luger in 45acp almost had it. But in a final trial the wrong specs for the 45 acp were sent to Georg Luger. So when he brought his guns in from Germany they malfunctioned with the new 45acp. He was out of the running. Contracts in Europe called him and DWM.
tipoc
