1943 Remington Rand M1911A1

[usmc3439]

Well folks, recently I finally got the pistol I wanted for a long time. Had to save for a while to be able to get it, but it was worth the wait. It is a 1943 Remington Rand M1911A1. It still has all the correct checkered parts, vintage Keyes Fibre grips, and stamped trigger correct for late 1943 production. It still retains all the proofmarks, inspector's cartouche and ordnance department markings. It is also marked RIA, meaning that at some time between the late 40's or 50's, this pistol was re-worked/inspected at the Rock Island Arsenal. I replaced the springfield barrel, commonly seen on arsenal rebuilds, with the original High Standard barrel correct for 1943 production. I also have an original 1943 Graton & Knight holster that will be used as her only holster from now on.

Everybody knows that I am a WW2 history buff, so being able to own a piece of history like this, and knowing that most likely this pistol was carried by someone in the conflict is really amazing to me. I am really going to enjoy this pistol, and it will be a treasure that I will pass on to my kids. And yes, I will shoot it. Not as much as I do with my other guns, but It will see some action from time to time. Since the pistol does not have as much value as any other pistol that has not been rebuilt at an Army arsenal, I plan to have it professionally restored to its former glory.

Remington Rand, originally a typewriter manufacturer, was one of the war-time manufacturers of these pistols, the others being Colt, Ithaca, Union Switch & Signal and Singer. Remington Rand was awarded a contract order on March 16th, 1942, for a total of 125,000 1911A1 pistols. The company had no experience building pistols at the time it was awarded the contract. Remington Rand formed a new division (Remington Rand "C" Division) to take charge of building the pistols. Remington Rand "C" Division converted a vacant plant into a modern pistol manufacturing facility. The plant was located on Dickerson street in Syracuse, N.Y and was once used for building typewriters.

Initially some manufacturing equipment was not available. This caused Remington Rand to acquire parts from other sources to complete the early pistols. They purchased barrels from High Standard, Colt, and Springfield Armory; Disconectors from US&S; Grips safeties from Colt; and Slide stops from Colt and Springfield Armory (2,865 left over from WWI). Remington Rand "C" Division inherited much of the documentation, tooling, and machinery that originally was used by The Singer Manufacturing Co. in their Educational Order. Consequently some of the parts of the early pistols were made using Singer supplied tooling and fixtures. Careful examination of Early Remington Rand pistols will reveal striking similarities in some of the parts to Singer made parts such as the triggers and mainspring housings. The first 255 production pistols where accepted by ordnance inspectors in November of 1942.

Initial shipments appeared to perform satisfactorily, but subsequent tests performed by Ordnance Inspectors revealed serious problems with parts interchangeability. In March 1943 James Rand Jr., stopped production due to a high rate of Parts Interchangeability Test failures. Only after a change in management and a thorough review of the inspection and manufacturing operations was production finally resumed in May of 1943. When Remington Rand did resume production the line from under the "O" in "NO" in front of the serial number was removed; this transition started at approximately 955000 and either prefix can be seen as late as serial number 1016000. Throughout production Remington Rand aggressively attempted to innovate and improve the production of 1911A1 pistols. According to Charles Clawson books the ERRS (Experimental Remington Rand Series) pistols were created by Remington Rand for conducting experiments to improve their product. They were later presented to officials and employees of the company, known as "Experimentals"

By March of 1945 they where building the lowest price pistol in the war effort and quality was considered second to none. By the end of the war Remington Rand had produced over 875,000 pistols, almost as many as Colt (628,808) and Ithaca (335,467) combined.

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