WWII Commercial/Military transfer pistols

[Scott Gahimer]

Here are a few photos...just for fun. They show some of the pistols Colt's reworked and transferred over to the military contract when they suspended their commercial production in 1942.

The first (5) are all renumbered pistols. Then in the photos with (10) pistols, nine are renumbered and one simply has a commercial to military transferred slide. That pistol is in the 930xxx range, and is one of about 8-10 known.
One of the renumbered pistols is 860819, and is W.B. final inspected. That pistol is one of 2 known.

There were about 6575+/- renumbered commercial pistols that were transferred and reworked to military standards. Mr. Clawson says they started at 860003 and ran (mostly consecutively) through about 866600.

Other pistols in a broader 1942 serial range had commercial parts transferred as well. The identifiable parts are normally the Colt S marked and "P" proved barrels, S marked receivers and the marked and unmarked pinned base C/M magazines.

I personally only know of two C/M pistols outside the 860xxx-866xxx range that have S marked recievers that are cut for the Swartz safety, but were not far enough along in production to require rework or renumbering. I have one of those pistols in the 872xxx range. The other one is Brit proved and in the early 90x,xxx serial range.





One of my nicer C/M pistols:

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.