1941 Colt...a first/last transitional pistol.

[Scott Gahimer]

Here is a pretty neat pistol. It is one of the very last pistols to have an R.S. inspection mark and one of the first to have a W.B. inspection mark. It's a Colt that was shipped 21 November 1941.

The R.S. marking is on the top of the receiver and serves as the Provisional Inspection. The W.B. serves as the Final Inspection. Mr. Clawson states Col. Broberg replaced Col. Sears as Army Inspector of Ordnance for the Hartford Ordnance District on 1 July 1941, which is actually just a couple weeks prior to when Colt switched from blue to Parkerized finish. However, Colt M1911A1 pistols were still R.S. final inspected up to about s/n 750500 in November.

Perhaps new dies for the inspectors took a while? Anyway, this was the earliest W.B. final inspected pistol Mr. Clawson had observed at the printing of his 3rd Edition Collector's Guide. He had owned this pistol for several years before I acquired it from him.

I've seen a few others with the R.S./W.B. inspections. As I recall, they've all been in the 750xxx serial range.

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