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Old 12-16-2018, 08:18 PM
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DWalt DWalt is offline
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"The 45 Frankfort or 45 US was the issue ammo for the 1909 revolvers but would fit the officers personal SAA's or Schofields (if anyone still carried one!)"

Let me clarify some confusion. There is no cartridge officially named the .45 Frankford. A small number of short-cased (ca. 0.92") rimmed .45 cartridges loaded with smokeless powder were made by Frankford Arsenal for use only in the 1906-07 Army Pistol trials. Most collectors today call it the .45 Model of 1906 cartridge, but in fact there was never an official name assigned to it by the Army. The Frankford Arsenal production of these short .45 cartridges was of such poor quality that those submitting guns for the trial received permission to use similar cartridges specially made by UMC. There was an idea at that time that some inventors might want to use that same short .45 cartridge for semiautomatic pistols entered in the trial but none did, so they were used only for Colt and S&W revolver submissions. S&W called it the .45 Special, but the cartridge was never manufactured by anyone in commercial quantities.

The cartridge used in the Model 1909 Colt revolver (a slight modification of the.45 Colt New Service revolver) was named by the Army as the ".45 Revolver Ball Cartridge, Model of 1909" It is essentially identical to the much older .45 Colt cartridge, except it has a slightly larger rim diameter than the .45 Colt to facilitate extraction when used in hand ejector revolvers. It was made only by Frankford Arsenal. It bears no relationship to the so-called ".45 Frankford" short .45 cartridge of 1906. The Colt Model of 1909 revolver and its ammunition had a very limited service history, primarily used only in the Philippine campaign against the Moros as a stopgap measure pending official adoption of the .45 M1911 pistol. The Model of 1909 cartridge was impractical for use in the old Colt SAA revolvers due to overlapping rim interference, but the .45 Colt cartridge (or the shorter .45 Schofield/S&W) could be used in M1909 revolvers.

BTW, the very first .45 cartridges made for use in semiautomatic pistols were hand made by Colt, modifying .45 Colt cases. Not too successful as the cartridge was so long.

Last edited by DWalt; 12-17-2018 at 02:39 PM.
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