I'm continually amazed by what you folks on this forum come up with for the Victory Models. Is there similar information for 1911s?

I picked up something I have been after for quite some time (for a decent price) in Cabelas of all places today:





A 1911A1 has been a rare and expensive thing since I started looking for them. This one was low enough I could spring for it, despite having no finish left there's no deep pitting, all I did to it was give it a light cleaning and oiling (it was bone dry).

Goes well with my Ithaca slide / High Standard Barrel / Remington UMC Frame (from 1918). Which was my first 1911.

There's a lot of good information on this forum for USGI 1911's:

USGI/Foreign Military and other Vintage 1911s - 1911Forum

I've got a 1943 Ithaca that I'm fond of.

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- Change it back -

If that's a 1911, not a 1911-A1, it's a Remington - UMC, not a Remington Rand. Your Ithaca is a WW II gun, and probably went to the Air Force. But most details of its history have been lost.

You are entirely right, its a Remington UMC frame, and a 1911 not an A1, at least when it started life.

Got it, thanks. I was just wondering because it seems like guys have been pulling together things I would have never thought anyone could related to the Victory models. Thought maybe the same thing was done with the 1911s.

Probably a dead end history wise, unless you can track down the family member who sold Grandpa's .45 to the store.

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Alan
SWCA LM 2023, SWHF 220

According to Proofhouse, and if my old eyes read 1448691 at the serial number on the frame, it's a Remington-Rand frame produced in 1944. I have a similar numbered frame with a Colt slide. Not unusual to have frames and slides manufactured by different companies during WWII after they went through the arsenal. Happy 4th to all, Bill.

Congratulations on your Ithaca. They are great old guns.

Your pistol was made at the tail end of 1943, one of about 30,000 in that production run. Ithaca made about 191,000 pistols in 1943. They were not manufactured and shipped in numerical order.

At some time or another, it was rearsenaled at the Rock Island Arsenal...that's what the "RIA" on the frame is for. Not much chance of finding out what was done to it...could have been anything. I have a '43 Remington Rand that had a Colt barrel installed.

The inspector at Rock Island was Frank Krack, and I'm surprised I don't see his "FK" stamp on the right side of the frame. Rock Island would also often stamp the flaming bomb on a pistol, but I don't see that on yours, either.

You're correct that there were a lot of mix-and-match 1911A1s, but if Proof House is saying that's a Remington Rand frame, I think they're wrong.

And the mixing/matching usually occurred in the field, or at arsenals where the pistols were shipped for repair, or after the war by civilians who had access to the WWII pistols and spare parts.

In 1943, Ithaca manufactured pistols in the serial number range of 1441431-1471430. The OP's pistol, with its serial number of 1448691, falls within that range. Also (to the best of my knowledge), in 1943, Remington Rand frames did not usually have those inspector stamps on the trigger guard as the OP's pistol has. The last Remington Rand made in 1943 was numbered 1441430.

Or at least that's what my data sources are saying.

Funny fact: Ithaca, a firearms manufacturer, produced the third-fewest number of 1911-A1s in WWII.

Remington Rand produced over 2 1/2 times as many.

Yep. Remington Rand had produced over 875,000 pistols by the end of WWII, and Ithaca had made about 335,467. Colt had produced 628,808 for the war effort.

I'm always looking at prices on the old Ithacas and Remington Rands, and am totally amazed at what the really nice ones are going for these days. And it's really rare to find even a mediocre one for less than $1200-$1300. I'm seeing all original ones of both brands go for well over $2K.

I love the old WWII 1911A1s...their simplicity and often their roughness of finish. I'd take one of them over any of these fancy-dancy "1911s" that we see in stores today.

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i don't think the army was ever totally happy with Ithaca. For a "gun maker" they needed a lot of help to get started, and the set up took longer than anticipated as well.

Even after they got things running the quality wasn't as good as the other makers, and as we already discussed they made far fewer guns.

Thanks guys, great information.

The S/N is 1448691 which proofhouse seems to indicate falls into a 1944 Ithaca production of 30,000.

Threw the correct grips back on it and snapped a couple pictures with a 1943 Graton & Knight Co holster.

I think the "correct" grips are mismatched (understandable given that the gun was re-arsenaled). The right grip looks like a Keyes Fiber grip (used on Remington Rands and Ithacas) while the left grip looks like a Coltwood (used on Colts). The telltale sign is the size of the reinforcing ring for the grip screws. Notice how the left grip has much "fatter" rings than the right side.

Huh, that makes sense, I thought something was off about them but I didn't really examine them all that closely.

The Barrel also has an HS on it, would Ithaca have originally used an High Standard barrel or would that be something else that was swapped out when it was re-arsenaled?

Yes, a High Standard barrel would be the right one for your gun. Ithaca got some Colt barrels when they were first starting up, but used HS barrels for the vast majority of their production run. They also got a small quantity of Flannery (F) barrels sometime during the war. Almost all Ithacas I see will have a HS barrel though.

I should have done this in the first place probably.

High Standard produced barrels for most of the companies making the pistols including Remington-Rand, Ithaca, and Union Switch & Signal (possibly Singer as well, although so few pistols were completed by Singer they are extremely rare and valuable in any condition). As wartime exigencies required it was not unusual for these companies to ship parts around to each other to meet production requirements.

Parts remaining in inventory after WW2 continued to be used for maintenance and depot rebuilds into the years of the Vietnam conflict. As parts inventories were drawn down new contracts were let out for parts as needed (Savage made slides, S&W made barrels, probably other examples exist). Pistols that underwent depot-level maintenance and rebuilds may be found with any combination of parts imaginable, both WW2 and later production. Since the actual manufacturer's name is stamped only on the slide it can require considerable research to identify every piece in any of those pistols.

Additionally, tens of thousands of the pistols were sent out to other countries (either given, sold, or lent), then found their way back after decades of use and maintenance by other nations.

At Fort Benning, Georgia, while on "casual" status between two school assignments I was put to work for several weeks in the post armory. Active, reserve, National Guard, and others rotated through for training that included weapons of all types (US and foreign), and our job was stripping them down, cleaning, checking critical dimensions, and reassembling. The .45 pistols came in by the hundreds every week and were detail stripped, the various parts placed in large wooden boxes, cleaned, tested, and reassembled by pulling the next part out of the box. The chances of any of those pistols ending up with all original parts were exactly zero. Any showing damage or excessive wear went into large bins for shipment to a depot for repair or rebuild (simple things like rusted or broken springs, etc, were fixed on the spot with spare parts).

The last US M1911A-1 pistol was produced in 1945. There were no further contracts after WW2 (other than a few national match guns, etc). Those pistols remained in active service until adoption of the M9 pistol (about 1985, with full transition going on into the 1990's). Some remain in US military inventories. Tens of thousands ended up at the Pueblo Army Depot (now Pueblo Chemical Depot), then were transported under guard to the CF&I steel mill where they were scrapped (about 1998-99).

All of these factors combined to make the occasional all original pistol a highly desirable collector's item.

Yep, you have one Keyes grip...the one with the "K" inside the star and the mold number on it.

And that's definitely an Ithaca frame...that little mark on the left side of the trigger guard is an Ithaca mark.

Also...I can't see it in your photos, but there should be a marking on either the top of the magazine floor plate toe tab or on the bottom. If it's there, what is it? Some mags were made by Risdon ("R"), Scovill ("S"), and Little ("L"). Oh, and General Shaver mags ("GS"). Mags that were made under contract to Colt will have a "C" as part of the mark, in addition to the manufacturer's mark.

from what I can see the slide stop lever looks correct (5 serrations), as well as the trigger (stamped). As WATCHDOG states the grip with the star in it is a Keyes Fiber grip, while the other is a Coltwood.

It appears the mainspring housing is incorrect (looks like it has a diamond pattern). Ithaca switched to using serrated (grooves) mainspring housings around the 900K mark if I remember correctly.

Even though the gun is a mixmaster, I like the look of the gun, especially with the rough crosshatch machining marks on the slide. It has that "been there, done that" look. Nice pickup!

There's also the possiblity that the checkered mainspring housing was installed at Rock Island when the pistol was rearsenaled. The checkered MSH on my '43 Remington Rand seems to be correct for that year, from everything I've found...but you just never know with these old pistols.

There's a line of thought among serious/purist collectors of these guns that if it's been rearsenaled, its value is diminished. It isn't "original". I call baloney on that. These old pistols are 70-plus years old. All of them have some kind of history to them. They may have been worn by some guy who sat at a desk, or they may have been dragged through the snow at Bastogne, or through the sand on Iwo Jima. You just never know. Most of them need little, if any, work to make great shooters. They are fun to shoot, and they're just as deadly now as they were in 1941.

We had a very non-serious pistol team at 18th MP BDE, HHQ at Long Binh. We knew enough to take a bunch of pistols apart and then reassemble to get them a bit tighter. The pistol I shot was 2 years older than I was.

It's a little L, so Little?

Thanks for the information guys. I'm pretty happy with it. I find the idea of an unused all "correct" 1911 to be wrong as in not what a used 1911 should be.

If I weren't so into old Smiths, or if I were 20 years older, I would probably have gone down the path of the 1911 collector. They are a hard gun not to love. It's a shame they are so locked down and inaccessible for young collectors.

I have to say what a pleasure it is to see guns in this condition. To see so little blue left make me wonder where it has been and what it has done. There are very few of us that find beauty in a well used firearm. It is nice to see you did not remove its history by re-bluing.

Well, no matter what the case, I think it fits in well with my small but very pleasing collection of 1911s





Got inspired by the 4th of July to take a group shot. Happy Independence day!

Well since this seems to have become a "Show your GI 1911" thread, here's my Remington Rand:

You were born in 1909?!

Thank you for your service!

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Alan
SWCA LM 2023, SWHF 220