Episode 2 - Christmas at C&Rsenal

[M.Becker]

December 24th, 2022, 23:59 hours at an undisclosed location in South Carolina

„Hoe, Hoe, Hoe!“



A few hours later.

Merry Christmas, May.

Merry Christmas, Othis. You got into the spirit. I didn’t know you were that good with sound effects!

Huh?

Around midnight. The jingle and the ho, ho, ho. It almost sounded like someone was actually flying...why are you staring at me?

I heard that too and tough you did it!

I absolutely didn...maybe Bruno is pulling our leg?

No way, he left two days ago to visit the family.

+bothinunison+ Let’s search the house!



[Loony Toons French Accent] A little while later [/Loony Toons French Accent]



Hi, I’m Othias and this was under my Christmas tree. The Automatic Pistol, Caliber .45, Model of 1908. Let’s get it over to the light box!

It weights two pounds on the dot. With 9.3 inches it’s actually longer than it looks and it fires seven rounds of .45 ACP from a single stack, detachable magazine.

If you are a subscriber to the show you know how this works. I put the gun away and tell you it’s entire development history in excruciating detail. Except, I already did so in past several episodes. If you haven’t seen them go back and … who am I kidding. Like you don’t want to know this part of the alternative history and now. I won’t be able to go into the usual details because the only source that came with the gun, is the 1958 special of the Firearms and Ammunition Magazine.

So let’s jump right in: Starting in 1900 the US Ordnance Board held several trials of semiautomatic pistols.

January to March 1906 a group of officers tested the pistols that had been submitted to the Army. They included the .45-caliber Luger, Colt, Savage, Bergmann, Knoble, and Merill-White. There were also three revolvers present, Colt and Smith & Wesson double actions and a Webley-Fosbery automatic revolver.

I will go into greater detail on this in a future episode that’s more relevant for our universe.

The revolvers had been there as a control group. Just in case no one of the semi automatics worked sufficiently. Half didn’t.

The 1906 .45 cal. Savage had 40 percent more jams and misfires than the Colt 1905, a few dozen total but it had fewer parts and Ordnance being concerned with mass production liked her for that.

The Model 1905 Colt had 30 misfires, jams or malfunctions in 900 rounds fired.

Chief of Ordnance thus approved the purchase 200 of each gun to be placed with members of differing Cavalry, Infantry and Artillery regiments.

However Savage flabbergasted everyone by declining the order. There were internal issues among Elbert H. Searle, who designed the gun, William D. Condit of Philadelphia who made it and them got Savage Arms involved. That prevented immediate production, so the No.3 gun was back in the game.

The Luger! Lugers had been tested by the US before as we covered in previous episodes and the .45 version averaged below the Colt in the number of jams and below the Savage in the number of misfires but only as long as fast burning German pistol powered was used, so she didn't make 2nd place. Until now but to the consternation of Ordnance DWM declined the order too!

If you are stunned by the lack of interest in what would surely have been a lucrative government contract, there was a method and not much madness to it. Nowadays the US military spends vast fortunes on arms but back before World War 1 it was tiny. You could make more money selling pistols to the Belgians. Speaking of selling, Lugers were bestsellers in the existing calibers. DWM would have had to start a new production line for possibly as little as 200 guns because .45 ACP doesn’t fit in the frame that was in production. Considerable cost for maybe some return wasn’t worth it.

So Colt won by default, dind’t they?

[Bright Red Flash – bundles of dollars appear on the table]

Wow! Where did said come from? … Smith&Wesson?

Smith&Wesson indeed. They got into the whole semi automatic stuff late or early depending on what universe you watch this in and they concentrated on smaller caliber commercial guns, so thy didn't have a suitable large caliber pistol for the trials but enough others did to ensure their arch rival Colt didn’t get a freebie.

And then that happened! Colt winning by default. Over the ruins of their bankrupt factory but where could they get a working .45 pistol in a hurry? From DWM of course who where only to happy to take Smith&Wesson’s money.

And in a further plot twist Savage Arms came around right after the Ordnance Department had placed the order with Smith&Wesson/DWM, making our old friend General Crozier order them too. The more, the merrier I guess.

So how did it go? As far as the Ordnance Department was concerned it didn’t go at all.

The Savage with it’s unique delayed blow-back action is worth it’s own episode, which we will do in the future but for now let's keep it brief. It had the highest number of misfires and breakages, an uncomfortable grip safety and an even more uncomfortable recoil.

Colt’s improved Model 1907 had a long list issues too. Significant jamming problems, broken parts (mostly firing pins and sears), difficulty getting accurate fire, and awkward handling on horseback. These issues were partially alleviated by a few modifications made to the guns in the latter half of 1907. Larger ejection ports and larger grip safeties, primarily. Took your sweet time there Colt! From then on it was relatively smooth sailing until the slide lock worked itself loose on the rage and the rearward disassembling slide suddenly disassembled itself into the face of the shooter. No permanent damage was done, except to the idea of the Colt being suitable for service.

Last but not least the Luger. At face value it did well. Some minor parts breakage that was fixed quickly by technicians from Smith&Wesson and DWM, overall high reliability, especially under adverse conditions as the toggle action was kicking any dirt off the gun with considerable authority. See the mud test InRange did on a 9mm P08. However that happy state of affairs only lasted as long as you used rounds loaded with fast burning German pistol powder, which was not produced in the USA.


So the Ordnance Department recommenced to – you guessed it- hold more trials! In a year or so, giving all participants +cough+ Savage plenty of time to get their guns working.

Then one would be picked and it would be the perfect one or rather perfected one!


What did the US government with this perfectly reasonable recommendation? It asked for endurance test of the Luger. Using Germany pistol powder. That was promptly done in March 1908 with three guns. One taken straight from the 10th Cavalry Regiment, the other two were refurbished to undo the not inconsiderable wear they had been deliberately subjected to during the trails.

Each gun fired 3,000 rounds. The worn Luger had five misfires, one of the new ones eight and the other just three. It took the Army about a week to figure out what happened. Magazines! Gun No.1 got a mix of new and used ones, No.2 mostly used ones and No.1 mostly news ones.

The endurance test was thus repeated with all new magazines and the misfires were four, two and one.

Gun No.1 was than taken in by a field armorer and fired another 1,068 rounds with no issues.

The Ordnance Board dutifully reported that the .45 Luger met reliability standards but stressed only as long as German powder was used.

The US government then decided to adopt the Luger as Automatic Pistol, Caliber .45, Model of 1908 and German pistol powder too. Turns out that was also for sale. Who would have thought? Obviously not the Ordnance Department!



And this finally bring us to our big boy here on the table. Let’s get the camera closer so I can show you the gun in all it’s glory.


We have a mostly the Luger you should be familiar with if you watch out show. A Luger barrel, just bigger because bigger is better and therefore everything is bigger in America. Disassembly lever, side plate, toggle, safety bar, manual safety and a grip safety like on a Swiss Luger. On this production gun from … nineteen-eleven it’s slightly longer than on the trials pistols and the edges are rounded.

The grip of a M1908 has a few differences, starting with it’s width and length to hold the larger .45 ACP rounds and the grip angle. Not the 60 degrees of a standard Luger 55°, so .45 ACP will feed. Lugers are actually pretty sensitive to a feed geometry. That is also a reason they start having issues if magazines wobble even a bit in the grip. Like when the magazine catch starts to wear. Oh, and there is a lanyard loop. Wouldn’t want to loose her, wouldn’t we?

What else if different? The trigger, it is more hook shaped because of the diffident grip. That just leaves the markings. Here on the right we have “Smith & Wesson Automatic, Calibre 45”, “Government Model” and the serial number above the trigger. On the left is the “Springfield Armory”, “United States Property”, the flaming bomb and Springfield’s eagle are on the toggle.

Normally we’d do an animation but aside from the dimensions the 1908 works like the Lugers you saw and Bruno`s with the family over the holidays anyway. But let’s take a quick lock at the internals.


…...


As you can see nothing in there you have not seen thrice. Let’s give it to May to shoot.


+May on the range, raises gun, Star Spangled Banner starts playing+



With the war/insurrection/rebellion in the southern Philippines driving demand, Smith&Wesson and Springfield rushed to set up production and by early 1909 all was in place for a torrent of .45 Lugers to be unleashed on the Moro Rebels but about the same time hostilities died down and so did Government funding for the military.

US Ordnance used to low production rate to tinker with the design and in … 1911 the M1908 A1 was standardized. I have one here and you don’t see any difference until I push the magazine release button. … Wheredoyouthinkyouaregoing!?!

Shooting the magazine halfway across the room is unLuger-like. Normally you push and pull but cavalry wanted a faster, one handed unloading.

To make this work the magazines have the nub on the left side and a matching milling in the frame. I have already loosened the side plate, so we can take a look inside and see … a new part. When we insert the magazine this arm rests on the nub and its powered by its own coil spring. That would be revised later because there would be environments where you don’t want your magazine catapulted out of the gun entirely.

The existing guns were all updated to the A1 pattern. It’s quite rare to find a military issued one that hasn’t, so thank you Santa.

All in all a solid handgun but anything but not a major commercial success for Smith&Wesson so far. The US Army placed an initial order for only 6,000 pistols and kept ordering further batches of 1,000 once or twice a year. The Navy now and them ordered a few hundreds for itself and the Marines. The military total stood at a mere 16,000 by 1914 when:


“War were declared!”


What no music? Ah, not here! The Europeans are at it again, the war of great attrition has started. Everybody is loosing men and guns at a mind boggling rate, so they’d all come running and grab as many of these as they can, right? No, wrong!

It’s not like the French didn’t like the Luger but at the end of the day the Ruby was good enough and so much cheaper, the Belgians had actually adopted .32 ACP as their standard round, the Serbians had bigger problems than a shortage of pistols. That left but one, the British!

They liked big heavy and slow but they also liked just one handgun round in their supply chain. Thus they ordered revolvers in .455 Webley but wartime attrition kept eating their inventory, Smith&Wesson had an underused production line and that culminated in this:

The Pistol, Smith&Wesson Mk.I, Caliber .45. Let’s not get it over to the light box. Let’s being the camera in and take a closer look as what makes this different from that.

First of all ignore the finish, this gun has been refurbished after the war, well after both of them. This would be blued. Aside from that and the abundance of British proof marks the difference is the missing grip safety. That had been originally included at the request of the cavalry and with little fighting on horseback in the trenches was removed by mid 1915 already.

We are also not handing this to May to shoot because it’s just an M1908 with no grip safety.

The first exports contracts were signed in January 1915 with deliveries beginning as early as March. In total roughly 53,000 were delivered to Britain until April 1917 when: “War were declared.”

[WWD-theme playing]


And now it was on! The US had seen what was going on and Springfield Arsenal considerably increased pistol production in 1915 already as S&W was more and more busy with exports. Between the two of them they still cranked out almost 107,000 M1908 A1, however that includes post war production by Smith&Wesson who were allowed to wind it down gradually until late 1920. Springfield came to a hard stop and ended up with so many parts that they had spares lasting well into the 1930s. But that is another story.

I guess it’s time to bring May.


We have made room for May and a really big Luger. First impressions...about the gun!

Hi there polite ones! Aside from the way it appeared I can’t say much I didn’t say before because this is a Luger. Just in .45 ACP.

So anything standing out comparing to the other Lugers we had handling an ergonomics wise?

Not much. The grip safety is back and later gone again but that doesn’t affect the handling. Speaking of hands, the larger grip isn’t ideal but only because I have girl hands. It’ll fit fine into your big paws.

May I have it? I can easily get in there and so would have any man 100 years ago.

What else can I say? It operates just like the other Lugers we had. A bit unfamiliar but we grew up in the America where the Luger isn’t an all American icon.

You talked about the handling of Luger in three different episodes, so different question: What do you think about alternate America adopting the 1909 Luger?

It’s a no brainer! The Luger is a good gun. The worst I could say is that it’s not as good as…

...some other .45 we haven’t talked about and you could not get anyway in 1908.

I knew that because even I know things. I could get the Colt 1905 instead and that stinks. Even before you have the slide come back into your face.

Come on. It happened only once, not to you and no permanent damage was done to the shooter’s face.

Good for him but you see this? This is my face, there might be others like it but this is mine and I want it undamaged all the time!

So do I. As far as shooting goes, we have a video on the 1905 and while the Luger has more recoil than … some other .45, the 1905 makes you not want to shoot it again ever. The recoil is sudden, intense and uncontrollable.

So I guess you would take this into the trenches with you?

Definitely. I’d rather have the 9mm version but if I’m British or American I can’t get that. So the 1908 is fine, not perfect but fine.

So far so good but if you were British or American you could have gotten another semi auto in .45 ACP. Which of the two would you prefer?

Oh, hmm. I guess I’d still take the 1908.

May, making no sense as usual! First she says that the 1908 isn’t as good as the other .45 and them she picks the 1908. Women.

I’m thinking ahead of you. If I’m British or American in the Great War, I’m almost certainly deep in mud many times and Lugers laugh at mud! It’s the better gun for that situation.

And I can’t find fault with that logic. Anything else to say?

Nothing other than thanking Santa for this present.

So thank you Santa and see you on the next one.

[jemhouston]

Interesting

[Nathan45]

Nicely done. (And I'm really looking forward to the 1911 C&&Rsenal, this reminded me about it.