2 Attachment(s)
Pre-WWII 45 ACP pistol ball ...
My Grandfather left me his 1934C 1911 that he carried in WWII. It was his personal sidearm that he bought in 1934 while on leave from Fort Bliss to Chicago.
He had bought a few boxes of ammo at the time of the purchase (as the hardware store receipt of the purchase shows, which I still have in my possession) but a recent development leads me to believe this may have not been the original ammo but rather some that he might have acquired while still on active duty.
This is not jacketed WCC ammo, it is cast lead.
The boxes are waxed, the interior partitions are not. The ammo is still in good shape, I actually fired three rounds of it recently.
I did replace the original spring in the pistol probably 20 years ago but saved the original spring that I replaced.
I also used to shoot it quite a bit back in the 80s and 90s (using modern 45 ACP milspec FMJ ball ammo I had acquired while on active duty at Bragg) but had not shot it since until just recently and did not use any of my reloads that I use in my modern 1911s.
He passed in the mid-70s and left it to me and it has been well kept, along with the original ammo he passed to me ... in a 7.62 ammo can wrapped in an oil cloth. Those are also original two-tone mags. I take it out and wipe it down inside and out about once a year.
The ammo though ... might anyone have any idea of the date of that ammo? It may very well be original 1934 ammo because the receipt shows he bought ten boxes along with the pistol ... but I can't be sure. And I am told that all WWII 45 ammo was jacketed.
Attachment 279805
My Grandfather pic (below) taken by a street vendor and sold to my Grandfather as he was leaving the hardware store in Chicago on the day of the purchase. He left the pistol with the store owner and returned the next day to pick it up knowing he was going-out that night to a speak easy with his best friend (who was from Chicago) and he didn't want to be armed while drunk. He picked-up the picture the street vendor had taken at the same time ... he had paid the street vendor a nickel for the pic to be developed the day before and it was always one of my Grandmother's favorite pictures of him taken just weeks before they were married.
He was, naturally, dressed in the dapper Chicago gangsta garb of the 1934 day ... Oxford wingtips with a double-breasted suit and fedora hat. Smoking a cigarette ... he rolled his own and did-so until his death from lung cancer in 1976.
In WWII the Army allowed enlisted troops to carry their personal sidearms and while most, that could afford them, carried family revolvers, he loved his 1911 and it cost him almost two months pay at the time when he was a corporal ... eight years before he would deploy to Europe as a staff sergeant. He returned from the war as a 1SG. He was 22 years old when that picture was taken. He joined at the age of 17 in 1929 and retired after WWII in 1950 ... still a 1SG, with the Korean War looming over the horizon. My mother was 10 when he retired.
It was the first pistol I ever shot at the age of 10. I'll not shoot anymore of the ammo ... but I do want to make sure that it is properly preserved for my Son and Grandsons. The pistol itself is still very shootable but I doubt I'll shoot it again ... I am now almost the same age he was when he passed.
I have thought about deconstructing one of the cartridges just to see how the boolit was cast, lubed, etc., and to see if I might be able to roughly identify what powder and primer was used.
Attachment 279806
