1911 full auto scare early 60's

[gascolator]

Okay, I'm wondering if anyone remembers this:

Back when I was a kid in the 60'd I used to love those guy's magazines: You know, Popular Mechanics, Mechanix Illustrated, Science and Mechanics, etc.

So I had one favorite issue that had stuff like "The Atomic Cannon" (yes, it existed), and I think something like a build-it-yourself freezer alarm that told you if your power had gone off and your freezer had turned into a toxic waste dump.

Anyway, one of the articles in this particular issue was about the US Army issue .45 that allegedly could run amok and go "full auto" with subsequent loss of control and injury. The central character was a retired US Army officer whose side-arm had allegedly done same on the range, severing his jugular, from which he nearly died.

They made it out like the .45 was a menace to the troops.

Does anybody else recall reading that article, or anything related to the associated "scare?"

I tend to think it was a concoction of some old guys who resented not being allowed to sport their pearl... er bone-handled revolvers. Either that or as a defense by officers who'd carried out unauthorized modifications to their service weapons with bad results.

[RHGregory3]

If the sear (or other certain parts) are over shaved, the 1911 platform can potentially turn full auto. It's happened more than once. It can be done on a variety of automatics in fact.

Unless your planning a basement gunsmith project, I wouldn't worry :-)

[gascolator]

If the sear (or other certain parts) are over shaved, the 1911 platform can potentially turn full auto. It's happened more than once. It can be done on a variety of automatics in fact.

Unless your planning a basement gunsmith project, I wouldn't worry :-)

Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking. It's easy to imagine that some officer gets issued a weapon that previously was issued to someone who "improved" it but perhaps shot it rarely or not at all. What's the likelihood that the army does an inspection for that kind of thing in the early 60's? He diligently goes out to the range to qualify and gets sucker-punched by a "major malfunction."

[DaveIam]

About a year or so ago me and a friend were at French Creek Outfitters shooting. A guy had just bought a brand new 1911 (kimber i think) from them and when he went to shoot it, it fired in full auto. We all looked over to see what he was shooting because we don't hear full auto that often and he just had a puzzled and shocked look on his face. He had one of the employees come check it out and sure enough, the gun was firing in full auto. The buyer got a new gun and they sent full auto one back to the manufacture, never did hear the outcome after that though.

[Bama Man]

In the 60's, I was assigned to an M.P. unit as an "amorer". Part of my assignment was issuing .45's, etc, to M.P.'s going on patrol, and also maintaining thier weapons.
Keep in mind that I was 19-21 years old, and the only training I had was two weeks in Amorers School, where I was trained on five different weapons.
To say my training was minimal is an understatement.
However, I did learn that the weapons we issued probably dated back to WW II, as we had various manufactureres, not all Colts.
I never once replaced a sear and disconnector set.
So, if the pistol was a military issued weapon, it was very possible that it had been issued by a person such as I, that just pulled it apart, made sure all the parts were in it and clean, and was not allowed to test fire it with 2-3 magazined rounds to check it's performance before putting it back in "the rack".
The weapon was most likely just plain worn out. It is super easy to replace the sear and disconnector together at the same time, but I can't remember if I was even trained to look for that in school.
That is something you would probably ony find during test firing.

[EandGWZ]

About a year or so ago me and a friend were at French Creek Outfitters shooting. A guy had just bought a brand new 1911 (kimber i think) from them and when he went to shoot it, it fired in full auto. We all looked over to see what he was shooting because we don't hear full auto that often and he just had a puzzled and shocked look on his face. He had one of the employees come check it out and sure enough, the gun was firing in full auto. The buyer got a new gun and they sent full auto one back to the manufacture, never did hear the outcome after that though.

I guess they don't test fire their weapons prior to leaving the factory

[hzox221]

I have seen it happen many times. 99% of the time is was someone either toying with the leaf spring or putting the gun back together wrong.

[Kramer]

I remember reading about that issue on 1911s made back in the mid to late 1980s.

[Hoover 1]

My father in law was in the Army and drove the transporters for the atomic cannon.

And when I was in the Navy in the 1970/80's, I qualified with a 1911 45 that was older than my Dad (pistol was manufactured in 1922). When I was assigned to a SSBN as an Engineering Officer, our small arms locker had 45's that had labels that said "Do Not Shoot Unless it is an Emergency".

The 45's were getting a bit used by that point.

Thanks,

Hoover

[LifeInPa]

Talking about full auto 1911's didn't a criminal during the 20's or 30's purposely modify a 1911 to fire in full auto? Something like that.