I made a couple of gun purchases this summer that were my first dip into the realm of historical arms. An M1903A3 rifle made by Remington Arms and an M1911A1 pistol made by Remington Rand. They were both manufactured during World War II. Being the sort of person that I am, I checked into the history of the manufacturing of those particular weapons.<\/p>\n
Springfield Armory (in Massachusetts) was the main manufacturer of the assault rifle of the day – the M1 Garand. From 1937, when the Army bought the rifle, until the war ended in 1945, they made 4.5 million of the rifles. <\/p>\n
16.1 million Americans served in the military during the war, about 12 million served outside of the US. 4.5 million Garands weren’t enough to arm them all so Remington Arms (Ilion, New York) and Smith Corona (the typewriter company in Syracuse, NY) helped out by making the World War I era assault rifle – the 1903 – to augment arming troops. Many of the Marines who initially went to fight the Japanese in Pacific were armed with 1903s. Remington and Smith Corona changed the design of the rifle using a sighting system similar to the Garand to facilitate cross-training between the two battle rifles. <\/p>\n
The main difference between the two rifles was that the Garand was an eight-shot semi-automatic rifle while the 1903 was a bolt-action with a five shot magazine. Big difference in a firefight. But you go to war with the Army you have, not always the Army that you want.<\/p>\n
The military had the same problem with their .45 automatic caliber pistols, the M1911A1. They had to ramp up production of the handgun and Colt, the main manufacturer, couldn’t handle the demand, so the military signed contracts with other folks; Remington Rand (900,000 M1911s produced), Colt (400,000), Ithaca Gun Company (400,000), Union Switch & Signal (50,000), and Singer (500). Remington Rand made typewriters before the war, Singer, of course, made sewing machines. Union Switch & Signal made railroad signaling equipment. All five companies were mainly in the northeastern part of the country – in the good old days, that’s where all of the manufacturing took place. Well, until the Leftists chased all of the manufacturers south with their taxes and over-regulation. <\/p>\n
A little more history of my Remington Rand; a gentleman brought it home from the Korean War (remember when you could do that?) and it was stolen from his home in the early 60s. The thief ground off the serial number. Law enforcement eventually caught up with the thief and returned the gun to him with a new ATF-assigned serial number etched into it (we checked out his story with the ATF before we took possession of it). I guess the days of the ATF going through that kind of trouble to return a stolen weapon to a legal gun owner are probably gone, just like the manufacturing capability we had in this country before World War II. <\/p>\n
I just wonder if we had an emergency the size of World War Two again if we have the capability to respond as a nation in the way that folks did back then. The capability and the willingness to respond on that scale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"