M45A1
M45A1: A New Colt .45 for the 21st Century By John D. Gresham Few combat firearms are more personal than pistols. Much of this connection centers on the fact that successful marksmanship with a pistol is a matter of personal skill, practice, and hand/eye coordination. For more than a century, the pistol of choice for members of the U.S. military was the Colt M1911 .45-caliber semi-automatic. Originally designed by the incomparable John Browning, the M1911 “rail gun” and its .45-caliber ACP (Automatic Colt Pistol) round have been the standard for hitting power and reliability over 11 decades. Even though the M1911 was replaced in U.S. military service by the Beretta M9 9 mm pistol in the 1980s, many units and communities within the U.S. armed forces continued to use the M1911 for specialized purposes. Much of this desire to stay with the M1911 had nothing to do with nostalgia, but rather with the vastly superior hitting power of the .45-caliber ACP round. Also designed by Browning, this round had several times the mass of a 9 mm round and could, quite literally, “stop a charging Moro warrior dead in his tracks.” The most notable of those services holding out on giving up the M1911 was the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC), which always loved the pistol for its incredible stopping power and maneuverability in close quarters combat situations. To this end, the USMC actually began to remanufacture M1911s at the Marine Corps Weapons Training Battalion’s Precision Weapons Section (PWS), located at Quantico, Va. There, Marine gunsmiths would disassemble selected M1911s down to the frames for examination and precision alignment. The weapons were then reassembled with new grips and ambidextrous thumb safeties, a new trigger assembly, high-visibility sights, precision barrels, and finally, improved magazines by Wilson Combat®. Known as the “MEU(SOC) .45,” they were mainly reserved for use by Marine Expeditionary Units (Special Operations Capable), or MEU(SOC)s. The result was a virtually new weapon with improved accuracy, softer recoil (like a 9 mm Glock), and the classic firepower of the .45 ACP round.
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The remanufactured pistols became treasured throughout the Marine Corps, especially since only a handful were ever seen outside of the USMC, and generally as presentation weapons given to senior officers and officials. So eventually the Marine Corps began to consider a new procurement of .45-caliber pistols, and bought a number of Interim M1911 Close Quarter Battle Pistols from Kimber while it considered its options. In the early years of the 21st century, USMC units were fighting across the globe in environments from the mountains of Afghanistan to the Philippines and Africa, relearning combat lessons from the 20th century that had been long forgotten. This included the need for compact, reliable, and maneuverable firearms, particularly in closequarters combat situations. In addition, Marines began to see the nature of their opponents change, with body armor and pre-combat pain medication usage becoming common in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. The Beretta M9 and the 9 mm pistol round were felt to be inadequate for these kinds of emerging threats. The requirement for a new pistol became more pronounced, especially when the new Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command (MARSOC) battalions were created, and the Close Quarter Battle Pistol (CQBP) program was started, with a number of submissions from various firearms manufacturers. The actual CQBP requirement itself was long and involved, initially calling for a level of parts interoperability with the original M1911 pistol. However, as the procurement moved along, features like a seven-round magazine and overall system reliability began to take hold in the minds of the USMC evaluators. On July 20, 2012, the USMC Systems Command announced that the winner of the new CQBP pistol contract was Colt Defense LLC of Hartford, Conn., the original manufacturer of Browning’s classic M1911 more than a century ago. The new CQBP pistol, designated M45A1, looks and operates like the same M1911 pistol used in World War I by Sgt. Alvin York and World War II by Sgt. Audie Murphy.