Another BTW, the cavalry didn't need to campaign for adoption of the New Service revolver; it was already the standard Army handgun, having been adopted as the Model 1909. The Army wanted a modern .45 caliber pistol and having no idea when (or if) an auto pistol would be adopted, the adopted the Model 1909 in that year. Colt chambered them for the .45 Colt, but the Army found the small rims jumped the extractor, so Frankford made the .45 cartridge, Model 1909, with a larger rim. (Those cartridges can be used in the Model 1873 only by loading every other chamber; that made no difference whatever to the Army, as the old single action was long obsolete.) Two Model 1909s were used as controls during the testing of the later auto pistols. In firing thousands of rounds right along with the pistols, the revolvers had two failures, both due to bad primers. There was no mechanical failure or breakage of the revolvers. The Army adopted the M1911 anyway.
The whole history of the U.S. Model 1909 .45 revolver has never been told, and I hope to do it in a book I'm researching. That said, I'll address a couple of myths now.
The Model 1909 was in reality, a commercial Colt .45 New Service revolver, chambered in .45 Colt, with plain walnut stocks that were specified by the Army, that wanted something slightly slimmer then the standard black hard-rubber kind.
It did not replace the older model 1892 .38 revolvers then in use, except in one place – the Philippine Islands. In fact, with the exception of a few hundred, all of the 1909 revolvers that were made went directly to Manila without the usual stop over at the Springfield Armory.
As is generally known, the .38 revolver and proved on too many occasions to be inadequate when it came to stopping Moro tribesmen. Some older .45 Model 1873 Single Action Colts were shipped post-haste, but they were strongly disliked. Most of the available ammunition was old, left over from the Indian Wars, and loaded with black powder. The gun was slow to load and unload, and could only be carried safely with 5 rounds. So as an emergency stopgap the Model 1909 came about, and it’s adoption had nothing to do with the revolver vs. pistol controversy then going on within military circles. The problem was that the war with the Moros was on going, and the pistol wasn’t ready yet.
While some 1911 pistols came with Army units being rotated from the United States,
direct shipments of the new Colt weren’t made to the Manila Arsenal until April 18, 1917. Eventually the 1911 pistol replaced the 1909 revolvers, mainly because they used ammunition that was exclusive to that arm. Thereafter they were sold as surplus.
The above is only a small part of what is a very interesting story...
