Springfield 1911 Found on WW1 Battlefield!

hey guys welcome to another walk-in Wednesday you know I took a little bit of a break because my film guy Randy who's behind the camera he went away on a little bit of a vacation and a lot of you were freaking out on me saying where's the videos so I'm gonna pop out several videos this week and this is gonna be one of them it's gonna be a quickie but it is a walk-in Wednesday because this did come in the door now I usually show you beautiful guns and all of you oh and all over my beautiful guns this is also a beautiful gun but it's very much pitted it's kind of like your ugly child you still love it but it still got it it's got a lot of flaws so come on a little closer and take a look at this gun so obviously this is a 1911 I assumed a colt 1911 coat when it came in the guy that brought it in said it was a battlefield pickup and you can see that it is a World War one battlefield pickup taken from the battlefields of France using a metal detector now a lot of times when I tell stories like that a lot of you challenge me and say there's no way I'm afraid this time I'm gonna have to agree with you there's no way this was in the ground for a hundred years so even though it looks like a battlefield pickup from France I'm gonna assume that that is not entirely true certainly it was kept very poorly probably I would say with this amount of pitting and rust the wood actually didn't do too fair too poorly I'm assuming this was in somebody's basement for a very long period of time and I liked it it just spoke to me in fact I wish it could speak because it would have quite a story to tell the magazine was missing but what I find most fascinating about this and I am gonna take it apart again I assumed it was a 1911 colt it's actually not and I'm gonna show you that but if I rack it back and dry fire it you can see it is still working now nothing against the Luger but I I deal a lot with Lugar's and just did a video on lures the tolerances are so tight that often when I take the receiver of a Luger and put it on a different frame it won't fit because it's so tight and the the individually fitted anything this pitted I'm sure it would not you know on the Luger you rack it back by pulling up on the toggle I'm sure it wouldn't work at all you wouldn't even be able to rack it back if the gun was in this condition but the 9th 1911 Colt the testament to Colt and their design the tolerances allow this to continue to work and spoiler alert I am going to try to shoot this when I say I I don't mean me I'm not going to try to shoot it Randy's gonna take it out this afternoon and shoot it now what's cool about this is my guess is this gun has not been fired in a hundred years and you're gonna watch it for the first time be fired in a hundred years live and on this video okay so I mentioned a damp basement the damp basement would not actually hurt the wood the wood actually does well in a moist environment but the metal does not now this part the slide stop for some reason I'm sure it was replaced because it is in much better condition than the rest but notice the hammer and everything else hammer is all pitted I am going to take this apart so you can see the inside there's the barrel all pitted we'll take that apart and then the front barrel bushing has been replaced the this this piece and this piece are too good compared to the rest of the gun and the magazine was missing so obviously to shoot it we'll stick a magazine in there but that's no problem let's take a look at the other side I mentioned that we thought it was a Colt but actually when we take a really close look what we find is it's even rarer rare right here you can see the Springfield flaming bomb logo and if we look at I have this one to compare the flaming bomb logos right there that's what it looks like and you can see just a piece of the flaming bomb logo there would also be one here and here although on the back of the slide I can't really see it I can close my eyes and imagine it but it's actually probably go on the other confirming evidence would be the serial number so we know the Springfield here's the serial range you can see here from the from the book that there is a serial range for the Springfield and in World War one so this is a World War one gun this is an early one from 1916 this is from 1917 just like in World War two there Colt couldn't keep up with the demand and so they contracted out to other suppliers in World War one Colt made under a half a million there are about 50,000 Springfield's made so that they that's 1/10 of the total number and then about 20,000 were made by Remington and there are other other producers but those were the three main producers of the 1911 Colt so on the slide here you see a Springfield Eagle it's quite unique and over here there is something there but we can't quite make it out again we're just assuming this is a Springfield Springfield in Maine 1911 rare variation but if we take a look at the serial number so we know the position of the serial number is right here we know this is an early one 16 and then what I can make out here is a serial number that begins with 103 and we see that that is in the Springfield range so 103 and then I can see some other digits but my conclusion is this is a rare Springfield 1911 issued during war war 1 now I brought this one this one is actually from our website I brought now just to show you a comparison this is a fairly average condition if when you take these apart the inside parts are marked with an S for Springfield so it has s proof marks on the barrel on many of the other parts it have also has a unique magazine you see the lanyard loop magazine and what they call its it's not the keyhole but it's a reinforced copper reinforced back of the spine this magazine will fit in here just fine when we're ready to shoot it yeah pops in Randy good luck hope you keep all your fingers on on the post both of your hands but he's gonna take this out and shoot it let's take this apart pretty quickly I usually don't do takedown videos but as you can see this is this is unique first I'll take off the front barrel bushing push that button down a little tight swing this around and this pops off I've already mentioned that that's obviously a replacement okay the next thing I'm gonna do is pull this back and line it up with this first notch right here most of you know how to do there's rust foot coming off of this so you know this is this is old it's very tight but I'm lining that up this actually pops off really easily so you can see the condition I'll put this here that is the takedown lever now all we do is pull the slide off and you can see the inside actually not too bad it's rusted all through here I can see the rust down in here that's why the magwell was tough actually you probably can't see it very well but that magwell was is pretty pitted and I I'm not gonna take the grips off because they're already cracked and I'm afraid they break but underneath there it's probably pitted even worse because moisture gets in under the wood the wood holds the moisture against there so I have seen very beautiful guns like this one and taking the grips off and you'll see pitting under the grip so I would imagine under this grip is even worse you see the front strap in the back strap this this still works by the way it still has a spring to it and that's the mainspring housing which was smooth in world war one world war two they change they put a hump I know I say it all the time what hump they put a hump in here and then they also checkered it made it made up a little better grip and by the way I get the cheapest possible gloves and you can see that in one shoot they're falling apart they look more like nylons than than gloves but I change them out every time ok so now we get to the barrel again these parts are probably s marked pull the spring out and pull the barrel out first let's look inside you can see the amount of rust down in here all right I take the barrel off and you can see how badly pitted it is I'm not sure this is the original barrel because I don't see an S I do see a P proof which was what it should have but I don't see an S proof and it is course is 45 caliber let Borchardt Borchardt not the bore short that's a different video the bore shots are difficult so I'm gonna have Randy try it out but that the bore looks as bad as the inside of the board looks as bad as the outside so my guess is this will shoot and Randy will live but I'm not sure and that's why I'm not going to shoot it but I would predict that accuracy will be impaired because I really don't see any rifling I just see pitting so let's take it to the range and find out how cool is this first time being shot in a hundred years let's go check it out come on [Music] [Music] hey I hope you like that little flashback in history to 1917 but Randy is back safe and sound all his fingers and toes are intact and this was the review as you saw first of all the the gun did not load properly because the feed ramp was all pitted so it would not slide up into the barrel but when he put him in individually he was able to shoot the gun however the slide did not function very well you had that bang it a few times fit in order for it to shut so it does turn out and it didn't know no surprise to us that the pitting on the slide actually hurts and the feed ramp didn't feed properly so turns out this is not a good protection piece hey thanks for watching make sure you like and subscribe to our Channel and hit the notification bell so you know when I do another video

Channel: Legacy Collectibles

Views: 2,205,512

Rating: 4.7622209 out of 5

Keywords: ww1 history, springfield 1911 pistol, rare battlefield find, rare and authentic ww1 artifacts, colt 1911, shooting 1911, shooting historic guns, rare and expensive firearms

Id: FhwMkoWH2hU

Length: 13min 32sec (812 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 03 2020