Presumably an attempt to reduce the cost to manufacture the iconic handgun.

This one is also on display at the Springfield National Armory Historical Site.

  • @FireTowerOPM
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    81 year ago

    My guess is it was the same idea as the Liberator (conveniently in the bottom left). A cheap gun that could be dropped in occupied cities to arm partisan fighters with something they could use to get a rifle.

    The Liberator wasn’t a very good pistol and was single shot. The stamped 1911 might have been an attempt at practicing the ideas behind the Liberator in a semi automatic handgun.

    We made ~1 million Liberators but turns out the hard part about arming partisans isn’t making the guns, but getting them to them. I believe most of them never left out hands. Probably a factor in the death of the stamped 1911 program.

    • SSTFM
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      81 year ago

      Believe that zero Liberators were ever airdropped as originally intended. Not because it was too difficult but because it was a waste of a bomber mission.

      I’m not arguing with you, just thinking out loud why and how this handgun idea ever materialized into more than a paper suggestion.

      • @FireTowerOPM
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        51 year ago

        Yeah, it was definitely a ‘good on paper’ type idea. The only other possible explanation I can think of is export sales to poorer countries.