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Ahh, the Mystery of the RIA National Match 1911

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Only produced for a single year by the Army’s Rock Island Arsenal, the RIA-marked National Match “GI Custom” 1911 .45 is a rare gun.

Why National Match?

So-called “National Match” 1911s date back to custom-fit target guns made to compete in the U.S. National Matches held annually, first in New Jersey and Florida and then at Camp Perry, Ohio. Modifications made by military armorers and famous Colt rep Henry “Fitz” FitzGerald to GI guns led Colt to introduce a specific National Match 1911 model in 1933, with lessons learned from the event guns. Except for the gap between 1941 and 1957, Colt National Match 1911s continue to be produced, in small numbers.

Early Colt National Matches, such as this circa 1932 model in the Guns.com Vault, were little more than standard 1911s with a tuned trigger and better barrel. Only about 3,000 Colt NM pistols were made before World War II (Photo: Guns.com)
An M1911-equipped Marine Gunnery Sergeant Henry M. Bailey, winner of the Custer Trophy at the National Rifle Matches, Camp Perry, Ohio, summer 1930. First awarded in 1927, the Custer is still presented to the winner of the National Trophy Individual Pistol Match. (Photo: National Archives)

After World War II ended, with the Colt NM gun at the time out of production, the Army looked into making its own. The program, run out of the Army’s old Springfield Armory complex in Massachusetts, took existing GI M1911s already in inventory and re-worked them into more match-friendly guns. A National Match specification was established, and the conversion process included not only hand fitting and tuning but a new “hard” slide, either from Colt or Drake Manufacturing, while triggers, springs, bushings, and sights became an evolutionary process tweaked every season.

The 1962 standard GI Springfield Armory produced NM 1911 pistol. Note the sights. (Photo: Rock Island Arsenal Museum) 
The 1962 standard GI Springfield Armory produced NM 1911 pistol. (Photo: Rock Island Arsenal Museum) 
The 1963 standard GI Springfield Armory produced NM 1911 pistol. Note the adjustable rear sights. (Photo: Rock Island Arsenal Museum) 

Between 1955 and 1967, Springfield Armory produced 24,055 NM M1911s, an average of about 1,850 guns per year. Of these, most were sent to assorted military marksmanship teams while just 3,876 were sold to the public through the Army-run Director of Civilian Marksmanship program, an organization that became the non-profit federally chartered Civilian Marksmanship Program in 1996.

Lieutenant Colonel Walter Walsh, Team Captain, Marine Corps Rifle and Pistol Team, 1955 National Matches. Note his NM 1911 complete with target sights and a Colt commercial slide. A competitive shooter on the FBI pistol team during the 1930s bank robbery era, he was on the teams that tracked down criminal Arthur Barker, son of gangster Ma Barker, as well as “Public Enemy Number One” Al Brady. Serving in the Marines in WWII, he reportedly made a 90-yard shot with an M1911 on a Japanese sniper on Okinawa. He went on to compete in 50M Pistol at the  1948 Summer Olympics and won the gold medal with the United States team in the 25 m Center-Fire Pistol event at the 1952 ISSF World Championships. (Photo: National Archives.)

However, with the Pentagon’s decision in the 1960s to close Springfield Armory as a money-saving measure (it would reopen in 1978 as a National Historic Site), it was decided that the Army’s in-house National Match program would shift its home to Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois.

The Short RIA NM 1911 Run

According to the FY1967 Rock Island Annual Historical Report, due to the planned phase out of Springfield Armory by the Army in February 1966, Rock Island sent two mechanical engineers and three armorers to Massachusetts to be trained specifically to support the National Matches.

Following five weeks of OTJ at Springfield, the Rock Island contingent worked side by side with Springfield Armory personnel at Camp Perry in the summer of 1966 while the tooling for the NM 1911 program shuffled from Massachusetts to Illinois. By September of that year, Rock Island officially received the Work Authorizations for the NM program, and the following month, the Army released the funds to proceed.

The program was authorized to complete overhauls on 1,533 caliber .45 M1911 National Match pistols, convert another 848 M1911 pistols to National Match standard, and overhaul 2,462 NM M14 rifles. However, the guns didn’t arrive at RIA until the end of 1966, while the technical data package was not received from Springfield until late January 1967. This put the program behind, and it wasn’t until March 1967 that a team of about 45 military and civilian armorers – many from marksmanship units from across the Army – had begun training, spread out in three, four-week classes, at RIA by the NM cadre instructors. It was only then that assembly began at the armory’s Building 61.

These original color photos were taken of the RIA NM 1911 line in Building 61 in June 1967, with armorers fitting pistols to precise National Match standards.

The production process included careful hand-fitting of the slide and parts. (Photo: Rock Island Arsenal Museum)
As well as detailed work, making sure the trigger and action were smooth as glass. (Photo: Rock Island Arsenal Museum)
Checkering the pistol’s front strap. (Photo: Rock Island Arsenal Museum)
Testing of finished pistols included firing proof rounds, left, and minimum accuracy tests, right, from fixtures. 
Finished NM 1911s at RIA, 1967. (Photo: Rock Island Arsenal Museum)
The RIA NM 1911 standard. (Photo: Rock Island Arsenal Museum)

By July 6, 1967, 1,820 National Match M14 rifles and 1,764 NM M1911 pistols had been delivered to Camp Perry, notes the report. That August, nine RIA NM armorers went to the matches at Camp Perry to support the month-long effort there.

Then came the thunderbolt news that, with almost 500,000 U.S. troops stationed in Vietnam, the 1968 National Matches were canceled. It was the first time since 1950, when the matches were canceled during the Korean War, that Camp Perry would be shuttered for the summer. Further, the Gun Control Act of 1968 put a serious crimp on how guns were sold on the commercial market, one that is still felt today.

This brought about the end of the NM custom shop guns, with much more limited production shifted to the Army Marksmanship Unit’s Custom Firearms Shop, which continues to operate today.

Meet RIA NM 1911 #4784

The author was recently lucky enough to pick up a 4th Round Range Grade military surplus M1911 from the CMP.

A Military Model M1911A1 frame, serial number 824784, the pistol had been manufactured in 1942 at Colt. According to the CMP Forums, using the old Springfield Research Service books, it was accepted by the Army and shipped to Springfield Armory between September 18 and October 22, 1942. It likely went from there to an Army unit in Europe, as pistols in its serial number range soon after left for the New York Port of Embarkation.

Then, surely in the 1967 time frame, it was subsequently selected for upgrade to a National Match competition-grade pistol at Rock Island Arsenal, as it has both “RIA” and “NM” marked on the right side of the frame. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
It has a Colt NM 7791435 marked slide including a 1/8” .358 high front sight. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
The right side is marked: “Colts PT. F.A. Mfg. Co. Hartford, Conn. U.S.A.” Lightly scratched into the rear of the right slide is “WC” likely denoting it is for use with wadcutter ammo only. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
The gun carries a Colt NM 7791414 marked barrel, with the last four serial numbers (4784) electro-penciled to the hood. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
The NM7267718 barrel bushing also carries a 4784. The bushing was an extremely tight fit to the barrel and slide. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
It carries a large U.S.-marked Kensight adjustable rear sight. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
Note the aluminum trigger, which breaks at an amazingly crisp 3 pounds. Also note the “dummy mark” from some past incorrect reassembly at some point in the past 50+ years. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
The milled front strap is standard for an RIA NM 1911. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)

Continued use?

Following likely use by a division, post, regional, Army, state, or other-level Marksmanship Training Unit, some signs point to #4784 being converted a second time since leaving RIA in 1967-68.

A look at the internals. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
Compared to a standard GI Colt military model from 1944. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
The uncheckered straight mainspring housing is different from the NM standards, likely installed in later years. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com) 
It carries late model (Ergo XT Rigid intro’d in 2007) tapered black checkered plastic grips. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)
It has a UID label on the bottom of the dust cover. The Army only started putting these on guns starting around 2004. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)

Doing the archival work, a FOIA request to the Army pulled the inventory records for the gun going back to 1975. It spent a lot of time at Fort Lewis, Washington, with “unknown” unit owners back when the 9th Infantry Division and 2nd Ranger Battalion were there. Sent to Anniston Army Depot in January 1989, it was soon turned around and sent to the Concept Evaluation Support Agency in Lexington (Bluegrass Army Depot) in October 1990, where it stayed for a few months before being sent to the 1st Cavalry at Fort Hood, then back to CESA in April 1992. Of note, CESA is the main supply depot for Army Special Forces and SOCOM units.

The FOIA puts the gun everywhere from Washington state to Kentucky, Alabama, and Texas over a 48-year timeline. (Photo: Chris Eger/Guns.com)

The pistol remained at CESA for almost 30 years, including the entire Global War on Terror. As the Program Executive Office for Special Operations Forces Support Activity (PEO-SOFSA) was at Bluegrass, the pistol may have been a loaner. Issued as needed and returned after a requirement, especially during the high-tempo SOCOM operations in the early 2000s, it may have never been “officially” transferred on paper. This could account for the OIF-era UIC sticker, Ergo Rigid grips, and straight main spring housing. Barring an email from some operator who remembers the gun and its serial, we may never know. Some GI NM 1911s have been documented as former Delta Force guns, and SF widely used accurized .45s for years post 9/11.

Sent to Anniston Army Depot storage in June 2020, #4784 was transferred to the CMP in July 2023. From there, it has just been in the Eger family collection and will stay there until its next chapter.

Special thanks to the Rock Island Arsenal Museum for their assistance with this article. If you are ever in the area, please stop in and visit the facility while you still can. It is slated, along with 20 other base museums, to close in the next few years. 

Beauty, in Commercial C96 Small Ring Format

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Got a chance to spend some time with this beauty lately.

Pre-WWI commercial C96 models generally have a serial number that falls into the 30,000 to 274,000 range, and the VL&D marked pistol that recently came through the GDC Warehouse is No. 81976– putting it as roughly a 1905 production handgun. As such, it hails from the peak of Mauser’s golden era, with excellent fitting, fire-blued small parts, a “strawed” trigger, and deeply varnished wooden grips.

Further, it is kind of rare, being one of just 1,900 guns shipped directly from Oberndorf-on-the-Neckar to the firm of Von Lengerke & Detmold in New York City.

What? You don’t know VL&D?

More after the jump. 

Boyko’s No. 29

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In 1950, Chief Edward Boyko of the Passaic, New Jersey PD entered a “name that gun” contest at the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) conference in Colorado and submitted “Chief’s Special” as a suggestion for the hard-hitting new Model J revolver.

Smith & Wesson announced the winner in the December 1950 issue of The Police Chief, the IACP journal, and named Boyko as its author. The prize? A specimen of the new gun, complete with factory engraving.

Serial No. 29, it was an early “Pre-36” with a small grip and trigger guard of the I-frame, features that were later changed to make the revolver more comfortable to shoot with full-house loads. It also had a standard latch (later guns had a flat latch) and half-moon front sight, a configuration that only the earliest Chiefs Specials shipped with.

Plus, Chief Boyko’s was factory engraved.

Um, like this:

Yup, read more about the long-lost Boyko Chiefs Special in my column at Guns.com.

Euro But Not Trash: The Cold War Vintage CZ 75 ‘Pre-B’ 9mm

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While guys who dig CZs these days often like to think of themselves as mysterious and edgy, back in the chilliest days of the Cold War, picking up a CZ 75 was tougher than you’d think. 

A product initially of Communist-controlled and Moscow-allied Czechoslovakia, as I’ve covered dozens of times in the past, the CZ 75 first hit the market in Europe in 1975, hence the name. While nothing in the design was new – every feature had already appeared in a production gun somewhere – the combination of its internal slide rail design (similar to the SIG P210) with a 15+1 shot detachable 9mm magazine (Smith & Wesson Model 59), double-action/single-action trigger system (Walther P-38), and a linkless cam locking system (Browning Hi-Power) yielded a very sweet shooting pistol with a decent capacity that could be seen as a legitimate target or “combat” handgun, especially for its day. 

A second-generation 1986-vintage CZ 75 “Pre-B” with all matching serial numbers and zero import marks. (Photo: Chris Eger)

CZ 75s were known in the U.S. – they even popped up in that 1984 classic “Red Dawn” in the hands of dastardly commie airborne forces in the opening action sequence. The thing is, as there was plenty of bad blood between the U.S. and Warsaw Pact countries in the 1970s and 80s, it was fairly hard to get a CZ 75 in the States. 

This meant that most in that period came in via two narrow and now historically ironic sources: from Canada through a company called Pragotrade, and via American servicemembers/businessmen who bought them in Western Europe back when gun laws over there were a lot less draconian.

The latter is where I think this gun came from, as it doesn’t have any import marks but does have what seem to be factory-installed adjustable LPA target sights, which would make it a ringer for CZ 75s sold commercially in Britain in the mid-1980s. 

For instance: Czech out this ad from Edgar Brothers, a big UK-based gun distributor that is still in business – although not in the handgun market for the past 25 years. 

Now, that gun looks familiar…

More in my column at Guns.com.

Omar’s Pistols Headed Home

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Cue the “That Belongs in a Museum” memes, authorities have managed to recover and return dozens of rare collectible guns– some priceless– to the institutions from where they were stolen.

The pieces all went mission in the 1970s, back when security was lax in most public museums, and all that was needed was a big screwdriver and a flashlight to pull off a low-risk burglary.

In all, some 50 items, some dating to the French and Indian War, were returned to 17 institutions located in five states. 

Among the more interesting items recovered were: 

  • An 1847 Mississippi rifle stolen from Beauvoir in Biloxi, Mississippi.
  • World War II battlefield pickup pistols– a Luger and a Walther PPK– once owned by General Omar Bradley, stolen from the U.S. Army War College in 1979.
  • Assorted 19th-century flintlock rifles stolen from Pennsylvania museums.
  • An early Colt Whitneyville Walker revolver, valued at $1 million, stolen from the Connecticut State Library.
  • 18th-century English and Scottish pistols stolen from the Valley Forge Historical Society Museum.
  • A Volcanic pistol stolen from Pennsylvania’s Hershey Story Museum.
  • A rifle from the Daniel Boone Homestead in Birdsboro, Pennsylvania.

A huge Colt Whitneyville Walker revolver (bottom row with CT tag) was taken back to its home state. A powder horn (center right) dating to the French and Indian War was stolen from a Belchertown, Massachusetts, museum in the 1970s. The Walker PPK and Luger in the top right corner had been donated by Gen. Omar Bradley to the Army War College in Carlise, Pennsylvania. An exceedingly rare Volcanic pistol stolen from the Hershey Museum is to the bottom right. (Photo: FBI)

More in my column at Guns.com.

Ever wanted a red dot on a BHP?

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EAA over the past couple of years has been bringing in the new MC P35 platform from Girsan in Turkey, and the guns, essentially clones of the old Mk III BHP, have proven to be popular. Not content to rest on that, the company has responded to calls to update the classic and earlier this year delivered the OPS series, which adds an accessory rail to the frame and a flat-faced trigger without the mush of a magazine safety plunger to overcome.

Now, the logically named new MC P35 OPS Optic goes one better and comes from the factory micro red-dot slide cut in the RMS/RMSc footprint.

Better yet, they even throw in an optic.

You have to wonder what John Moses Browning would think of such a creature…

More in my column at Guns.com.

Battle of the (Hi-Power) Clones

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I’ve been kicking around a pair of 21st-century Hi-Power clones with two different origin stories, and we have a few things to talk about.

John Browning’s GP design, as delivered to the firearms world in 1935 via Fabrique Nationale’s resident gun genius Dieudonne Saive, was given its gold watch by FN in early 2018, and BHP fans the world over wept. While Turkish gunmaker Tisas briefly sent their Regent BR9 clone over here, other one-time Hi-Power clones such as Israeli-made Kareens and imports of the same branded by Charles Daly, Dan Wesson, and Magnum Research were history.

Then came 2021.

In September of that year, EAA announced they were on the cusp of bringing in the Girsan-made MCP35 from Turkey while Springfield Armory in October started hinting around at the gun they would soon introduce as the SA-35. Both were different takes on the classic Hi-Power of old, offering new ways to satisfy that eager fan base that was left with separation anxiety after FN exited the BHP biz.

Since then, I’ve given each of these newcomers a series of tests and evaluations, including putting over 1,000 rounds through each model. With that, let’s see how they stack up against each other – and the ghosts of Hi-Powers past with which they must contend.

At the end of the day, it boils down to why you want a Hi-Power in the first place. Both guns are better clones than I have seen in some past efforts under other banners (see the FEG, PJK, and the Bulgarian Arcus 94). Heck, even when stacked against late-model FN MK IIIs assembled in Portugal in the 2000s, there is little to grouse about. This is firmly an apples-to-apples comparison.

More on said apples in my column at Guns.com.

The Hi Power was Dead, then came the SA-35…

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A modern and attractive reboot of a classic complete with new features for a 21st Century market, Springfield Armory’s SA-35 has a lot going for it.

Introduced late last year, the SA-35 isn’t a page out of the old FN/Browning catalog, although it generationally has a lot in common with the latter’s 1960s “T/C-series” Hi-Powers. This includes an external extractor (a little foreshadowing is due here), ring hammer, and “smooth” slide, lacking the earlier thumbprint take-down scallop seen in guns prior to that time. I personally think the T/C-series was the summit of BHP evolution, so that’s a wise choice on Springer’s part.

When Browning halted production of the Hi-Power in 2017– let’s just admit they allowed it to wither on the vine for 20 years beforehand– it started the clock running for someone else to pick up the design and run with it. Cue Springfield.

So far, I’ve put 1K rounds through the SA-35 since last November, and have a full report in my column at Guns.com.

$500 Turkish Hi-Power, with a Catch

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A Turkish import via Florida-based EAA Corp, the affordable and well-made MC P35 is set to go the distance for those looking for an affordable Hi-Power clone.

EAA announced the MC P35 late last year and it is finally filtering out to distributors’ warehouses and gun store shelves. A resurrection of the classic late 1980s Browing/FN Hi-Power Mk III design, it is a short-recoil-operated single-action pistol with a frame and slide crafted from 4140 steel.

Basic specs are like any standard BHP, having a 4.87-inch barrel with a 7.8-inch overall length. Weight is 32 ounces flat with an unloaded 15-round magazine inserted.

The MC P35 has a couple of noticeable differences from the late Cold War-era Hi-Powers: a ring hammer rather than the more typical spur hammer used by the Mk III, and a 15-round flush-fit magazine produced by Mec-Gar of Italy. In a move sure to hurt the feelings of Hi-Power fans the world over, the Girsan has a magazine safety disconnect– in other words, it doesn’t fire without a magazine inserted.

But it did turn out to be reliable in testing.

It’s a blend of both old and new, and allows someone to get into Hi-Powers without having to spend Hi-Power money.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Whispers of a Portland Colt

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You often hear, when talking about old firearms, “if only they could talk.” Well, they can’t, but sometimes their hidden history tells a story.

Speaking of which, I recently came across a nice early Colt 1903 Pocket Hammerless and did some digging on its background. Turned out, it was made in 1911 and was one of 25 pistols of the same type shipped to Honeyman Hardware in Portland some 111 years ago.

Who is Honeyman and why is that interesting? Find out in my column at Guns.com.

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