Tag Archives: Colt Vest Pocket

Is that a 9mm in your pocket? 1986 edition

Posted on by Leave a comment

While there is a number of very handy and downright pocketable little 9mm pistols today, back in the mid-1980s, Detonics was the main name in the game.

Super compact semi-auto pistols at the time were far from a radical concept, as guns like the assorted Browning Baby and Colt Vest Pocket had been on the market since the 1900s. However, they were more on the pipsqueak level, chambered in .25 ACP. Larger format pistols like the Walther PP/PPK brought .32 ACP and .380 ACP to the table, but if you wanted something with a bit more ballistic performance, you had to cash in your savings bonds and go for a Semmerling or an ASP, both of which were in extremely limited, almost underground, production.

Enter the Detonics Pocket 9.

More in my column at Guns.com.

A Rimau Z-man’s vest gun

Posted on by Leave a comment

Here we see Australian War Memorial collection item REL/12244, a Colt semi-automatic vest pocket pistol.
Blued frame stamped on the left side with Colt’s Pt.A.MFG.Co HARTFORD CT USA and Patent dates 1896 – 1910 with the rearing horse trademark. On the right side COLT AUTOMATIC CALIBRE .25. Black plastic grips with ‘Colt’ and the horse trademark.

This pistol belonged to Sergeant David Peter Gooley, A.I.F. who joined the Z Special force in June 1944. He was a member of the Operation Rimau party which was captured and executed at Singapore by the Japanese on 7 July 1945

Rimau saw 23 commandos on a “borrowed” Malay junk sink 3 Japanese ships. Of the party, 10 were killed during the op or died in custody while the remaining 13, Gooley included, were executed a month before the cessation of hostilities