America had just won a war against Spain, liberating both Cuba and the Philippines in the process, and found itself embroiled in a nasty guerilla war with the Moros, Muslim indigents who regarded those islands as their own and fiercely resisted all attempts for peaceful relations. The then-new U.S. service revolver, the Colt Officer's Model .38 Long Colt, had proved a dismal failure in stopping adrenaline-crazed Moros, who readily charged into the middle of groups of American troops, chopping up everyone within reach and then disappearing back into the jungle. In fact, things had gotten so bad that a near mutiny resulted. U.S. troopers had lost all faith in the .38 Long Colt's ability to perform its assigned mission—to keep attackers away—and in a desperate attempt to rectify the problem, the Army rushed quantities of old Colt Single Action Army
.45s to the Philippines and hurriedly issued them with recently mothballed black powder 250-grain, lead flat-point ammunition. As archaic as it sounds, the move solved the problem almost instantly. To the relief of American soldiers, the old six-guns stopped the attacking Moros in their tracks. The U.S. Army quickly retired the .38 Long Colt but was acutely aware that it couldn't continue to utilize an antique, single-action revolver for very long. Nearly every country in Europe was in the process of adopting some form of self-loading pistols, and it was clear that America needed to do it as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment