The author's example of the M45A1 exhibited tight fit and shot well at the range. is likely that he could operate and fieldstrip the new USMC Colt with no difficulty. That is quite a service legacy for any military firearm. I recently came across a passage from Jeff Cooper written in 1961 that read, "the big pistol [1911] has been with us for half a century, and as yet no better sidearm-for serious combat work-has been devised." It is a testament to the enduring nature of the M1911 that a full 50 years later the Corps was issuing the latest version of the design in the M45A1. I didn't think much on it at the time, but as we received those first tan Colts and issued them out to our Raiders it was just a few months more than 100 years since Colt had delivered its initial shipment of the "U.S. Pistol, Model of 1911" to the Marine Corps. The M45A1 serves still today, but it will almost certainly be the final chapter in the U.S. military service life of the M1911. My old unit carried them on special operations missions around the world for a couple of years and then completed the en masse switch to the Glock 19 that had been occurring gradually even before the Colt's adoption. The M45 serves on with a few specialized Marine Corps units and is expected to for a few more years when most think it will be replaced by a polymer-frame, striker-fired 9 mm, thus ending a long and historic run for the M1911 and its .45 ACP cartridge. These decommissioned Colts will continue to be a hot item among both shooters and collectors for the foreseeable future. The pistols are exceptional purely as shooters, and scarce and significant for several military and historic reasons. We are fortunate that they found their way onto the public market. AMERICANRIFLEMAN.ORG JULY 2019 69https://www.cimarron-firearms.com/ https://www.lymanproducts.com/ http://www.AMERICANRIFLEMAN.ORG