1911 draw by Chic Gaylord

[Jack Malloy]

If you have ever handled an original model 1911 as opposed to the a-1, you will find that the thumb safety is almost impossible to use, as its very, very small, not at all like even the standard "mil spec" safeties of today which are huge in comparison. The original was flat against the slide and only had a minor tab sticking out towards the end, and not very far at that. its even harder to use than the old style Browning High Power safety...
You also find that the original 1911 had a super wide hammer, roughly the same size as a Smith N frame target hammer and a smaller grip safety tang.

Basically the rest of what you said was true. It was designed for cavalrymen to carry in a flap rig hammer down on a LOADED chamber. The grip safety was an add on. That was in the field. Around base the gun was traditionally carried hammer down on an empty chamber.
Up till the 70s actually, many 1911 fanciers carried hammer down on a live round in the chamber and even hammmer on half cock over a loaded chamber, which is why colt changed the half cock notch to an intercept.

Bill Jordon was not necissarily anti-auto. He discusses autos in No Second Place Winner and he points out that the autos of his day were not reliable with lead bullets and that FMJ ammo didnt have enough stopping power for law enforcement use.
Jordon noted (and had a photo of his own) the 1911 could be had with bigger sights, a custom extended thumb safety and the grip safety tied down and that it could be modified to handle hollowpoints and lead bullets but that the expense of doing all that to each gun made it too cost prohibitive for most departments.

I read Handgunners Guide last summer. Gaylord points out that the 1911 commes into it's own as a gun for clearing dark alleys as you can lay down a volley of fire and reload rapidly.
While some of what is in both books is outdated today, there is still much valuable information you can glean from them and they are well worth reading especialy if you are a revolver man.

Something to remember. We had high capacity autos and assault rifles in the 50s and 60s. Its just nobody in Hollywood new about these "high tech weapons of death."
So movies and tv shows generally featured .38s and riot guns.

And cops trained for real life contingencies. Like pulling over a speeder and winding up in a shootout. Or handling a prowl call and getting shot at by a sniper.
In those REAL LIFE situations being able to draw and fire and hit what you aimed at RAPIDLY was much more conducive to officer safety than the idea of having to fire 46 round in less than a minute.
In the late sixties there were concerns about types we would call Terorrists today carrying machine guns and machine pistols and being "outgunned" with the then standard .38. Speedloaders came along along with the popularity of Magnum rounds and you did not hear too much concern about being "outgunned" for some time afterwords.
(It can be downright educational to read old Gun books from the seventies).
Some departments did experiment with 1911s, High Powers and the then new S&W 59s. But the revolver stayed pretty much in the running till the early to mid 80s.....
What happened?

Movies like Lethal Weapon and Die Hard and tv shows like Miami Vice seem to have been the predominant factor in the switchover from autos to revolvers as then and now, most real life gunfights are over after three rounds have been fired and take place at a distance of ten feet or less.



Jack the Literary Critic for The Firing Line....

LOL...


>>>he gun was designed for mounted calvary troops and meant to carried in a full flap military holster and carried hammer down on an empty chamber. When drawn the slide was racked and the safety put on till you needed to fire. Once done firing the safety was put back on.<<<

[ClarkEMyers]

There was a real famous guy in the sixties named Chic Gaylord. As some of his customers say, he had the hands of a craftsman, the eye of an aartist and the mind of a scientist. He majored in art in college and after graduation worked as a cartoonist for the famous Peter Arne[ sic actually Arno I think], dean of American cartoonists. He finally went on his own and in his shop on West 47nth St NYC he began to develope the finest holsters for law enforcement people. He never advertised as his fame came from word of mouth. He also became known in those days to be the top man in combat shootng. He made holsters for every type situation and all type pistols. He once put on a demo with 17 weapons concealed on his body. I had the pleasure of meeting him a number of times when a friend in law enforcement asked me to go.
..........................

Austin Behlert
Pistolsmith, retired.[deceased]

Gaylod was quite a guy. I remember talking to him a few times on the phone when I was playing around making holsters for myself, and a few cop friends.
He spent a lot of time talking about design, the benefits of heavy thread for stitching, and properly molding a gun to a holster.
In those days, he used real guns to mold the holsters. Today, it's just not possible with all the different manufacturers, models, and variations of the same model available.

Not many people realize it, but Chic passed away about 10 years ago. He was in a nursing home until his death. One of his good friends, Lefty Lewis, a retired NYPD Detective, and holster maker, used to visit him regularly.

Chic certainly was the father of the concealment holster as we know it today.

Lou
_________________
Alessi Holsters, Inc.
You'll never know it's there, until you need it..

.....I can't take credit for the originality of that design. It's actually an old Chic Gaylord design that he called 'The Dragoon', and was intended as a cross draw holster worn on the belt with large heavy guns.
I adapted it to a shoulder rig back in the mid seventies, and it has been a popular hunting rig for many of our customers for almost 30 years now. We've made minor changes over the years, but essentially it is the basic Gaylord design..
........

Lou
_________________
Alessi Holsters, Inc.
You'll never know it's there, until you need it..

......Actually Chic Gaylord was the first holster maker to use a pull through snap on his holsters. Later, Paris Theodore also used it frequently on many of his designs.
I believe I was the first maker to design a shoulder rig with the pull through snap in the trigger guard though. That was in the early 70's.
....

[emphasis added]

Lou
_________________
Alessi Holsters, Inc.
You'll never know it's there, until you need it..

I'm not going to quote some of the folks who have been a little bit less in the public eye - though as an exercise for the reader there are quite public endorsements by truly well qualified people who carried a gun in odd places for Uncle Sam and from some of the early IPSC people - in some cases the same people.

If anybody really thinks I'm fabricating these quotes PM me. If you're not impressed by Luigi and Austin and their work we have nothing much to say to each other. They may be mistaken but they really are primary sources.

[ClarkEMyers]

Another example of his dismal lack of knowledge shows in his discussion of carrying a automatic with a round chambered, in the form of a 1911 Government Model. Gaylord presents, as ‘…the way to do it…’ a reverse twist holster which mandates the user pass the muzzle of the gun past his own body, as he is cocking the hammer. Okay, in those days few men carried a 45 auto cocked and locked – and from Gaylord’s devotion to revolvers, I’m sure he would have had fits at the mere suggestion – it does not take much thought to prefer a straight draw holster which does not cross the user’s body. Even in the ‘50s we knew about that sort of thing.

I can't speak for how many but there have always been some who carried a 1911 cocked and even unlocked depending on time and place.

I myself was no doubt much too influenced by Mr. Gaylord as I have been known long ago and far away to carry a 1911 cavalry draw - in my limited experience if I'm frex in the back of a restaurant booth with a loose table shoved into my admittedly loose gut so I need to present if at all from such a cramped seated position and can't just dive under the table a cavalry draw allows both a better seated draw and a better weak hand draw than my current more relaxed carry of an Alessi GWH (weak hand draw behind the back and I'll be waving the muzzle all over there is no Utopia). Fortunately for all concerned I never had to do it but I did agree with Mr. Gaylord as to the utility from awkward positions. Today I'd need a special accomodation to present from a belted-in position in a typical small car - I'm impressed by the Horseshoe velcro model for special situations myself. Again today a contingency unlikely to arise but quite different from an upright uniformed Sam Brown belt carry or a Jordan Holster or.......

I'm by no means defending the book - which today is a curiosity piece - but I was impressed by a few things and my betters who started out smarter than I ever was were more impressed by more things.

On the historical use of the 1911 I suggest inter alia the 1940 edition of FM23-35 Automatic Pistol, Caliber 45....... available for easy viewing at http://www.sightm1911.com/manual/manual.htm

[Doug.38PR]

Why wasn't cocked and locked considered good practice back in the 50s and 60s? I mean what did people back then figure the lock switch was for?

[Jack Malloy]

In the fifties and sixties the revolver was considered to be the nea plus ultra of combat handguns....


There are a couple of factors.
One is that law enforcement officers were more concerned with speed of the draw on the first shot. And of course the handle of a revolver sticks out and makes for a faster draw than an auto draw, and there was no safety to fumble with.
Secondly the revolver was considered more reliable. Remember, the shooters of the 50s and 60s grew up with IMPORTED military surpluss autoloaders, many of which were produced by slaves in wartime conditions against their will, and were not as reliable as the pre-war autos from the same makers were.
So a lot of .32s and .9mms from German controlled countries were prone to malfs and breakages. Some people just assumed that this meant that all autos were that way. They did not stop and think, "Hey, this gun was made by a captive in a plant against his will."
Also, in an era of the DA revolver the idea of a gun with a cocked hammer in the holster would have given a lot of people the willies.

Remember, in the teens and 20s a lot of cops carried autopistols for awhile. Some like the Colt model 1903 pocket models had no exposed hammer and to be ready for action you had little choice but cocked and locked.
At that time LE was still getting used to revolvers that cocked themselves so an autoloader was not that big of a deal.

[tipoc]

Jack, I may have stretched a point saying that Gaylord, Jordan, Keith etc. "didn't like autos much" it would have been more accurate had I said that they preferred wheelguns (though Jordan referred to autos as "ammo burners", "jamamatics", etc.). Gaylord and Keith considered them specialized weapons for either concealment (Gaylord, the Walther PPK) or as Keith did, praise the accuracy of the Luger but considere the 9mm ball ammo available at the time as good only for a battlefield and not so good for hunting or self defense.

We should say that these were the opinions of experienced shooters from a particular generation who were familiar with both U.S. made and imported guns. Among the broader population there was a general impression that autos were less reliable than revolvers. They were also specialized. Pocket guns like the Colt M1903, hideout pieces like the Browning .25s and .32s. But for serious work a wheelgun was preferred.

For the first half of the last century leverguns were the American rifle of choice. The popularity of bolt action rifles was slow to grow and only took off in the period tween the wars and in the 50s. Semi auto rifles for hunting and sport have only come into the picture the the last 30 years or so. There were exceptions to this (the BAR and Remington) but in general they were few.

"back then what did people think the lock was for?"

It was used the same then as today only probably more so. Think of how you use the safety other than for carrying in a good holster cocked and locked. Same.

Firearm tactics have evolved over the last century a good deal. From the gunfighters of the old west (and East who had their techniques too) to McGivern, to Fairbain and Sykes, The OSS and the FBI, to Jeff Cooper (who popularized carrying cocked and locked) and popularized two handed combat shooting, to these days. Along the way old techniques are sometimes forgotten or rediscovered.

Reding the old texts is always rediscovering our past and is useful.

tipoc