[haggis]

It's my opinion that Bob Murphy's monograph Colt New Service Revolvers has the best collection of facts about Colt New Services with a good section on M1917's. There is a great deal of information about both Colt and S&W M1917's in Charlie Pate's book U.S. Handguns of World War II, the Secondary Pistols and Revolvers. Unfortunately, both books are recently out of print. It's hard to find a copy of either on the secondary book market, and even when found, prices are considerably higher than they originally were. But if you want to learn about these guns, your best bet is to scour the used book sites and pay the price. Good used book sites are Bookfinder, Abe Books, Alibris, Amazon and IDSA Books.

Grumpa, PM me your e-mail address - I've got a few things that may interest you.

Buck

 

[haggis]

Haggis, the Man At Arms articles I mentioned cite both Murphy and Pate among thei source material.

Yes, and I suspect that they would have cited Tim Mullin's book had it been available then. It fulfills a very specific need insofar as the detailed pictures, and I always recommend that a serious collector get a copy. But even Mullin states that Murphy has the details of production and features captured very well in his monograph.

BTW, one of the things I sent Gary was your second Men at Arms reference on the Colt M1917, in PDF format.

Best Regards,

Buck

 

[haggis]

It's likely that you are reading the Army service number on the butt. Yours would be service number 76,800 which is about halfway through the production run. That particular revolver was delivered to the Government during the week of June 15, 1918 as part of a weekly delivery of 2700 revolvers. There were about 155,000 Colt M1917's produced from October, 1917 through mid-February, 1919.

Buck