with timeless continuity, the 1911 has outgrown the Colt brand with which it was once synonymous.
The P-35
“Porgy & Bess” opens in New York, and Steinbeck’s “Tortilla Flat” is published. The hot dance is the Rhumba. Milk is up to 23 cents for half a gallon (delivered, of course). Boulder Dam, Alcoholics Anonymous, and the Social Security Act all come into being. It is the birth year for Woody Allen, Elvis Presley, Sandy Coufax, and the Browning Hi-Power pistol. It is 1935.
Colt collectors will spot the WWII-vintage ejection port and sights on “retro” Colt 1911A1, reintroduced in 2001.
The P-35 was the last design of John Browning, who also created the Colt 1911. Many would also consider the Hi-Power his best. Known in some quarters as the GP or grand puissance, the pistol may owe more of its ingenuity to Didionne Souave than to Browning. In any case, it was the first successful high-capacity 9mm semiautomatic, and for more than a quarter of a century was the definitive one. It remains today the standard-issue service pistol of Great Britain and numerous other countries.
For most of its epoch, the P-35 was distinguished by a tiny, mushy-feeling thumb safety and by sights that were not the right size or shape for fast acquisition. In the 1980s Browning fixed that at last with its Mark II and later Mark III series pistols, which reached their high point in the Practical model. Good, big sights…a gun at last throated at the Browning factory to feed hollowpoints…big, positively operating ambidextrous thumb safety…legions of Browning fans were in heaven. That the guns by now were being manufactured for Browning in Portugal instead of at the Fabrique Nationale plant in Belgium mattered only to the most rigid purists.
Like the Colt 1911, the P-35 is slim, easy to conceal, and comfortable to carry. The 13+1 magazine capacity seemed to be its big selling point. But if people bought it for firepower, they kept it because it had a more endearing quality: It simply felt exquisitely natural in the human hand.
Before people used the word “ergonomics,” John Browning clearly understood the concept. No pistol is as user-friendly. Col. Cooper, who has been called “The High Priest of the 1911,” once wrote that no pistol had ever fit his hand better than the Browning. What a shame, he added, that it was not offered in a caliber of consequence.
Produced for the most part in 9mm Parabellum and occasionally in caliber .30 Luger, the Browning got a boost in popularity stateside during the 1990s when it was introduced in .40 S&W. The bigger caliber feels rather like a 1911 slide on a P-35 frame, but it shoots well. There were early reports of problems, but the factory quickly squared these away. The 9mm Browning has always been a rather fragile gun when shot with heavy loads. I’ve seen baskets of broken Browning frames in English military stockpiles and in Venezuelan armories. The hammering of NATO ammo, hotter than +P+ as produced by England’s Radway Green and Venezuela’s CAVIM arsenals, was the culprit. Fed the hot loads only sparingly, and kept on a practice diet of low-pressure standard American ball ammo, the 9mm Browning will last and last. The massive slide of the .40 caliber version, along with its strong recoil spring, is apparently enough to keep the guns in that caliber from breaking epidemically.
The Browning’s mechanism does not lend itself to trigger tuning in the manner of the 1911, that is one reason it has never been popular with target shooters. For most of its history, its magazines would not fall free unless the pistol was deprived of one of its trademark features, the magazine disconnector safety. The latter, when in place, renders a chambered round unshootable if the magazine has been removed. In the 1990s, Browning came up with a magazine with a spring on the back that positively ejected it from the pistol.
The timeless styling of the Browning made it a classic, but make no mistake: Its easy “carryability,” and especially its feel in the hand, have made it an enduringly popular defense gun. From petite female to large male, every hand that closes over a Browning Hi-Power seems to feel a perfect fit. One caveat: Though it will hold 13+1, serious users like the SAS discovered that it wasn’t very reliable unless the magazine was loaded one round down from full capacity. Just something to think about.
Classic Double-action Autos
Some gun enthusiasts would argue whether the words “classic” and “DA auto” belong in the same sentence. Can there be such a thing as a “classic” Mustang? Only to the young, and to fans of the genre. Ditto the DA auto.
Surely, in terms of firearms design history, there were at least a couple of classics. The Walther designs of the 1920s and 1930s are a case in point. There is no question that the P-38 dramatically influenced duty auto designs of the future, though no serious gun professional ever made that pistol his trademark if he could get something else.
European soldiers and police dumped them at the first opportunity for improved designs by HK, SIG-Sauer, and latter-day Walther engineers. South African police, who stuck with the P-38 for decades, told the author they hated them and couldn’t wait to swap up to the Z88, the licensed clone of the Beretta 92 made in that country.
The Walther PP and PPK have timeless popularity that comes from small size and ease of concealed carry, splendid workmanship in the mechanical sense, and a cachet more attributable to the fictional James Bond than to genuine gun experts who shot a lot, though the great Charles “Skeeter” Skelton was a notable exception who actually carried the PP and PPK in .380. By today’s standards, the ancient Walther pocket gun is a poor choice. If it is not carried on safe, a round in the chamber can discharge if the gun is dropped. If it is carried on safe, the release lever is extremely awkward and difficult to disengage. The slide tends to slice the hand of most shooters in firing. Walther .380s often won’t work with hollow-points, and though inherently accurate thanks to their fixed-barrel design, often require a gunsmith’s attention to the sights to make the guns shoot where they are aimed. There are not only better .380s now, but smaller and lighter 9mm Parabellums!
Here is a circa 1930s production 6-inch S&W M&P with factory lanyard loop and instruction guide.
In the historical design and “influence on gun history” sense, one could call the Smith & Wesson Model 39 a classic. But it, too, was a flawed design, and it would take Smith & Wesson almost three decades to really make it work. The S&W autoloader was, by then, a redesigned entity and a part of the new wave, rather than a true classic like the 1911 or the Hi-Power.
S&W Service Revolvers
In 1899, President William McKinley signed the treaty that ended the Spanish-American War, the first of the Hague Accords were drafted, and Jim Jeffries was the heavyweight-boxing champion of the world. Born in that year were Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Swanson, James Cagney, Fred Astaire, and the Smith & Wesson Hand Ejector .38 revolver that would become known as the Military & Police model.
The Smith & Wesson double-action was the “Peacemaker” of the 20th century. As the M&P’s name implied, it was the defining police service revolver for most of that century, with many thousands of them still carried on the streets today. S&W revolvers fought with American troops in both world wars, Korea, and Vietnam.
There are doubtless still some in armed services inventories to this day.
One of the first of many small modifications to the design was a front locking lug that, many believed, made the Smith &
