Moved from the old YW site:
gschwertley
Okay, here are a couple of not very good pics that I had one of my daughters take. Her little digital camera is not as good as my old Minolta for close-up work. Nevertheless, you guys are always asking for pictures so this time at least I have some.
This is a picture of a Colt Service Model Ace pistol, caliber .22 LR. This particular piece was made for the Navy in 1945. It belongs to a co-worker of mine who recently inherited from his father, who recently died. Heck of a way to get a gun, but there it is.
He turned the thing over to me to clean it for him as a favor as it was filthy and looked like it hadn't been cleaned since it left the factory. I am very nervous having it around, as these are very valuable and since this particular one was handed down, it would be impossible to replace.
Between 1935 and 1945, around 13,800 of these were made for the military. Compare that to 1911A1 .45's (Colt only); between 1924 and 1945, 1,643,068 made for the miltary. This particular piece is Parkerized, so is not worth quite as much as the earlier blued examples.
You should be able to see from the pictures the discoloration of the front part of the slide and the area on the slide around the slide stop notch -- these areas were hardened after the finish was applied, hence the color change. This is the same on .45's after such-and-such a serial number and is normal.
Frankp87
Beautiful! Was the .22 for training purposes?
gschwertley
Yes, these were made for training purposes. The early Ace models had a solid barrel and .22-like recoil. The Service Model Ace pieces have a floating chamber that causes the pistol to have more felt recoil when fired, therefore more realistically simulating the .45 recoil.
This floating chamber design was invented by "Carbine Williams" made famous by the movie of the same name featuring James Stewart. Carbine Williams was a convict who had a talent for designing weapons. He was taken on by the Winchester Co. and his designs inspired the .30 Caliber US Carbine used in WW2. If you haven't seen the movie, locate a copy and watch it. It comes on TV once in a while, but not as often as another Jimmy Stewart movie centered on guns, "Winchester '73".
The Service Model Ace shown above is marked "United States Property" but does not have unique US Navy markings. We have definite knowledge that it did come from the Navy and if anyone bothered a Colt letter would confirm it.
yockey5
It is a nice looking piece for sure! Something about the design that looks so good.