The United States in the early 20th century by John Moses Browning designed a lot of excellent semi-automatic pistols, there have been introduced M1900 \ M1903 \ M1910 three compact pistols, but the power or lethality of these weapons can not let the U.S. soldiers trust, after all, not much bigger than the slap of the pistol just from the appearance can not bring deterrence, U.S. soldiers still trust large-caliber pistols, such as browning M1911 pistol or today's protagonist M1917 revolver, One of the characteristics of the gun is that there are two types of guns of one model.
.44 caliber Magnum revolver bullet, note its pronounced convex base margin
.45 caliber automatic pistol bullets, note that there is no bottom edge
The bullets in the two pictures above are helpful for the content below.
During the U.S.-Philippine War in the 1890s, because Smith & Wesson's .38 caliber revolver proved to be ineffective in the face of native Filipinos, Colt, the largest manufacturer of American revolvers, proposed a standard revolver using .45 caliber (11.43 mm) bullets, long barrels, and heavy grips, the M1909.
Colt M19091 revolver
After the First World War, the United States entered the war because of the lack of M1911 pistols among front-line soldiers, the U.S. military's approach was to let the revolver make up for it, and the job of making up for it was given to Colt and Smith & Wieson.
Colt Company because of the full production of M1911 does not have the energy to make a new gun, simply the M1909 revolver gun modified the nest chamber diameter to adapt to the .45 ACP (Colt automatic pistol bullet) bullet; but such a simple modification caused the bullet and the nest chamber mismatch, the revolver bullet is a bullet with a bottom edge, the bottom edge bullet will slide back and forth in the nest to cause a dud away from the firing pin, in order to solve this problem Colt added a half-moon clip to the gun to fix the bullet, The half-moon clip is like adding a convex bottom edge to the automatic pistol to fix the bullet, the half-moon clip is three three fills is very characteristic; although the late use of the nest chamber gap process to adapt to the .45 caliber ACP bullet, but the nest shell hook and shell throwing top rod can not withdraw the punched shell shell, you need to use a tool such as a pencil to push the shell out!
Colt M1917 revolver
After the outbreak of World War I, the United States sold arms on a large scale, when Britain had a large number of arms orders in the United States. Among them, Smith & Wesson of Springfield, Illinois, made a .445-inch (11.56 mm) caliber revolver for the United Kingdom, which had a large order as a British military pistol, and when Colt went all out to produce the M1911, Smith & Wesson took over the task of producing the revolver gun, and the company's approach was also very simple, or the same production line took the British revolver gun over to a .45 caliber and began production, and the result was that as in the case of Colt, the .45ACP bullet without a bottom edge was also loaded with Smith & Wesson's half-moon clip, using three three-piece filling Like Colt, the Half Moon Clip is reusable.
Smith & Wesson M1917 revolver gun
The M1917 revolver has a caliber of 11.43 mm, a total length: 274 mm, a weight of 1.02 kg, a magazine capacity of 6 rounds, in addition to the United States and France are also equipped.
The Smith & Wesson M1917 uses the Half Moon Clip, note its massive bullet nest
The M1917 revolver was a pistol that the United States had hastily launched after the outbreak of World War I, and was withdrawn from the front line after the M1911 gradually met the needs of the army, and by 1940 it was mainly equipped by the United States National Guard and the British Royal Navy.
The Colt M1917 revolver was used in China, and some of them were equipped with the guns of the commanders after being captured by our People's Liberation Army.