To quote the USAF order at the time, “ Because of the peculiarities of the M13 revolver, i.e., requirement for special ammunition, limited use and potential danger if used for other than the purpose for which it was designed, all M13 revolvers excess to Air Force requirements will be mutilated to prevent further use as a weapon. In October 1959, both the Colts and the Smiths were recalled to their depots and crushed, their frames deemed unsafe. This turned a couple of them into small hand grenades and kabooms were quickly reported.
Colt agent 38 special serial number lookup full#
When stocks of M41 special ball, a low-powered round that pushed aĬolt Aircrewman at Springfield Armory Museum.ġ30-grain jacketed round nosed bullet grew scarce, users loaded their aluminum guns with full power stuff. This is not unexpected as at the time Offutt was home to the bombers of the US Strategic Air Command, whose crews sat on constant ramp alert to scramble towards the Soviet Union with a cargo of atomic weapons.īesides the Colts, between 1953-54, Smith and Wesson produced about 40,000 aluminum framed M-13 snub-nosed pistols to augment the small numbers of Aircrewmen in circulation. The largest lot of these, some 255 revolvers, was sent to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska in 1951. Records from Colt show that some 1,123 were shipped to the US Air Force from. So yeah, the Aircrewman was about as light as you could get.Ĭolt made just 1189 of these guns in 1950-51. In comparison with the snubs of today, the 5-shot, S&W 637 Airweight comes in at 13.5. Whereas the Detective Special was 21-ounces and the Cobra was 16-ounces, the superlight Aircrewman tipped the scales at just 11-ounces with six rounds of 38-Special loaded. To be safe, the Air Force used low-pressure rounds instead of commercial. The Cobra already used an aluminum side plate, but to throw out all of the steel except in the barrel and replace it with the wondermetal was a bold step forward.
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To carve weight away from the Cobra, Colt used space age aluminum for the frame and cylinder instead of the normal ordanance grade steel. 38-specials with small profile rounded butts and 2-inch barrels. The Cobra itself was a revamp of the company’s earlier 1927-era Detective Special. In a time where every ounce of weight was sliced from huge bombers like the Convair B-36 “Peacemaker” to allow them to carry atomic weapons to the Soviet Union, the watch word was ‘lightweight.’Ĭolt answered this call for a small and effective, but super lightweight handgun, with a modified version of their then-new Cobra line of snub-nosed revolvers. In 1947, the US Air Force was carved off from the Army and the new brass realized the need for a modern space age handgun for the occasional aircrew emergency, survival situations, and nuclear weapon’s security breach. 38 revolvers of various manufacturers supported by the occasional M-1 carbine. Throughout World War 2, US Army Air corps, personnel and glider pilots often carried full sized. This led to those daring young aviators to begin carrying handguns and in some cases rifles with them for those unexpected stops. In World War 1, pilots and aircrew often found themselves lost, crashed, or shot down in areas that were less than friendly.
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US Air Force Pilot with Aircrewman revolver.