There is no record of any 1911A1 with a serial number later than 2693613. There was one last batch shipped in late September of 1945 but it was actually made up of guns with earlier serial numbers. To answer your original question though, the complete Ithaca records are now public and have been reviewed countless times by countless people. The frame wasn't made by Ithaca at all and one way to confirm that is to look at the shape of the rear tang and compare it to any other Ithaca frame made at the time.
Ithaca 37 serial number dates serial numbers#
If anyone has done other work on the subject of late Ithaca serial numbers about which I'm not aware, please point me to it.ĭavid unfortunately it's definitely not an Ithaca-produced gun. I think someone needs to take it apart, and look for other characteristics that could absolutely confirm it as a reproduction. So, I guess it’s possible it’s a real production Ithaca pistol. I’m also not sure what contractual clauses existed for notification of cancellation, and completion of assembly of remaining inventory.
I’m not sure how quickly we put the brakes on production, but I assume it was relatively quick. This means that the subject firearm would likely have been delivered 28 days after 9/7/45, which would have been almost 5 weeks after the Japanese surrender. Examining the ship dates for 6 months prior to 9/7/45, delivery numbers documented by Clawson show that an average of 9422 guns were delivered each month. Serial number 2669404 is 9086 units beyond what is supposed to be the last pistol manufactured by Ithaca, and 24,209 short of the end of total Ithaca serial number assignment. Maybe they did, but I don't see any additional context to the subject after the Clawson work. It's certainly possible that there is more to it, and that we are assuming that all 3 authors fully vetted Ithaca production when that might not be the case. My question is this.Has anyone else looked at those same records, or performed additional research on the subject? It appears to me that the Meadows and Poyer books took Clawson's work at face value, and cited his work in their books. He stated that the Ithaca records had issues, and were incomplete, yet he was pretty straightforward in his statement of the last Ithaca pistol manufactured being serial number 2693613. I still don't think it would be a good first item for a collection, but I also don't believe we can completely dismiss it without very close inspection of the firearm.Ĭlawson certainly did his research, and his work was the first in-depth coverage of WWIII M1911A1 pistols. I want to offer up some other thoughts on this controversial M1911A1 pistol. I've put a lot of rounds through that pistol over the years.I may shoot it again tomorrow.ĭavid some reason, this subject kept me awake for a couple of hours last night, thinking about the possibilities. The frame has not been altered, but it has many competition upgrades that I made to it about 25 years ago. I still have it, and it was already reblued when I bought it. At least I thought it was an Ithaca for the first 15 years or so.Until I realized it was an Ithaca slide on a Remington Rand frame. No matter if it is legitimate, based on the published resources and manufacturing record references available, it would most likely be frowned upon by a future purchaser unless new information proved its provenance.Īn Ithaca M1911 was the first handgun I ever purchased, 31 years ago in Hawaii.
This is probably a gun to avoid, particularly as a first M1911A1. He also states the assigned range for Ithaca went up to 2693613, as others have stated. I want to add that Clawson noted that Ithaca records were discovered in a government warehouse, and that "many were missing or illegible due to poor quality microfilming." That being said, he states with no apparent ambiguity that the last pistol manufactured was serial number 2660318.
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