Counter Jockey asks, "So, silly question, this is the Artillery Model. We're there different M-1873s for each respective branch of the Army?"
A skimmed history and free-form high-points version:
First; no hyphen in the designations. M1873. Actually it's Model of 1873 but the "model of" gets shortened to M and the spaces deleted for time saving on the typing.
The original Colt Model P as adopted by the United States Army as the Revolver, calibre .45, Model of 1873 had a 7-1/2" barrel.
Some of these guns led a hard life being rode hard and put away wet repeatedly.
Quite a few went straight from Hartford to an Army warehouse.
In the early 1880's it was decided to modernize the handguns and that's the Colt New Army adopted as the Revolver, calibre .38, Model of 1892.
To call Congress stingy during this time-frame is a massive understatement.
The Army, having defeated the Indians for all time, was downsized aggressively.
This meant two things. Not much money for new guns, and many guns were surplussed.
Not enough new guns to go around meant that the M1873 had to remain in service, but many desperately needed repaired.
The repair and refurbishment process included a shorter 5-1/2" barrel.
The new 1892 and 1894 .38's were prioritized to the Cavalry. The altered M1873's were first issued to light artillery units... thus becoming the artillery model. The older 7-1/2" barreled guns were prevalent in cavalry units until replaced by the 1892, so they become known as the cavalry model.
There's no "infantry" model because only officers were issued handguns in blue-leg units. Those officers were issued the same gun as the cavalry.
I think the idea that there were separate models for cavalry, infantry and artillery comes from there being different swords for each of the fighting branches.
Even more fun! The altered model was more widely issued to cavalry units than to artillery due to them being more widely available in the run-up to the Spanish-American War. Then even more were issued for duty in the Philippines because a bigger hole was deemed necessary to stop Moros.
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There's no "infantry" model because only officers were issued handguns in blue-leg units. Those officers were issued the same gun as the cavalry.
ReplyDeleteWhite-leg. The infantry started going back to white as the branch color in 1872.
Look at Cheyenne Autumn or Sergeant Rutledge.
They're still blue-legs even with white piping. It's slang, not accuracy.
DeleteIt's white from 1775 to 1851, blue from 1851 to 1886, white again from 1886 to 1902 then back to blue in 1903 to present.
On the frontier the colors of uniform items didn't approach uniform or even regulation much of the time. The dark blue blouse hung in with the later tan for an amazingly long time because the men were expected to buy the replacements and weren't issued the new color. Once congress finally unassed funding for issuing uniforms for uniformity's sake, it started looking more like an army again.
Leather goods were supposed to be brown, but the black and natural hung on until we stopped using leather...
Thank you. Fascinating.
ReplyDelete