All metal
and engraved like the original, looks stunning!!
Dummy bullet
version. All moving parts, operates. functions like the real thing!
Serial
number 332088
Functions, Field-strips like the
real thing
In very good
condition throughout, practically new !
Includes original box,
original sales literature, 6x ACG Colt .45 dummy bullets
We ship
internationally.
Please ask for a shipping quote:
sales@mg-props.co.uk
General George Smith Patton, Jr. (11 November
1885 21 December 1945), is a legend in US military history. In his 60-years of
life, he spent the majority of it wearing one uniform or another and died on
active service. Forever the warrior, he is fittingly buried in a military
cemetery in Europe, not far from where he died.
As a soldier, he carried many guns, but one of these is almost as famous as he
was his Colt .45
Colt's Model of 1873, better known as the Single
Action Army and sometimes as 'the Peacemaker', was the sidearm of the late 19th
century US Army. A six-shooter that was chambered in more than 30 different
calibers including .45 Colt, .44-40 WCF, and others, it was Colt's first popular
revolver that used cartridges and not cap and ball. Adopted and carried from
1872-1892 by the 'bluecoats' they were used in the great plains wars and kept in
hard service in civilian use by ranchers, outlaws, and lawmen for decades after.
Patton's gun
George S Patton in 1916 was a renaissance man in the US military. He had spent a
good bit of his active service overseas. He competed in the 1912 Stockholm
Olympics in the modern pentathlon, studied sword fighting in France, and even
designed the last cavalry saber the US Army ever issued. The standard sidearm at
the time in the Army was the brand new Colt 1911 longslide, which augmented a
series of .38 caliber revolvers. Patton however wanted something with just a
little bit more character.
Based at Fort Bliss, he ordered from the Shelton-Payne Arms Company in El Paso
for $50 a specially engraved Colt 1873 in .45 LC, serial number 332088. With a
4.75-inch barrel giving the six-shooter an overall length of 10.25-inches and a
weight of 38-ounces, the gun was hefty. Patton requested a highly engraved
silver finish along the frame and barrel. Custom Helfricht engraved ivory grips,
with 'GSP' in black enamel on the right panel and a volant eagle on the left,
set the gun off. At the time, Patton's pay as a Second Lieutenant was just $155
a month, so the revolver was a large investment.
He picked up the revolver from Shelton-Payne on
March 5, 1916, just in time for war.
Just days after his new purchase, Patton was transferred from his position as a
young 31-year old second Lieutenant with the 8th Cavalry Regiment at Fort Bliss,
to the staff of Brigadier General John Blackjack Pershing, who was marching
south into Mexico. The reason Pershing was moving south was to chase, with the
Mexican government's permission, the bandit horsemen of Pancho Vila who had just
raided the town of Columbus New Mexico. Patton, without a command, became
something of a jack-of-all-trades for Pershing, moving around Chihuahua with a
small group of soldiers and civilian scouts in a convoy of Dodge Brothers cars
to accomplish one task or another. While on a scouting mission to buy corn for
hungry troopers and horses, Patton bumped into one Captain Julio Crdenas,
Villa's second in command at the San Miguelito Ranchero.
The resulting gunfight left Crdenas and the two bandits with him dead at the
hands of Patton and his men. In the gunfight, instead of using a military-issued
firearm, Patton went into combat with his Colt and personally engaged targets.
Afterward, the good lieutenant Patton tied the dead bandit to the hood of his
Dodge and carried him back to Pershing, earning the nickname, 'Bandito' in the
process.
The Colt has a notch that Patton personally carved into the ivory grip in
remembrance of this battle. He was to continue to carry the revolver off and on
for the next 29-years of his military service. Although he did not carry it in
World War 1, he was famously seen with it often during World War 2. It was then
that he famously addressed the statement in a newspaper that his Colt was
pearl-handled with, "Only a pimp in a New Orleans whorehouse or a tin-horn
gambler would carry a pearl-handled pistol."
