RARE WWII Ithaca 1911 A1, British Lend Lease - Collector's Overview

Video Transcript:

Today's video we're going to be going over a little bit of World War II history, specifically something from my personal collection, and that is this. This is a US property marked 1944 Ithaca, British Lend Lease 1911A1.This pistol came into my collection from the son of a British RAF pilot who has issued this and flew missions in World War II over Germany. A bit of a disclaimer with this video is that a lot of this information about this particular pistol and these British Lend Lease 1911s in particular has been lost to time. So all of the information that I'm going to give you is going to be as accurate as possible, but a lot of it's going off of my memory. So if there's something that I get wrong, let me know in the comments down below. About World War II, under the Lend Lease Aid Act, the United States provided a ton of aid to countries that we were allied with, which included England. So we provided them with food, vehicles, and weaponry. The reason we provided so much to our allies was because we had superior production capacity and we were separated from the war by oceans on either side. Of the many things sent to England under the Lend Lease Aid Act were these Ithaca 1911A1s.

It's estimated that just under 40,000 1911A1s were sent to the British military under the Lend Lease Aid Act, most of which were Ithaca manufacture, but there were some colts that were sent to them and there are at least two known specimens of Remington Rand 1911A1s that were sent to Britain as well. The Lend Lease 1911s were made here in the United States and then they were shipped to Canada and from Canada they were shipped over to Britain to be put into service.Because all these 1911A1s were made for US government contract, they all have the United States property mark on them, but in order to conform to the English proofing laws, they also have English proof marks on various parts. So the frame, there are several proof marks, the slide has proof marks, and so does the barrel.

According to the British proof marks, another thing that makes these Lend Lease 1911s unique is that beneath the serial number on the frame, very small, it says "not English make". We're going to get a real good close-up view of some of these proof marks that are on this Lend Lease 1911. So we're going to start with the left side of the pistol and it's got two markings on the frame. The first one is a letter F and it's real faint and it's beneath the slide stop lever on the frame. Right near the mag release button, there's a letter P stamped. We flip it over and we take a look at the right-hand side of the frame. On the rear, near the beaver tail, there is a British crown proof mark with the letters B-V in it. Further forward on the frame, underneath the United States property mark, there is what appears to be two crossed swords and it's hard to make out, but it looks like the letter D and the letter B. And of course next to that, it's the mark that says "not English make".

If we move up to the slide, on the right-hand side, the slide also says "not English make" and in front of that is a proof mark that is the British crown with the letters B-V in it again. There is another proof mark in front of the rear sight on the top of the slide, the letter P. On the barrel, there are three proof marks. They're all the British crown and the first one has the letters B-V in it, the second one has the letters B-F in it and the third one is hard to make out, but it looks like it may be W-P. But we'll let you take a look at the picture and see what you think it says because that one's a little bit fuzzy. You can tell this pistol was all original because there were no spare parts sent over as part of the Lend Lease program. So there was one barrel that was proof marked, one slide that was proof marked, and one frame that was proof marked. How the United States Lend Lease Aid Act worked is that, like in this case, 1911s were provided to England for free and as long as they returned the 1911s after the war, they didn't have to pay for them. If they didn't return them, then they did have to pay for them. So most of these ended up getting shipped back to the U.S., got added back into the United States military inventory, and then all the issued 1911s, if they needed a repair, they had additional units to pull from.

So it's not uncommon to see like a CMP 1911 with, let's say, a British proof marked slide. You might have one that has a Remington Rand frame, but it has a British proof marked barrel, that sort of thing. But it's pretty uncommon to see a full unit like this all matching. Now some of these 1911s didn't make their way back to the U.S. initially right after the war. Until the 1950s, there was a company by the name of Inter Arms that got some of these and they imported them onto the U.S. civilian market. So what those pistols had was an additional stamping on them that said, "released British government 19 whatever year they were brought back in." Most of them were, I believe, 1958. So this pistol does not have those marks.

So this was not part of the batch. That was returned later. If you do happen to come across one of these Lend Lease 1911A1s that is not part of the Inter Arms import batch, there's a very good chance it'll be in really good condition like this one is, because 45 ACP wasn't terribly popular with the English military during World War II, and a lot of these were issued but not used. So they just kind of rode in a holster throughout the war. So as a collector, if you ever come across a 1911A1 that you believe to be a British Lend Lease, what you're going to want to look for as we went over before was the proof marks on the frame, the proof marks on the slide, and the proof marks on the barrel. If you want to know if it's one of the Inter Arms imports in the 1950s, you're going to want to look on it somewhere to see if it says, "released British government followed by a year."

If you do find one of these in all original condition, definitely get it. They're getting harder to find, and they're a great addition to any Milserp collector's collection. One interesting thing about these Lend Lease pistols is that they were issued with a holster, but unlike the pistol itself, the holsters didn't have any sort of British marking on them. So in this case, the one that I have, this was the holster it was issued with, but if you find one of these pistols and you want to make it correct, you don't actually need to hunt down a special British holster. It's just your standard USGI 1911A1 holster.

If you like this video, be sure to check out our video we did on this stuff, Dominican Yellow Tip AP, and find out what makes it so incredibly dangerous to shoot. Thanks for watching, and we'll catch you guys next time.