This is a subject to which I can clearly warm…
Upon recollection and information, as this was an on-going story I worked during my tenure at
GW, the original contract between the FBI and Smith & Wesson called for 9600 "
Models 1076-NMS," being as Rob notes without S&W's traditional magazine disconnecting safety (that's the "NMS" part), the Quantico-specified sights and a trigger (here's the rub) with a non-S&W-standard release point meant to accommodate the then-FBI instructed "trigger-prepping" presentation
[VIOLATION OF RULE #3]. I'm unsure about the trigger guard which Rob's research references, but I don't think it was the recurved version… some of the earlier ThirdGen (AIP) S&W's had them, but Tom Marx was instrumental in getting that feature consigned to the scrap heap in the rear yard of 2100 Roosevelt Avenue.
These went to Quantico in fits and spurts throughout 1990, but in the first five months of 1991, three events occurred… two on ranges in Oklahoma City and Tampa, one in a potentially "hot" situation in Miami (yeah! imagine that!)… where the pistols "froze up" so seriously that they had to be shipped back to Massachusetts for repair.
The event which quite directly signaled the beginning of the end for the Models 1076-NMS came when the Miami unit went into the field after a bank robber. The op went well… no shots were fired, an arrest was made… but when the team returned to HQ and one of the SAs attempted to clear his weapon, he couldn't! The slide was locked shut on a chambered round.
On 31 May 1991 an unhappy S&W and the FBI jointly issued a recall announcement, and all the Models 1076-NMS accepted to that point were returned
en masse to Springfield for remedial work, and some additional "tweaking" that Quantico decided they desired beyond the "lock-up" problems.
The FBI immediately issued a contract to SIGArms for 1,000 Models P226, with an option for 1,000 more… which they exercised at the same time. (Before the year was out, they "piggy-backed" on a DEA contract and acquired 5,000 Models P228 since the Congressional oversight process frowned on excessive "emergency acquisitions" such as the one let that first week in June.)
In the subsequent months, while CeePee and I quietly heard the FBI's progress reports from our respective sources at Quantico, and I filed regular
Industry Intelligencer updates, S&W was in a bind… our pal Sherry Collins (a/k/a "Scorpia Mossmoon" in her earlier dayglo and tie-die days), the company flack-catcher, tried to but the best face on the issue, back-grounding us that the source of the problem was "
that $#%*&^@ special trigger the Feds demanded!" Hers was a tough job… but she was uniquely equipped for it. A hard-drinking, salty-speaking gal (her vocabulary suggested that between her days as a flower child and her entrance, first into into the insurance industry before landing at S&W, she'd done a seasoning tour on the back of a Harley) who easily connected with the gunwriter crew, she was never reticent about back-grounding any of us on what was going on, although invariably with a weather eye on which side her bread was buttered.
S&W… this was on the Steve "I propose, you depose!" Melvin
¹ watch… was corporately ham-strung. They had had the FBI "bragging rights," and were embarrassed as Hell at the failure of the Models 1076-NMS… which they were institutionally convinced was as a result of Quantico's insistence on the non-standard trigger group. (Well, hey! Steve, accept the contract, deliver a working product!) But they didn't want to damage their relationship with the FBI, so they were pretty much forced to suck it up and say nothing that would engender further hard feelings.
Between the end of May 1991 and October 1992, the Performance Center, Paul Liebenberg presiding, worked diligently at a "fix" for that trigger problem, as well as other "modifications requested
²." My guy in Quantico was pretty constant in his "
Any day now" responses to my regular inquiries as to progress on the Models 1076-NMS front, always very careful to not knock S&W. (But at the same time, letting slip tidbits which suggested that the FBI was starting to get interested in the .40 S&W platform which, ironically, Melvin had directed be developed after the FBI had specified a "down-loaded" 10mm round for their duty load. This is a fascinating and complex multi-faceted story which Charlie was in on well before I got into it, and part of this is related in his "
The Far Reaching Effects of that Miami Firefight" story.)
Finally, in Fall 1992, the FBI was sufficiently satisfied with the Models 1076-NMS
rev.3 that they were willing to accept approximately 2500 of them them for issue… but much time had elapsed, and their 10mm program was, if not moribund, then stalled. The .40 S&W was an enlarging blip on the radar screen for a number of reasons, and some years later, was adopted.
There were, when last I spoke with Quantico on the subject, a relatively modest number of those Models 1076-NMS in service
³… I think it was about 400-500 as of November 2002… but those were "grandfathered holdovers," and no new ones had been issued in years.
I never got a hold of one of those almost mythical 15-round magazines, but I do have one of the "palm swell" lexan stocks Charlie has referenced.
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¹.- Commonly referred to as "Ol' Gun o'the Week Melvin."…
².- An example: many of the guns were rejected on the basis of an "off center firing pin strike." And, in fact, many strikes were off dead center by a few thousandths of an inch that had absolutely no harmful effect.
³.- But then the FBI's roster of authorized duty guns and "Special Agents Personally-Owned Pistols" is surprisingly eclectic, and far more extensive than it once was.