csmkersh,
Had it not been for (former CSA General Officer & MG, USVC, too) Joe Wheeler, the US troops in the Philippines would have been "stuck with" revolvers in .38 Long Colt. = GEN Wheeler insisted that Colt "Alaskan" revolvers in .45 Colt were issued to the troops "in contact".
Evidently a LOT of "the big Colt's revolvers" were issued, as self-appointed BG (Fertig was actually a LTC, USAR, Inactive) ,Wendell Fertig's guerrillas, who fought the Japanese in WWII, managed to locate any number of those "obsolete" Colt's revolvers, after the Philippines fell to the Japanese.
(One cache of Colt's revolvers in .45 Colt were found hidden on the Del Monte pineapple plantation, with a few hundred rounds of ammo.)
Note: An old & now sadly "Promoted to Glory" friend of my father's was "with Fertig" & said that the guerrillas were actually making cartridge cases from brass curtain rods, making primers from match-heads & casting their own bullets in the jungle.
(Mr. Ames once told me, when I was a youngster, that "The General said that if any of us fired even one round of the scarce ammo that, "You'd damned sure better bring in a Jap rifle & some ammo, to replace the one that you fired.")
Mr. Ames also once told me that a single guerrilla "went on a scouting mission before daylight one morning" & didn't return for 5 days & "just after black dark" came back to HQ "leading a parade of Filipino civilians", who were struggling to carry all the 6.5mm rifles, ammunition and 2 crates of hand grenades that he had captured. - It turned out that the single guerrilla "had come upon a Japanese truck driver, who was relieving himself" & after killing the driver with a bolo knife, the guerrilla looked in the cargo truck & found that it was filled with rifles, ammunition, the grenades & some other "useless to military use cargo".
Mr. Ames said that that young man was given a "field spot promotion" from LCPL USMC to 1LT, USAR by GEN Fertig "for supremely meritorious service in support of the mission of USFIP."
yours, sw
mg:
