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The only remaining loose end was to determine how the revolver and holster came into the possession of the dealer who sold them to me. Through a phone call to the dealer it was learned that he bought the gun and holster from a friend. The dealer said it was his understanding that they had belonged to his friend’s father. The dealer put me in touch with the friend, who told me that several years ago his father worked for a bank in the Bronx. The bank provided the gun to his father for use when he transported large sums of money via the New York subways (that must have been MANY years ago) and the man’s father had retained the revolver and holster when he retired. This information would seem to fill the final gap in the story, assuming that the man’s father was an employee of the Bronx Savings Bank where Martin H. Bluethner served as a Vice President.

THE MODEL 1917 HAND EJECTOR

Smith & Wesson’s Model 1917 revolver can perhaps best be described as an expedient that actually worked. When President Woodrow Wilson addressed Congress on April 2, 1917, requesting a declaration of war against Germany, the official side arm of the United States Military was the semiautomatic Colt Model 1911 pistol. Much like their Commonwealth allies, American forces were faced with a severe shortage of handguns as they entered the conflict. Furthermore, the Colt factory was unable to produce Model 1911s in anywhere near the numbers sought by the military. To bolster production, Remington-UMC was awarded a contract for manufacture of the pistols. The U.S. Army’s Springfield Armory also undertook the job of producing Model 1911s. But tooling up for such a project was no small task, and neither source was able to build the guns fast enough in the quantities needed.