Guns & Outdoors Forum

So, in 82 I joined an organization in the Air Force called AFOSI. We were issued an unusual weapon as far as the military is concerned. It was a highly customized 1911A1. Pictured.

The weapon was built from old 1911A1s at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas.
The slide was shortened to Commander length and the frame shortened to what would become the Officer's size in a couple years from Colt.
The hammer was bobbed. The trigger guard squared and checkered. The front and back straps stippled. I really liked it.
Won a few Air Force shoots with it.

Interesting. . .

Plainclothes carry gun for Air Force cops?

Were the Allen head grips screws part of the USAF job or something that came to the gun later?

Were they buying mags or chopping them in-house?

Bobbed hammer on an SAO gun? Wouldn't be a snag issue carrying cocked & locked. Were you guys rolling Israeli carry?

AFOSI and the Air Force cops are different organizations. These are not original grips. Who ever owned this pistol changed them. The original grips had regular grip screws. The bobbed hammer thing was probably just the designer's idea of a cool feature and the gun was carried cocked and locked. They chopped the mag in house and added the finger platform. Then we carried two 7 rounders for reloads.

I've seen that gun before (I think you posted it on the old board) and I love it! It's basically a bigger cousin to he Detonics Combat Master, one of my favorite CCW guns of all time.

A few points to Big's post. I don't know if those were originals grip screws in THAT gun but hex screws were available in the 80s, I had them on several guns back then because I liked the aesthetic and also because they had a "slim" version of them even back then and all my 1911s have slim grips on them. It's usually my first modification to any 1911 I own.

The bobbed hammer was a feature on the Detonics CM and that gun didn't even have a grip safety it was pinned in place and rounded off. Never had a snag issue even with IWB carry with that little gun. I also would like to know the answer to the mags. It's not difficult to chop and rebuild 1911 mags to minute length. Detonics figured that one out a long time ago when they created their original 6 round mags for the CM which has a frame even shorter than the officers. I still have probably 4-5 Detonic mags in a box somewhere, they are cute.

One of my bucket list gun, and I will build this gun one day, will have a chopped down Detonics sized grip frame with a Colt 3" slide/barrel because I hated that Detonics made the cut on the slide and moved the rear sight forward which makes for a very short sight radius but then used a 3.5" barrel/slide instead of going all the way down to 3". In guns that size even that .5" makes a difference. My gun will be even smaller that a current day officers and will have a shorter slide with better sights than a Detonics, which apparently nowadays have transformed to pure gold guns.

Interesting conglomeration.

Zee wrote: ↑Thu Oct 08, 2026 6:32 pm Interesting conglomeration.

And it takes some real gunsmithing talent to get a Frankenstein 1911 running well.

Had a grueling shoot-off with another agent that involved reacting metal targets. The competition went most of the afternoon. In the end, I beat him. He commented that if we were to do it again the results would be different. I replied, I'm sure they would because he wouldn't be in the finals...

It's A cool gun.
My carry is similar
Wambli has shot It's big brother.
This one is just as precise

That is a cool gun. As you may remember, my FIL was in the OSI as well but was not really a gun guy. I asked him about the guns he carried, and he mentioned it as either ‘a .38 or a .45, depending on what the duty was’. He may have carried one like that, but I’ll never know.

Very cool gun