Today for Gus’ Gear I have an interesting British pistol, the Webley MKI automatic pistol in .455 caliber produced for the Navy contract. About eight thousand pistols were manufactured by Webley & Scott for the Royal Navy before and during the war. Only a few hundred were manufactured for the Army as they felt the Webley revolver was a more suitable weapon. This pistol has been covered in an earlier post, but I have included the take down procedure this time.
The markings on the right side of the pistol just behind the top of the right grip indicates that this pistol was placed into service in 1913. In this photo a feature was built into the pistol, at the request of the military, for a magazine cut off. This was accomplished by having two notches in the magazine that would engage the magazine catch. Here it can be seen that the magazine is extended about 3/8ths of an inch below the grip. This allows the shooter to hand load a…
On the left side it is marked Webley & Scott Ltd. Pistol self loading .455 Mark I N 1913. After trials in 1912 between the Colt 1905 and Colt 1911 pistols in .45 ACP and the Webley & Scott pistol in .455 this pistol was adopted by the British Royal Navy. Production started in 1913 and continued into the 1930s. This was the first self loading pistol adopted by the British services. Later in the war it was supplemented with Colt 1911 pistols chambered for the .455 cartridge.…
Disassembly of the Webley & Scott pistol can be done without any tools, normally the grips would not be removed. I have removed the grips to show the interesting mainspring. The U shaped mainspring is a very strong spring that engages the recoil lever which connects to the recoil lever stop in the slide.
To disassemble the pistol, remove the magazine and check that the chamber is empty. Press the take down button behind the trigger on the right side of the pistol and move the slide back slightly, this disengages the recoil lever from the recoil lever stop, allowing the recoil lever stop to be pulled out the right side of the slide. The recoil lever stop is kept from coming all the way out by a screw, so there is no worry about dropping the stop. Pull the slide all the way back and it will lock in place, then the barrel can be lifted forward and up to remove it from the frame. Now depress the slide release button on the left side of the pistol at the top of the grip, this will allow the slide to be taken forward off of the frame. The grips can be removed with a small screw driver, although this would not be necessary for normal field stripping for cleaning. Reassembly is a reverse process. This pistol is very easy to reassemble correctly, and the fact that .455 Auto cartridges are impossible to find makes it unnecessary to call your brother-in-law to test fire the weapon.
