I can only echo the recommendation already made by others to acquire Clive's book
before purchasing a pistol ... you will learn a
LOT ...
All Inglis pistols were produced in 1944 and 1945 - ending in October of the latter year, so several months production - and many thousands of of both No. 1 and No. 2 pistols - are indeed "post-war" manufacture ... though they are indistinguishable from "wartime" production except by serial number.
The official "model designations" were "Pistol No. 1" (for the longrange-sighted/stock-slotted Chinese model ... CH numbered) and "Pistol No. 2" (for the fixed-rear sight, unslotted "Canadian" model ... T numbered), but the pistols themselves were
not marked as "No. 1" and "No. 2". I presume that was because the differences between the two versions were so self-evident, and they were not intended to be used side by side, anyway.
As I recall from
Inglis Diamond, there are two reasons why "hybrid" pistols exist (i.e. having the slotted gripframe of the No. 1 pistol but the fixed rear sight of the No. 2 pistol):
- when the first Chinese contract was terminated due to inability to get the pistols delivered past the Japanese blockade, existing frames which were in the production pipeline for use on No. 1 pistols (and were thus already slotted for the shoulder stock) were diverted into production of No. 2 pistols.
- more commonly, that same situation also resulted in many completed No. 1 pistols being diverted to use by both Canadian and British troops. Quite a while
after WWII, both Canada and Britain converted any No. 1 pistols remaining in their inventories to No. 2 specifications, by milling off the sightbase for the long-range sight, and replacing it with the standard No. 2-configuration non-adjustable rear sight. The slots in the gripframe were just left in place ....
Clive actually indicates that Canada had a policy of using the No. 1 pistols as "give-aways" during post-war aid programs (to Belgium, the Netherlands, and other countries), with a view to purging those pistols from its inventory. Thus by the time the above-mentioned conversion program took place (in the 1960's, IIRC) Canada actually had relatively few such pistols to convert.
Last year I acquired a rather nice example of a No. 1 pistol, actually bearing a Canadian Broadarrow on the left side of the slide (in addition to the same mark on the right side of the frame of
all Inglis pistols) which is clearly one of the pistols given by Canada to Belgium as post-war aid ....
(Click thumbnails to enlarge ...)
(The shoulder stock shown is one of the reproductions ...)