(A Work in Progress)

Colt made over $21.5 million in profits in the years between 1914 and 1918. By the end of World War I, Colt had delivered over 425,000 M1911 pistols, more than 150,000 revolvers (such as the M1917), 13,000 Maxim and Vickers machine guns made under license, and 10,000 Browning machine guns. Colt had also successfully subcontracted thousands of additional pistols and machine guns through Marlin-Rockwell, Remington-UMC, and Winchester.

At the same time, they also had accumulated a cash reserve in excess of $5.5 million. However, this surplus immediately began to decrease as Colt’s President, William Skinner, made the decision to fill all of the company’s commercial backorders at their pre-war prices, despite wages and material costs having risen. Pres. Skinner was succeeded in 1921 by VP Samuel Stone. Stone had risen to his office after many successful years as Colt’s sales manager.

Skinner and Stone had each sought to diversify Colt’s manufacturing base from small arms after the end of WW1. It first branched out into the production of adding machines and commercial dishwashers. (The former was a costly failure almost immediately.) Later, Colt bought out a hard plastics manufacturer in 1920, as well as an electrical device manufacturer in 1923. While US military orders were low during the 1920s, small arms production was sustained by foreign contracts particularly from Central and South America.

At the start of the Great Depression, Colt’s armory employed nearly 1,600 people. Of these, 120 had been there 25 years or more, and 10 had been employed at least 50 years. Previously, it was felt that if an employee lasted their first year with the company, they would have a job for life. Elderly employees were routinely retained on the payroll in makework positions long after they could no longer operate machinery or perform delicate handwork.

Despite the dramatic reduction in commercial orders, Stone did his best to keep as many people on the payroll as possible. Less than 400 positions were cut. While hours were reduced, day rates and piecework rates remained as before. In contrast, the company’s executives reduced their own salaries by 10%. Stone also decided to continue paying dividends to the company’s shareholders. All of this generosity had the end effect of reducing the company’s cash reserves to roughly $2.9 million in 1932.

Orders began to rebound in 1933, but the company then began to start having issues with its employees. In 1934, the company’s own employee organization was replaced with three workers organizations who were loosely affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL). These organizations attempts to negotiate with Pres. Stone were rebuffed, ultimately leading to an AFL-sponsored walkout in March 1935. Government representatives were brought in in attempts to negotiate and force a settlement.

The AFL goaded Senator Gerald Nye of Montana in an attempt to pressure the National Recovery Administration to withdraw their Blue Eagle accreditation from Colt. The loss of the Blue Eagle would mean that Colt would no longer be eligible for government contracts. Luckily for Colt, this threat was soon made moot by the US Supreme Court’s ruling against the constitutionality of the National Recovery Administration’s own existence. However, in the subsequent months, Colt was routinely targeted by Sen. Nye in his ongoing hearings investigating the US munitions industry.

Between Colt’s own strikers and outside agitators, there was a great deal of violence towards the Colt employees who dared cross the picket line. As the strike dragged on through May, support for the strike among Colt’s employees faltered. An unaffiliated trade unionist attempted to force the issue in late May in a plot to bomb the factory and Pres. Stone’s home. The attempt to bomb the factory was abandoned due to police presence, but Stone’s home was successfully attacked. This act of violence was the final straw even among Colt’s own union representatives, and within a week of the bombing, the strike was finally called off in early June.

Besides its labor issues, Colt’s facilities were damaged the flood of 1936 and the Great New England Hurricane of 1938. Earlier in 1938, Colt VP Fred Moore was killed in an accident during testing of Browning’s unfinished 37mm automatic cannon design. Moore had risen from a tool room employee to works manager during his long career due to his close working relationship with John Browning. Moore was one of several potential successors to Pres. Stone who never lived long enough to take over the company.

Despite the tragedies, Colt managed to rebuild its cash reserves in the years leading to World War 2. However, the armory employees successfully unionized under the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) in 1941. leading to a series of labor disputes that lasted into the war years itself. Increased costs, military contract price renegotiations, contract reductions and cancellations, and other issues ultimately led to Colt starting to post monthly losses in July 1943. The issue was further compounded when the Army cut its orders for .50 BMG by 40% in January 1944. Colt sold off its electrical division months later, but the bleeding continued.

Pres. Stone’s health reportedly began to suffer, and he was under pressure to leave. With no suitable successors within the company, Stone convinced Graham Anthony, the president of Veeder-Root, to succeed him in April 1944. Pres. Anthony’s first day at Colt was met with a new strike threat. The company was under pressure to reduce the differences between piecework pay rates paid primarily to experienced fitters versus the flat day rates paid primarily to machine operators.

Mass layoffs occurred at the end of the war, and the financial losses continued through 1946. If Pres. Anthony had not already alienated any remaining older employees with his outsider status, the appointment of Colt’s Plastics Division head Ben Conner as Executive VP was likely the final straw. Conner was reportedly quite heavy handed in his attempt to run off any potential competitors to succeed Anthony as company president, which he ultimately did in 1949. Colt was also faced with trying to rebuild its commercial firearm production lines. Tooling and fixtures for designs that had been discontinued during the war, like the Single Action Army and New Service, were reportedly damaged due to improper storage.

Minor profits were made in 1947, 1948, and 1949, but this also brought the first attempts of a hostile takeover of Colt by financial speculators. Colt resorted to buying out the speculators’ shares in 1950 at a cost of $6.6 million from the company’s cash reserves. The company’s fortunes rose during the Korean War, but its sales and profits immediately dropped again afterwards.

The year of 1955 brought a series of corporate takeovers. Burton Bartlett and Chester Bland forced their way into the board of directors. Bland quickly replaced Conner as company president. Looking to make a quick profit, Bartlett and Bland began courting Leopold Silberstein and his holding company Penn-Texas, fresh from their takeover of Pratt & Whitney.

Silberstein quickly replaced Bland with Sidney A. Stewart, the vice-president of Pratt & Whitney’s Chandler-Evans Division. However, Silberstein installed his own son Charles as Colt’s executive vice president. Silberstein began selling off Colt’s non-firearms divisions, and he angered many Colt employees by giving away the company’s museum collection to the Connecticut State Library as part of tax write-off.

However, Silberstein’s control of Colt was short-lived. Silberstein made the mistake of turning his attention to acquire Fairbanks Morse. In response, Fairbanks Morse’s president Robert H. Morse, Jr. hired attorney and proxy-fight specialist Alfons Landa, and his associate David Karr.  Karr had until recently been a close ally of Silberstein.

In 1957, Silberstein failed in his attempt to take over the firm Fairbanks Morse, leaving Penn-Texas financially overextended. Landa and Karr ended up turning the tables completely on Silberstein in 1958, taking over most of Penn-Texas’ holdings, including Colt and Pratt & Whitney. The duo then betrayed Robert Morse, using their positions in both boardrooms to have Penn-Texas take over Faribanks Morse.

After the ouster of Silberstein, Colt VP and Sales Director Fred A. Roff was elected company president late in 1958, with Stewart becoming chairman of Colt’s board of directors. As VP of Sales, Roff had been responsible for working the deal for acquiring the license rights to the ArmaLite AR-15 rifle from Fairchild. Upon becoming Colt’s president, this deal was finalized.

On the ownership side, Penn-Texas was renamed Fairbanks-Whitney in 1959 to disassociate itself from the Silberstein-era. Landa also elevated Karr to president of Fairbanks-Whitney soon afterwards. Landa left as chairman in 1961, leaving Karr in control of the board of directors. 

In October 1962, Karr hired George A. Strichman as his replacement as president of Fairbanks-Whitney.  Strichman was previously the director of manufacturing services for Raytheon Corp. and had just left as president of the Kellogg division of the International Telephone & Telegraph Corp.   Upon taking office, Strichman was appalled at the state of affairs at Fairbanks Whitney, calling it one of the worst run companies he had ever seen.  Strichman then began allying with the Fairbanks Whitney board of directors to force Karr out. Under pressure, Karr resigned in March 1963.

Fred Roff also unexpectedly quit late in 1962, and was temporarily replaced by David Scott, who had just been recruited as Fairbanks-Whitney’s group manager for Colt, Chandler-Evans, and Pratt & Whitney. During his short term as president in 1963, Scott’s major contribution was hiring William H. Goldbach as VP of Operations. Goldbach was better known at the time for his work at TRW, establishing their M14 production line.

Scott’s successor was Paul A. Benke, yet another executive recruited from outside the company. Benke had the luck of presiding over Colt’s major sales and profits expansion resulting from their Vietnam War-era contracts.

In May 1964, Fairbanks-Whitney renamed itself Colt Industries in order to disassociate itself from the Landa/Karr-era and to capitalize on the name recognition of Colt firearms. Despite the conglomerate’s name change, the firearms manufacturer Colt, now renamed Colt Industries’ Firearms Division, was never the lead company of Colt Industries, nor one of its top divisions.

In 1969, the firearms company was divided into separate civilian and military arms divisions, and Benke was promoted within the parent Colt Industries to become the group vice-president of the two divisions.  Gordon A. Walker became president of the civilian Small Arms Division, while William Goldbach was named the Military Arms Division’s president.

Unfortunately, for Benke and Goldbach, military contracts began to taper off while the US scaled down its involvement in Vietnam. Goldbach left Colt Industries in 1972, and Benke was reassigned as VP of International Sales. Benke was succeeded by Guy C. Shafer as the firearms group vice-president, but I cannot find a direct successor for Goldbach at the Military Arms Division.

The civilian Small Arms Division was led by Walker until 1971, when William H. Craven took over. Craven was replaced by David C. Eaton in 1972, and Eaton was replaced by C. Edward Warner in August 1975. Eaton then transferred over to lead the Military Arms Division. It is unclear when the Firearms Group was dissolved, and the units recombined under the former banner of the Colt Industries Firearms Division. I place it at approximately 1976.

During the late 1960s and 1970s, conflicts with organized labor began to rise again. After Colt licensed production of the M16 family to the US government in 1967, Colt’s employees staged a five-week walkout, promptly proving the government’s point on the need for second-source production. A minor walkout late in 1969 related to an increase in M16 delivery rates was quickly aggravated by union representatives into a two-week company wide walkout. The union was attempting to increase their leverage ahead of their 1970 contract renegotiation.

The union played a similar hand ahead of their 1973 contract renegotiation, resulting in a five-month walkout. The walkout had been promoted by playing upon fears of a plant relocation due to the company’s purchase of land in New Mexico.

After 1973, three more union contracts were negotiated without a strike, although it was barely avoided in 1982. However, the failed contract negotiations of 1985 led to a near fatal strike in January 1986 that lasted several years. The length of this strike undoubtedly led to Colt losing its follow-on contract for the M16A2 to FN Manufacturing in 1988. The parent Colt Industries also tired of the drama, and made the decision to cut the Firearms Division loose in April 1989. Colt Industries subsequently renamed itself Coltec.

The National Labor Relations Board ruled in favor of the striking workers in September 1989. The company was successfully privatized in March 1990 with partial ownership going to the workers themselves and the State of Connecticut. The sale was followed by an agreement to pay back wages to all of the returning strikers. One odd aspect of the privatization of Colt was that all of its intellectual property had been sold to a separate set of investors. Thus, Colt had to pay royalties for the rights to make its own products and use its legacy trademarks

However, the new owners were pushed into bankruptcy by 1992. The Chapter 11 proceedings were dragged out, and potential buyers were thwarted by the possibility that while they might buy the Colt factory, they might not be able to use Colt’s own IP. The investment firm Zilkha & Co. came to the rescue in September 1994 by buying out both the factory and Colt’s IP rights. Colt became the pet project of Donald Zilkha, who had dreams of consolidating the firearm industry under one roof. During this era, Colt made curious purchases of Saco Defense and Ultra Light Arms, but their 1997 attempt to purchase Fabrique Nationale failed.

Zilkha’s enthusiasm for the gun business began to wane in the late 1990s. The threat of local and federal lawsuits was making the handgun market appear too risky. Colt even broached the possibility of ending their commercial handgun line in 1999.

Donald Zilkha’s business partner, Ioannis (John) Rigas, pushed for the spinoff of Colt’s military division as a separate company. Colt Defense was established late in 2002, just in time for the War on Terror. However, Rigas had his own investment firm, Sciens Capital Management, buy a controlling interest in Colt Defense.

Failing in their attempt to take Colt Defense public on the stock exchange in 2005, Sciens appears to have resorted to taking out loans on Colt Defense from which they then siphoned off the funds back into Sciens in various consulting fees and distributions.

Colt Defense and Colt’s Manufacturing were reunited in 2012 under the control of Sciens, but this was seen mainly as another attempt to drain money from the company. Colt entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy on 15 June 2015 and emerged in January 2016.

The company was bought by Česká Zbrojovka Group in 2021. In April 2022, Česká Zbrojovka Group announced it had changed its name to Colt CZ Group.