I went to a new barber recently. (They’re somewhat hard to find as a side note).
He had a framed US Army service service summary on the wall in his shop with a pic of him as a young man in uniform, likely his basic training graduation picture, various unit emblems, achievement pins, etc. We talked about his service at length while he was cutting my hair. I never served, but am an Army brat, so am pretty familiar with the Army.
He had graduated from basic in the mid-1960s. He talked about qualifying with the .45. This was a guy who had grown up hunting and around guns, who easily qualified Expert with an M-14. He said the .45s were complete crap leftovers from WWII that you were lucky to be able to get on paper with to qualify. He said you simply couldn’t get a decent group with them, and I believe he would heartily agree with your assessment of “old rattletraps.” My dad had the same assessment of the .45s in the inventory of the MP company that was part of his responsibility in the mid-1970s, so those same sort of crap WWII leftovers I expect. They were around for a *long* time.
Military 1911s and well built civilian pieces are almost completely different animals, is my takeaway.
The M45A1s were actually recent production.