The 1911 tends to dislike poor maintenance more than other pistols. Guns that are run hard will eventually need replacement parts, and some of these do best with hand-fitting so it helps to be handy with a file. Ill-fitted parts will cause no end of headaches. Whereas some guns can accept off-the-shelf parts without a problem, not so the 1911. Parts like the extractor sometimes need to be tuned. Proper lubrication is another issue (one that I recently learned after many rounds is best solved with FrogLube). Of course, this isn't an all-inclusive list.
What this means:
To a civilian shooter who casually shoots the 1911- not a damn thing.
To LEOs who carry it for defensive purposes- Spend the money for a good gun, learn the gun, be your own armorer to an extent, have a spare gun, find a great pistolsmith.
I'm out of my lane here, but my feeling is that within a SOF unit that issues 1911s, the above wouldn't be a problem. The shooters should know the gun intimately, and would have access to a good armorer to handle the routine stuff and/or issue another pistol as necessary. Most importantly, the unit would have damn good guns.
The biggest problem I've seen with 1911s is that people buy cheap, and then tinker with them.
A well-tuned 1911 is arguably one of, if not the, most accurate handguns available. That said, I believe most reputable manufacturers i.e. Glock, SIG, Heckler & Koch, Smith and Wesson build guns that are capable of greater accuracy than most shooters can achieve. For me, I'll take every advantage I can get.
A pistol's inherent mechanical accuracy is most important when shooting at distance. A trained shooter can make hits with just about anything at CQB distances (it's about the shooter, not the tool). However, as distance increases a pistol with great accuracy becomes invaluable because a less accurate pistol is likely to deviate more from the point of aim the farther away you are. It should also be noted that because the 1911 has both a great trigger and a low bore axis, it is easier to shoot faster and to manage the recoil than guns that do not have these attributes.
Combat distance is always unpredictable. The FBI maintains stats on this from a LE perspective, but my own experience has agreed with their numbers only 50% of the time. I can say from a SWAT perspective that unless I was aggressing the bad guy when my M4 went tits up, I'd prefer to let my teammates handle their business while I unfucked the gun (shouldn't take long). Inside a room or building, I'd transition immediately to my pistol. SOF doctrine/experience may differ, and I defer to them.
I can also tell you I can think of more than a few gunfights that were fought at 25m +. You can't pick the day, time, or battlespace but you can load the deck in other ways. One such way is using a very accurate pistol that lends itself well to defensive use.
