Tommy Gun Shooting - 1920's and 30's thugs in pursuit shoot G-Man with lots of bullets - this is the mental picture of the Tommy gun. But while the Thompson submachine gun was designed for the trenches of World War I and gained notoriety as a gangster's weapon, it was on the battlefields of World War II that it earned its place among the other most recognizable firearms of all time. About two million were won.
Brigadier General John Taliaferro Thompson, the force behind the Thompson gun, graduated from West Point in 1882. After the start of the Spanish-American War in 1898, Thompson rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel and became chief ordnance officer for the campaign. in Cuba. After the war, he became chief of the Small Arms Division of the Ordnance Department, where he was instrumental in selecting the .45 ACP cartridge—the round that the submachine gun would later fire. (The tests involved shooting human corpses and live animals to see which ammunition had the best stopping power. That was another time.) He also oversaw the development of the Army's new Springfield M1903 rifle and the adoption of the popular Colt 1911 pistol.
Tommy Gun Shooting
When Thompson retired in November 1914, he joined the Remington Arms Company as chief design engineer. World War I had begun, and Thompson began to think of ways to break the terrible, deadly stalemate on the Western Front. He believed that mobile firepower was essential and that US troops needed a "trench sweeper", so in 1916 he began working on automatic weapons.
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His company, the Auto-Ordnance Corporation, developed the first prototype in 1918. With the help of Theodor Eckhoff and Oscar Penney, Auto-Ordnance continued to develop Thompson's idea for a small machine gun: "It would fire 50 to 100 rounds, it was so light that [the soldier] could drag it while crawling from trench to trench. It was on his stomach." and can single-handedly destroy an entire company."
Thompson's design was based on a scientific theory presented by former US Navy officer John Blish. Blish noted that some of the Navy's breech-loading heavy guns had bolted breechblocks when fired with lighter loads, while larger loads that created more pressure had tighter seals. He attributed this to the different metals used in the back and rear block. He believed that under extreme pressure two dissimilar metals could fuse together better than two pieces of the same metal. He called it the "Blish Principle" and built a block of rock around it that could be used in firearms. He patented his idea in 1915, and Thompson got the right to use it in his gun. Thompson used a small bronze H-shaped block mounted on the gun's steel bolt. According to Blish's theory, this will slow the rear of the bolt.
There was only one problem: scientifically, Blish's theory of metallic affinity did not exist. In fact, the effect Blish saw was that his lock only added mass to the gun's bolt, which slowed the bolt movement in a percussion pistol. People discovered this during World War II, and British soldiers using Thompson often removed the Blish Lock. Later, when the Thompson was simplified to make the M1, the Blish lock was also dropped.
Adding only mass to the Blish lock, the Thompson performed as a simple shot, like many other modern submachine guns, including the STEN, MP40, and Soviet PPSh-41. When he pulled the trigger, the bolt was released, slamming back. He threw a round into the chamber and fired the pistol. The pressure from the fired round will then send the Thompson's bolt rearward, ejecting the spent case before the process repeats.
Sub Machines Vs. Light Machine Guns
When the United States entered World War I in 1917, Thompson himself was drafted, promoted to brigadier general, and served as director of arsenals throughout the war. The early Thompson prototypes, designed for combat, were too late to fight, but they were as aggressive as the names Persuader and Annihilator. An early model was capable of firing 1,500 rounds per minute—a fairly uncontrollable rate of fire. In 1919, Thompson began to take on its famous classic form, and by 1921, Auto-Ordnance had perfected the submachine gun until it was ready for the market.
When the Great War ended, Thompson took his gun to the civilian market and sold it as an "anti-bandit weapon". Thompson traveled tirelessly to promote and advertise his gun and its capabilities. In 1921, he went on a sales tour of Europe. The British were impressed with the machine gun and praised it for its convenience and compactness. But post-war budget constraints prevented any purchase. In 1927, Thompson tried again, showing an improved model to the unimpressed French army. Thompson to the United States. The Postal Service found that some customers placed 200 orders to protect their mail from violent thieves.
Of course, this is not the end of the story. The Thompson's high rate of fire and large magazine capacity saw it gain a reputation as the weapon of choice for lawmen and gangsters in the 1920s and 30s. Thompson quickly entered the language of popular culture, like Tommy Guns or the Chicago Typewriter. Two were used during the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre, when 70 rounds (a full 20-round box magazine and a 50-round drum magazine) were unloaded on seven members of Moran's gang in a matter of seconds. Celebrities like John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, The Barker Gang and Pretty Boy Floyd all used Tommy Guns. Although Thompson also found himself in the hands of the law, he became forever associated with Depression-era gangsters. (Although some police departments purchased Thompsons privately by 1935, the FBI eventually purchased 115 Thompsons in special carrying cases. Ironically, by then most of the gang members and gangsters the FBI was tasked with stopping had already been killed. or . occupied.)
Movies played their role in creating this myth. During Hollywood's heyday, Tommy Gun became extremely popular on the silver screen, with popular gangster films featuring the charismatic outlaw leading Thompson. But it wasn't until 1935 that a set of guidelines, known as the Motion Picture Production Code, was introduced. The code to denigrate outlaws dictated that gangster films be made from the perspective of the G-Man. Gangsters were no longer seen with automatic weapons, and the tommy gun became the FBI agent's on-screen weapon. It changed the tone of gangster movies with the iconic status of the Tommy Gun and helped glamorize G-men rather than gangsters. Thompson has since appeared in over a thousand films and television shows.
The Thompson Submachine Gun, The Gun That Made The Twenties
Despite the slander, business was not good. Thompson had the dubious honor of being one of the first firearms to fall under the National Firearms Act of 1934, which banned the use of automatic and concealable weapons by civilians in the United States without a major military contract, Thompson's company struggled. Only a small batch of his machine guns were purchased by the US Marine Corps for overseas use. Thus, despite decent civilian sales, Auto-Ordnance was on the verge of liquidation by 1929. The company had $2,200,000 in debt.
The magazine described Thompson as "the deadliest weapon ever made by man, pound for pound". General Thompson's gun was to face the greatest challenge. After the fall of France in June 1940, Britain needed all the weapons it could get and placed an open order for the Thompson submachine gun. By April 1942, 100,000 Thompsons had arrived in Britain. They became a favorite of the newly created elite commando units who used them in raids on occupied Europe. The US Army officially adopted the Thompson in September 1938, but did not order any weapons until the summer of 1939. But by February 1942, half a million Thompsons had been produced.
A Marine named Sgt. John Wisber Bartlett Sr. of the 1st Marine Division. his comrade ducks for cover with a tommy gun at a Japanese sniper. The department is working to take the Vana range before Shouri Nagar. Okinawa, 1945.
The simpler Thompson M1 and later the M1A1 would equip troops fighting in every theater of operations from the Pacific to North Africa and Europe. It was the final realization of General Thompson's dream of equipping American troops with a small machine gun capable of devastating firepower. Thompson himself did not live to see his weapon become a staple of the Allied arsenal and died in June 1940. But he enlisted and served in Korea and Vietnam before retiring from the US Army.
Museum Minute: A Bank Robbery & A Thompson Submachine Gun
Matthew Moss is a British historian and author specializing in small arms, military history and current defense developments. He has written articles for various publications
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