

The Thompson M1A1 Submachine Gun - smacktoward
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/just-call-this-submachine-gun-the-annihilator-fd9c067846ab?src=hn

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dccoolgai
I got to fire one of these at a range in Vegas while I was at a bachelor party
a couple of years ago (Everyone else went for the Desert Eagles and AR-15s
things like that, but being a history buff I picked the Thompson just to see
what it was like.) The first thing you notice when you pick it up is just how
damn heavy it is - the thing is incredibly dense. The range owner explained
that the weight of the thing was what made it so effective - especially in the
hands of people with little training, the "kickback" of a normal gun would
make it hard for someone without a lot of training to keep fire concentrated
over a sufficiently small area, but the heft of the Thompson makes it "drop"
back into place very nicely after the round is fired and the recoil kicks in.
Sure enough, when we pulled the targets back, mine was the most accurately
shot round-for-round (no one there was very experienced with firearms), which
I found to be pretty impressive since everyone else was shooting modern
weapons and I had this old brick - but the range owner said that was what made
the thing so effective. You could put it in almost anyone's hands and make
them fairly dangerous with little to no training.

~~~
laxatives
Just curious, do you know what someone with training would do differently with
a modern weapon? I imagine there's more to it than hold it tight or wait
between taking shots.

~~~
ctdonath
I've had machine-gun training, with UZI, MP5 and M16.
[http://www.donath.org/Defense/Guns/LFI-
IV/DCP01305.JPG](http://www.donath.org/Defense/Guns/LFI-IV/DCP01305.JPG)
Probably the biggest factor is simply spending time practicing, becoming
comfortable with the power & behavior of the weapon, and developing the
nuances to compensate. Modern ones are significantly lighter weight, subject
to muzzle rise (recoil makes point-of-aim move up) and just general jumping
around. Very recent ones better address such movement, both in balance of
action and by using significantly lighter (weaker) ammo designed for
penetration over power (lots of tiny holes vs a few big ones). Addition of a
silencer helps by mitigating muzzle blast & recoil. Old or new, it's having
spent enough time shooting it to grow accustomed to the behavior; what seems
overwhelming & uncontrollable at first becomes predictable & manageable.

------
ChuckMcM
My Dad used to own one and it _was_ fun to shoot, but I could not imagine
dragging it and a few hundred rounds of .45ACP ammo around. Very heavy. He
also had a "mini" one that someone had made that shot .22 caliber ammunition.
Much less expensive to shoot and much lighter.

That said, it is more the legacy of the 'machine pistol' (which the Thompson
is, given its pistol ammunition) which found service in special forces and
security services around the globe, that is interesting to me. Looking at
different defense manuals it is amazing just out deadly a modern warfighter
is, against a wide variety of opponents, compared to the folks who carried one
of these into battle. Like the gap between a cutlass and musket.

~~~
davidw
> warfighter

Just out of curiosity, when did this word crop up? To me it seems like some
kind of odd DoD invention to supplant more traditional words like "soldier",
but I don't know anything about the etymology.

~~~
hga
Marines are not soldiers, but both are "warfighters" (at least if they're at
the sharp end of the stick); ditto SEALs. Perhaps the word is used to avoid
getting Marines angry at you ^_^.

~~~
davidw
Ok, fair enough, but it seems recent - I don't think I've ever seen it in
connection with anything about, say, WWII. But I'm not exactly knowledgeable
about the armed forces beyond listening to the Vicenza base's radio station
every now and then :-)

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SlipperySlope
The Russians in WWII used a submachine gun, copied from the Finns, to great
effect in the urban battle of Stalingrad, the Germans reacted by developing
the assault rifle, later copied by the Russians, and eventually by everyone
else.

The Tommy Gun was the pre-war glimpse of what was to come. It used pistol
ammunition, not rifle ammunition, and thus was suitable for close-in fights.

I, for one, am glad that large scale war with millions of human combatants,
appears to be diminishing in likelihood.

~~~
ctdonath
IIRC, the options for ammunition were, at least on a military scale, severely
limited. Using the standard .30-'06 ammo would have been impractically heavy
and powerful. Lighter rifle ammo suitable for combat was practically
nonexistent. That left .45 ACP as the only viable option, hence it's use - not
the suitability for close-in fights.

Possibly interesting subsequent history... In 1934, USA practically banned
sale & possession of machine-guns (a $200 tax (equivalent to $6000 today) on a
~$50 product). In 1986, that became an actual ban (for post-'86 products). As
such, the market incentive to develop modern & sophisticated automatic weapons
pretty much ended with the M16 (the USA having by far the largest civilian
market for firearms). A few non-USA automatics have been designed since (FN
P90 and HK MP7 are of note), built around very lightweight ammunition and high
capacity magazines in very compact platforms; these point to what could have
been developed & available domestically, but was stifled for want of a market
to experiment in. Should the bans be lifted, we may see some remarkable
developments follow pent-up demand.

~~~
CWuestefeld
_In 1934, USA practically banned sale & possession of machine-guns. ... As
such, the market incentive to develop modern & sophisticated automatic weapons
pretty much ended with the M16_

Even the M16 (AR-15) is an outlier after the 1934 NFA. And consider that it
was designed in 1957. Contrast this with the USSR's AK47, designed in 1947.
Taking the small private developers out of the gave seems to be big reason why
the Soviets got there a decade before the USA.

Thus, it appears to me that the limitations on gun ownership in the USA is a
liability in terms of national security. We can debate about how much it
handicaps, and how important that is, but the effect is certainly there.

~~~
the_af
Out of curiosity, what do gun ownership limitations have to do with US
national security?

~~~
ctdonath
Here's a very relevant analogy:

The massive .50BMG rifle ammunition was developed around 1910. Its primary use
was established in WWII as an anti-aircraft machine-gun round, intended to
throw a lot of lead in the air fast with little concern about accuracy.

In the 1970s, precision long-range rifle shooters were looking for something
that could fire with interesting accuracy at very far targets, 1000-2000
meters. They repurposed the .50BMG ammo, built large long rifles to fire it,
and put it to a completely new use from its original intent. In 1980, the
Barrett M82 semi-automatic rifle was created - something that the military had
no interest in the development of, and which was created solely by the
civilian market.

The military suddenly took notice of this hard-hitting very long range rifle
that used standard military ammo, and suddenly military snipers had a new tool
- thanks to civilians - to enhance US national security using this one-man gun
which could take out significant targets a mile away.

Had there been a ban on civilian ownership of .50BMG guns, which some groups
have been pushing for hard for decades, the M82 would never have been
developed, and a lot more military targets would have been taken out with far
more expensive missiles with far more collateral damage & casualties.

~~~
vonmoltke
Actually, soldiers had been using scoped M2 HMGs as sniper rifles since
Korea.[1] After Hathcock's success with one, Barrett decided to build a real
sniper rifle around the cartridge.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Browning#M2_as_a_sniper_rif...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_Browning#M2_as_a_sniper_rifle)

~~~
hga
There's a big difference between a sniper being issued a 30 pound rifle he can
carry, and the mode in which Hathcock used M2s, by borrowing the use of one if
it was handy (128 pounds with tripod if not mounted on a vehicle).

~~~
vonmoltke
I agree, which is why Barrett made those rifles. My point was that the .50 BMG
had been recognized by the Army as an effective long range marksman's round,
to the point where they were procuring and issuing scopes for the M2, 30 years
before Barrett made their first rifle.

~~~
ctdonath
But the military did nothing beyond procuring scopes for M2s, effectively
keeping the powerful .50BMG out of snipers' hands as the M2 was a heavy crew-
seved weapon (vehicle or tripod mounted), unsuitable for a lone sniper to haul
for miles. Sure, Hathcock et al could make amazing shots with it, but only
from where it could be little farther than driven into position. It took the
civilian market to translate it to the true sniper's rifle prevalent today.

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mason240
>Thompson wrote in a 1918 memo to firearms designers.: "I want a little
machine gun you can hold in your hands, fire from the hip and reload in the
dark. You must use ammunition now available and I want it right away."

While not of the same magnitude of the actual moon landing, that must have
seemed like quite a moonshot in 1918.

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leroy_masochist
"capable of firing more than 800 rounds a minute—in some models"

No -- in no models. Cyclic rate of fire != number of rounds you can put
through the weapon within one minute. Even if you figured out a magazine that
could reliably put 800 rounds through without a stoppage, you'd melt the
barrel at about round 200-300.

~~~
bch
I'm not a gun expert, not clear what you're saying, but is it like saying that
a downhill skier isn't going 120mph unless they travel 120 miles in an hour ?

~~~
ctdonath
Sort of. It's the understanding that a skier may travel 120MPH, but we
understand that he's not going to do it for an hour - both because there isn't
a suitable slope 120 miles long, and because his skis/legs/boots/whatever will
self-destruct well before the hour is done. An M16 can fire at a speed of 800
rounds per minute, which it would do IF it didn't literally start melting the
barrel in the process (I'm trying to find a recent video where someone
actually tried to fire 800 rounds thru an M16 as fast as possible, and the
barrel actually burst around 500 rounds).

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leoc
The Medal of Honour for a feigned surrender? Oh dear.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfidy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfidy)

~~~
JshWright
To be fair, he was just responding in kind. Clearly the enemy soldiers had
done the same thing while he was gone.

~~~
vonmoltke
Overpowering your captors, even if you allowed yourself to be captured, is not
the same thing as feigning surrender. Once you are taken into custody you are
allowed to try to escape. There are no restrictions on taking your former
captors prisoner in the process.

In a feigned surrender you never get taken into custody.

~~~
Crito
Perhaps he initially did _genuinely_ surrender, only to launch an escape
seconds later, but claimed otherwise after the fact because it made a better
story. ;)

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bnolsen
Gen John Thompson should know better about how to hold a weapon. If you don't
mean to fire the weapon your finger shouldn't be anywhere near that trigger.

~~~
jccooper
That's a (very good but) modern rule. I can't say for sure, but I suspect it
originated as a specific weapons safety rule with Jeff Cooper in the late 80s
or so.

The concept of "the gun is always loaded" or "never point it at anything you
don't want to shoot" is an old one however. But it took a while for the belt-
and-suspenders approach to become popular, and historically people seemed
comfortable enough with their finger on the trigger. (It's rare to see
anything else in historical photos.)

A fair reminder for today, but nobody'd have told the General so at the time.

~~~
hga
It was a rule long before then, at least by the late '60s when I first started
learning. Can't remember when Cooper codified his rules, but I'd suspect it
was earlier than the '80s.

However I was taught by my father in the hunting domain, where Rule 2 rules,
"Never let the muzzle cover something you're not willing to destroy", i.e.
keep it pointed in a safe direction. That was because you never knew if a twig
or the like might pull the trigger (see the problem with holstering striker
fired handguns which catch e.g. a windbreaker cinch tie), and you don't trust
safeties. The iffy history of the Remington 700 underlines the importance of
Rule 2 (known to fire upon manipulating the safety).

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kghose
Also has a song about it (kind of)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvTv-I2Y390](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvTv-I2Y390)

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GFK_of_xmaspast
The thing about these guns is they used to be all over the place. In Ireland,
and Lebanon, and Palestine, and Berkeley.

~~~
kxo
They're still all over the place.

But these specific firearms are (artificially) worth so much you'll never see
them.

