A Blast from the Past
So the other day I went to a local range and rented a M1A1 Thompson submachine gun, and ran a hundred rounds through it. For those of you unfamiliar with it, this is the famous ‘tommy gun’ used by US troops in WW2 after 1943, and featured in such films as Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan. The version used by gangsters and during the early portion of WW2 were the M1921 and M1928.
I have fired full-auto weapons in the military and as part of my police duties, but never a Thompson, and in fact never a WW2 era automatic weapon. I was struck by the weight: it weighs eleven pounds, and due to it is relatively small size that weight is terribly concentrated.
The second thing that struck me was that while it is obviously very well crafted, its design was not to the standards I was used to. It has two switches, one safe/fire and one full/semi auto; both were steel pegs with a simple quarter-inch steel rod sticking out at a right angle, which I could imagine would catch on everything and dig into one’s side or back. The safe/fire switch was a bit forward on the receiver, making awkward for switching with your thumb without changing your grip on the weapon. The semi/full auto switch could not be thrown except with the off -hand; likewise the magazine release could only be worked from the left side. A left-handed shooter would have been seriously challenged by this weapon.
Reloading was an issue as well; the magazines had a raised double lip on the back which had to be guided into a similar notch in the magazine well. Practice would certainly help, but I do not believe that simple ‘insert and go’ reloading of modern weapons could ever be matched by the Thompson, especially since the left hand was required to detach the empty magazine before inserting another. Reloading under combat conditions would have to be made under cover, in my opinion.
Firing the weapon, on the other hand, was pure joy. The great weight meant there was virtually no felt recoil; firing it on semi I could put a bullet exactly where I wanted it, and rapid-fire on semi was extremely controllable.
Firing on full auto was a cinch; three and six round bursts were very easy to achieve and while the muzzle climb was (like any hand-held full auto weapon) pronounced, the weapon’s weight meant it was controllable; at 25 yards I was able to aim for center mass and drill every round of a burst in a near perfect vertical line.
Beyond 25 yards the .45 ACP round is going to start losing muzzle velocity, although the Thompson’s longer barrel will help a little. But there is no doubt this weapon is for 50 yards or less, even on semi.
The Thompson was designed as a ‘trench broom’ for WW1, a hard-hitting short-ranged weapon with a large magazine capacity (initially a large drum popularized by gangster movies) useful in trenches and bunkers where the ability to drop a foe in his tracks was critical. It was developed too late for WW1, and the drum proved impracticable for military service, but in a close quarter fight such as urban warfare it would make a formidable weapon.
Modern weapons have eclipsed the Thompson with advanced materials and designs that are far more user-friendly, but for a 90-odd year old design the Thompson is still impressive.
