were talkin about another iconic gun today

friend to gangsters and our soldiers in europe alike

the chicago typewriter

the tommy gun

this is the thompson submachine gun

its so well known

and yet its story might surprise you

its the gun that literally invented the term submachine guns

so lets see how it came about

so its wwi and theres a guy named john thompson

hes grew up as an army brat to lt col thompson

so unsurprisingly he joined the army and became a lt colonel too just like his dad

he was in charge of logistics in the spanish american war for the cuban area

he did a really good job too

got a gatling gun and a mulefull of ammo to san juan hill

which was great because there were a lot of cubans who needed holes

in fact he did so good he became the youngest colonel in the army

he went on to help in the development of the 1903 springfield and the adoption of the 1911

so he had some experience in seeing automatic weapons and design and adoption of guns

this would help him later

as the world entered wwi thompson retired from the army because we werent shooting anybody and dagnabbit he wanted shooting

so he joined remington as their chief engineer

when he saw what bs trench warfare was hes like no

this needs more guns

and worked to create what he described as a trench broom

something you could carry up to the top of the trench with you on a raid like a regular rifle

but then blast through the entire enemy squad below you like with a machine gun

he described this as

get this

a submachine gun

he was finishing his design up in late 1918 but unfortunately peace broke out so he couldnt try it in action

but no matter because the design was still solid so they just went ahead with working on production

because you know a war is gonna happen again pretty soon right

thompson helped found a company called auto ordnance

but it didnt have any manufacturing capacity

so what they did is contract with colt because

i dunno

they can make guns right

except if you know anything about manufacturing you know that the more you make the cheaper they get

economies of scale

i took a class once

so they had colt make 15000 of them

fifteen thousand

and they didnt even have any contracts or anything

pretty big leap of faith in their design

so within about a year colt delivered them

and these are called the model of 1921 because thats when they were all made

and

they didnt really sell them to anybody

things were going really really slowly

they sold a few to like police or whatever

one of the early sales was to the post office

uhhhhh

cuz apparently we still have friggin stagecoach robberies

but hey whatever gets your foot in the door i guess

a few years later a number of them were sold to the marine corps just in time for them to use them in a couple of police actions

central america

china

and the marines loved them

take a guy who had a 1903 and give him a friggin annihilator and hes gonna love it

that was the official name originally btw lol

so then the military started actually looking into this thing

but the navy wanted some changes thompson

first thing they wanted was a slower rate of fire

the model 1921 fired at like fucking 900rpm or more

and the navy was like can you do more like 600

because 900rpm divided by 20rd magazine equals zero

and we need it to last longer than zero before reloading

so they added weight to the bolt and boom youre set

and the funniest thing about all this

remember those 15k weapons built in 1921

here we are in the late 30s and autoordnance is still using those same stockpiles to swap new parts into

once wwii was getting ready to kick off autoordnance starts running out tho and they need to start making more

so they contract with savage

and the cool thing is they still had all the tooling from the first batch colt made

so they started making some new ones and sold a few to france

like 3700

sold some to the uk

and then the army got involved

they wanted some more changes thompson

because for real guys this thing is expensive and time consuming to make

ill show you in detail later but yeah

so much milling

so the army was like bro bro bro

this gun is way too fancy and we are shooting way too many nipponese for this level of fancy

economize

so savage helped redesign it by taking away all sorts of fancy things and ended up with a much simpler receiver with the basic necessities

and this is where the thompson really took off

of the three military variants there were nearly 2 million made

at the end of the war production stopped

and that was it

honestly even in wwii it was already becoming obsolete

compare the thompson to the sten gun and see

actually lets see right now

ok so the thompson submachine gun is an open bolt blowback submachine gun firing .45 acp out of 20 or 30rd stick magazines or 50 and 100rd drums

although the wwii military models deleted the ability to use drum magazines

when we talk about the thompson there are a couple big variants

the 1921

1928

and m1a1

originally the 1921 used a brass locking piece that was meant to operate off of the blish principle

now the blish princple states that different metals have different levels of friction against each other when at different pressures like in a gun

its also total bullshit that has even less connection to reality than lie detectors lol

but hey it was the nineteen teeny teens so what do they know

it still kinda worked tho

and like i said it fired way fast

for the 1928 model they gave it a smaller recoil spring so they could add a bunch of metal around it in the bolt

way heavier bolt equals slower cyclic rate

and that was pretty cool

but the biggest change was the m1a1

they totally ditched that fake blish block

and instead of this complicated milled bolt with diagonal slidey bits

they just did a bigass chunk of metal

they also ditched the removable stock

the 1921 had a badass button you could just slip the stock off with

thats how thompson designed the original gun

but that takes a lot of machining so the army ditched it and made it permanently attached

gay

another big change was the forend

they ditched the classic gangsta grip

and swapped to a simpler and still effective forend

honestly it works pretty darn good so no biggie

and the last big thing is they dropped the drum magazine

because for real tho that drum mag is way heavy and also all drum mags are terrible to have to carry on your body

thats just how it is

ok so lets see how these puppies worked

like i said before the original ones used the blish system

aka magic voodoo

and the m1a1 swapped to simple blowback

but there were other changes

originally they had awesome complicated wait why am i target shooting with a submachine gun sights

switched to ok this is an immobile hole in a sheet of metal

model 1921 had charging handle on top while m1a1 has it on the side

early models could use a drum that slides in from the side and the m1a1 removed those slots

and lets take a moment to see how the mag and fire control works

the mag release is where you might expect

and can be used by the thumb

except you slide it up

its a swinging arm that rotates around that rivet in front of the trigger

weird no

and see those fire control

separate fire safe

and semi auto

thats how it was

and the later models had the milled checkered selectors swapped for pressed tubes

lol oh well

weird thing about the stick mags is they have a slot along the back that rides up into a channel in the receiver

not super quick to get in

kinda strange system honestly but hey whatever

what else can i say about this classic

it was a gun just a little too late for wwi

but that put it in a good position to work out all its kinks in time to feature in a starring role in wwii

wwii saw the development of an entire new generation of submachine guns to replace it

but it held its own because its an inherently great design

everybody loved it

it goes bababababa

and what more can you ask from a submachine gun

it was expensive and time consuming to make

but it was worth it because the quality was excellent

hell id pay for it

in fact you can keep the change

ya filthy animal

pew pew

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