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.
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.
I've had machine-gun training, with UZI, MP5 and M16. 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.
You only would fire in short bursts in order to conserve ammo and to avoid massive recoil altering your shots. Also you lean into your weapon (assuming the buttstock is against the shoulder)
Edit: I should mention that I have had training with various weapon systems - I have fired the M16, M4 Carbine, M249 SAW, M240, and M27 IAR.
With a modern submachine gun, you actually twist the handles away from each other in a way that compensates for the drift of the barrel that occurs when using full auto.
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.
You are wrong on the terminology; the line is a bit blurry, a submachine gun is a carbine designed to fire handgun ammunition, wheras a machine pistol is a pistol that is either select-fire or fully-automatic.
The Thompson, with a fixed-stock and foregrip is clearly an SMG by that definition.
[edit]
Here's a machine pistol[1] (though you can get longer barrels and either a foldable or fixed stock, at which point it gets confusing)
Thanks! I've updated my vocabulary appropriately. And after grazing a bit on wikipedia updated my notion of the difference between a sub-machine gun and a machine gun.
There are a lot of "pistol-caliber carbines" (which are also by definition rifles) that aren't sub-machine guns. For example civilian versions that are semi-auto only ... and very useful in home defense, since they're more easily aimed thanks to the stock anchoring them on your shoulder (see e.g. dccoolgai's comments, some of his fellows on the firing line were using handguns). Or the WWII M1 Carbine, which not coincidentally was the first weapon system we fielded with exclusively non-corrosive primers.
Then there's the new Personal Defense Weapon category, with my favorite (in theory) being the P90. Not intended as a classical SMG, but more for people who's main weapon is not a small arm but say a tank. Short and compact to allow easy bailing out of a burning tank, with ballistics intended to give the bearer the best chance once out in the open.
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.
I saw it come into the lexicon of DARPA RFPs and proposals in the early 90's. It provided a generic term to encompass anyone engaged in the prosecution of the war. So these days it includes pilots sitting in trailers in Nellis AFB driving drones over Afghanistan.
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 ^_^.
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 :-)
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.
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.
>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
I think a lot of that has to do with the perception that PDWs are poor replacements for assault rifles - in a battle context greater range and accuracy will win out if you can only carry one weapon and a side arm
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.
Er, the Soviet Union took small private developers out of the market earlier and more completely than the US, so I don't think you can rationally claim that any disadvantage the US has was grounded in that.
I understand the interplay between the private and military markets. But to me, "national security" is a grander notion; it's about stopping attacks on a country or its interests abroad, not about the quality of its small arms...
"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass." - Yamamoto, hesitating to attack the USA mainland directly. (Though possibly apocryphal, the quote summarizes the "national security" justification. Among other issues, defending against a modern direct assault would be hampered by the lack of civilian-owned arms which would be significantly more advanced if not for the NFA et al bans.)
Yes, the quote is probably apocryphal. I think the sentiment is misguided: once it's up to civilians wielding small arms, it's not a matter of national security anymore; if it's come to that, it's likely a catastrophe already. National security is the job of the army and law enforcement/intelligence agencies.
I can see how having small arms in the hands of civilians would help mount a resistance movement against an occupying power, but that's not a matter of national security.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
I'd add that .50 BMG is more precisely a "material destruction" round (aircraft being "material"), it's rather excessive for a human target except at very long ranges as pioneered by e.g. Carlos Hathcock in Vietnam (a serious "competitor" to Chris Kyle modulo the very different terrain etc.).
I've read that the Barrett M82 has been used a lot in explosive ordinance disposal, something for which a single aimed shot (at a very long distance) is ideal, whereas a full auto M2 would be gross overkill, not to mention not particularity man portable (30 pounds, a bit over the weight of our medium general purpose machine gun (but that also requires spare barrels and a lot of ammo), vs. 128 pounds with tripod).
Developing new firearms is surprisingly difficult and expensive. If there is a large, free, and robust civilian market for them, there is a significant place to try out new designs, tweak them, and generally let the public pay for & field test new designs. With the 1934 & 1986 machinegun bans in place, the only customers are national militaries, which tend to want _one_ design, want it to last for decades, and while willing to pay a lot for R&D are incapable of the orders-of-magnitude more $$$ and design cycles that the civilian market is capable of.
As a consequence, there are effectively no new designs available, meaning US national security (as far as small arms go) is stuck with a 50-year-old design improved only by minor tweaks (and most of those, to make the point, are the result of the civilian market for the closely related AR15 rifle). The US military keeps trying to improve over the M16/M4, but can't because there's nothing out there so deeply tested & known, and nothing with a comparably large infrastructure supporting it.
A healthy civilian market means you aren't entirely dependent on the government and therefore politics for innovations.
E.g. the AR-15 and its round, which were adopted as the M16 and 5.56x45mm came from the civilian market (and the round's parent was civilian). Most or all of the modern optics that have been used in the GWoT came from the civilian market. Our current and prior service handguns came from civilians, and the same civilian, perhaps with funding from the military during WWII, designed the heavy machine gun we still use to this day. He also designed the lighter crew serviced machine guns we used from WWI (at least in part) through the Korean War. Oh, and the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR), our light machine gun prior to light versions of General Purpose Machine guns (and part of the internals of our current medium and light general purpose machine gun were inspired by the BAR).
Our sniper rifles are all militarized versions of civilian rifles, and I believe their scopes as well. The gold standard sniper bullet is from a civilian company, it's called the Match King, indicating its original purpose.
And that's just what I can remember off the top of my head from the 20th Century.
I can give you iffier examples of problems that we believe have come from places that extinguished or prevented the development of gun cultures, which is not to say that such places and governments haven't come up with good guns and rounds.
I think the KRISS Vector is an intriguing modern full-auto weapon. It incorporates an internal counterweight system to vastly reduce felt recoil. Like the Thompson, it is also chambered in .45 ACP (and uses Glock mags at that).
And obviously it's much happier to have large scale war rendered less likely through economic interdependence and development (roughly 1990-now, with no signs of stopping), vs. mutually assured destruction (how large-scale war was largely prevented 1945-1989).
I wonder if humanity would prefer more frequent but less severe wars vs. less frequent but more severe; with nuclear weapons the frequency/odds were very low but the severity of any war existential. From a species perspective, there's probably a strong argument for even 10-100x higher "expected deaths" if it removes infrequent complete destruction from the possibilities.
> I, for one, am glad that large scale war with millions of human combatants, appears to be diminishing in likelihood.
We did have a nice quiet period there, but I suspect China might be a real threat to world peace. Unfortunately China has growing up now a "forgotten" generation of young men who outnumber women their own age over 2:1, and what has history taught us societies do with a bunch of unhappy young men? Kill them in wars.
So while China might not be invading India or the US, there still might be a civil war if this bunch of unhappy men decide to turn on the government to force "change." That too would be a threat to world peace, as an unstable China is bad for everyone.
I think Russia's recent aggressive stance against Ukraine is worrying. But we'll have to wait and see if this is an "isolated incident" or some part of a USSR-mini-reformation. However the social makeup in that region of Ukraine (where many of the people living their speak Russian and want to be Russian) might be a unique one off rather than a specific change in Russia's overall international stance.
Let's also remember ISIL ("ISIS" as the US calls them). A group of mostly young poor men rampaging through multiple states because they feel their own governments have let them down, and are unhappy with the US's interference in the region and or drone strikes (that sometimes kill civilians, often with even an apology or investigation by the US).
Yes, there is a religious element to ISIL's increase in popularity, but it is often quite interesting to look at the social economic situation that allowed extremism to bread rather than simply looking at the extremism and pretending it gained popularity in a vacuum.
I general I suspect you'll see the US get involved on the ground with ISIL, you'll see the Ukraine situation simmer out with the Russian's holding the occupied land, and you'll see some major national or international incident with China in the next 15-30 years.
1. Modern nations would find engaging in a large conflict without a many alliance nations economically ruinous. Basically if all (or even some?) of your major trading partners cut you off, it will cripple you.
2. The long range and high precision nature of modern weapons make the idea of maintaining an industrial complex during a 1st world vs 1st world conflict very unlikely. I think this is going to severely limit the length of any such war.
>>US get involved on the ground with ISIL
Compared to 1st. world vs 1st world conflicts this is a low intensity conflict similar to what has been simmering for the past decade. Just a new face for the enemy.
>>you'll see the Ukraine situation simmer out with the Russian's holding the occupied land.
Note this supports the previous poster's comment.
>>and you'll see some major national or international incident with China in the next 15-30 years.
If you are basing this on the "numerous discontent young men" hypothesis you are on sound theoretical ground, but its worth pointing out that China often seems to operate under an alternate sociological law. Its also worth pointing out the immense power disparity between a Chinese civilian and their government is much greater than in say the US; In terms of communications and weapon availability.
The problem with this analysis is that it's irrelevant. Modern 1st world military capabilities are devastating beyond all reckoning from history. This is easy to forget because in every conflict involving such capabilities they've significantly pulled their punches for one reason or another. But in an all out total war things would be much different.
Of course there is the issue of nuclear annihilation, which should not be easily dismissed, and still poses an existential risk for human civilization.
Beyond that though, conventional military capabilities are quite potent, and if they were ever leveled intentionally and with ferocity toward, say, civilian populations we would likely be shocked at the outcome. Modern militaries are capable of killing millions per day using only conventional weapons.
Example: North Korea maintains its integrity by a viable threat that it could, using conventional (even old) weapons, level Seoul (pop.: 25M) in about a half an hour with a moment's notice.
There's no way they could "level" Seoul with conventional weapons, it's way too big and per what I've read but ought to check more closely, beyond all but the heaviest of artillery (i.e. beyond 152 mm range, even with rocket assist (which reduces the payload)).
Cause serious damage and kill a lot of people, yes, especially during the several days it would require to disable the howitzers in their Hardened Artillery Sites (HARTS).
The MP44, some of which are supposedly still in use.
It was truly the worlds first assault rifle (the name assault rifle is a translation of what Hitler called it when he found out they'd built it despite him ordering them not to).
It also looks a lot like an AK47 (though internally very different) though in many ways is much more sophisticated internally.
> 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.
Disc magazine was copied from Finns, PPSH itself was based on earlier PPD designs which were done roughly at the same time as Finns Suomi sub-guns were developed.
>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.
"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.
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 ?
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).
I think your analogy has confused some people but yes, that's what he's saying. I believe he's confused "800 rounds in a minute" -- which is impossible -- with "800 rounds per minute" -- which is a rate of fire that can be reached but only for periods much shorter than a minute.
The original article is saying "The skier can travel 120 miles in one hour because he is going 120mph". The parent is saying that the skier can't travel 120 miles in one hour, because even if you could find a mountain that long enough that could create a reliable path without any trees, the skier's skies would fall apart from friction (analogy breaks down here?)
That's interesting. The Germans surrendered as well, but they may have done so with the intent of actually surrendering, and upon seeing the weakness of the people holding them realized they could probably break free, making it not perfidy on their part.
That being said, the Geneva Convention didn't exist when this happened.
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.
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. ;)
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.
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.
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).
