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The Thompson Machine Gun

This sub-machine gun received a lot of notoriety for being used by gangsters, usually in the image of the attached high capacity drum magazine. Especially shown in the old gangster B Movies.

United. States of America
THOMPSON M1988A1

The Thompson submachine gun was in many ways the most famous of all weapons of its type. It was developed in the course of World War I by Colonel [later Brigadier-
General] J. T. Thompson but came too late to be used in action. Very few people wanted sub-machine guns after the war had ended so that the Auto Ordnance Corporation which made them found it very difficult to keep going, particularly in the depression of the 1930s. Good advertising and publicity helped, however, and there was a small but steady sale to law enforcement agencies and also. regrettably but unavoidably, to criminals of various types. A surprising variety of models of the Thompson were made, almost all in '45" calibre and one or two as automatic rifles rather than sub-machine guns. A few were even made in England by the Birmingham Small Arms Company. The weapon illustrated is the 1928, which with minor changes was the last peacetime version.

The gun worked by the usual blowback system, but somewhat unusually in guns of this description it had a delay device to prevent the bolt from opening until the barrel pressure had dropped. Two squared grooves were cut into the sides of the bolt at an angle of 45°, the lower ends being nearer the face of the bolt, and an H-shaped bridge fitted into these. When the bolt was fully home the bottom ends of the H-piece engaged-in recesses in the receiver. When the cartridge fired, the pressure was enough to cause it to rise, thus allowing the bolt to go back after a brief delay. This was hardly necessary in terms of safety but had the useful effect of slowing the cyclic rate which assisted accurate firing. The gun took either a fifty-round drum or a twenty-round box magazine, both of which are shown in the illustration.