The legendary Thompson Submachine Gun is an American SMG developed in the late 1910s by General John T Thompson. Initially envisioning an "auto rifle" to replace bolt-action rifles in American service while using an operating system less expensive than recoil or gas, Thompson acquired a patent issued to John Bell Blish for what turned out to be a friction-delayed blowback action. However, since the only cartridge in US military service that would work with the Blish action was the .45 ACP pistol round, Thompson changed his goal to a "one-man, hand-held machine gun," imagining it being used as a "trench broom."
The earliest design from 1917 was a bizarre belt-fed weapon called the "Persuader." This morphed into the magazine-fed "Annihilator" in 1918-1919, which boasted a staggering fire rate of up to 1,500 RPM, rendering the weapon virtually uncontrollable in fullauto. A pattern gun with no stock or sights was presented to Colt later on in 1919 to be redesigned for production. This became the M1921 and was marketed as a "submachine gun:" while not the first weapon of the type, it was the first to actually use the name.
The Thompson is inescapably associated with gangsters during America's prohibition era as "the gun that made the twenties roar," though this is largely a media myth: the gun was far too expensive for an average thug (costing $200 with a single 20-round magazine, equivalent to about $2,800 in modern money) as well as heavy and hard to conceal, and the most common weapons for such criminals were revolvers or sawed-off shotguns. The Thompson's infamy instead stems from a few high-profile users such as John Dillinger, George "Machine Gun" Kelly and especially Al Capone.
20 сен 2024
