Uncle Sam's burp gun: M1 Thompson submachine gun

Guns Magazine, Nov, 2008 by Mike "Duke" Venturina

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Plant a seed, nurture it, and watch it grow. Farmers and gardeners do so all the time. And I guess it will work with gun'riters, too. In this case I planted the seed in my own fertile brain, and did so just as a joke. A couple of years ago in my column I wrote tongue in cheek about an emu (about a 6' tall flightless bird from Australia) running up and down my driveway one summer evening. That was true.

Jokingly at the end of the column I said if" Montana was going to become overrun with emus then I was going to buy a Thompson submachine gun to protect myself from them. Well, we haven't had anymore emus in the driveway, but the idea of buying a Thompson was the seed I planted in my own mind. Now I own one.

Actually I wasn't a total stranger to Thompsons. Back in the late 1960s when I was about 19-years old, my shooting buddy's father was the chief of police in our small West Virginia town. At the time I was casting bullets for and handloading for a Remington Rand Model 1911A1 .45 ACP. A few times I would half work myself to death with my single cavity Lyman bullet mould 452374 (225-grain RN) and load us up a couple hundred rounds. Then my friend's father would give us the department's Thompson.

We would take it out of town and in short order blaze all those rounds away. At this late date, I don't even remember if that Thompson was a civilian or military model* Then about a half dozen years ago a fellow showed up at one of our Montana BPCR silhouette matches with his beautiful Model 1928A1 Thompson. After the match he let me hose away about 100 rounds from it while another friend took photos. That's how I got the picture of me firing a Thompson for my "emu" column.

Great Gun Sale

Something else triggered my submachine gun madness as Yvonne calls it, and I'll write about that sometime in the future. But, the short of it is last winter I had "Duke's Great Gun Sale" and disposed of many firearms, some of which I hadn't fired in a decade or so. With funds on hand, I began searching for a Thompson, and brothers let me tell you they are not cheap! In fact, the amount I paid for mine was exactly the same as Yvonne and I paid for our first house as newlyweds. And it was a bargain at that. It cost me several thousand dollars less than any other Thompson I priced.

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Anyway, I didn't want just any Thompson submachine gun. (As if any of them are ordinary.) What I wanted specifically was a World War II one such as served with the American armed forces. That could have been Models 1928, 1928A1, M1, or M1A1 all .45 ACP caliber and all issued to the US Army, Navy or Marine Corps circa 1941-1945. What I eventually landed was an M1 version, which actually was made in fewer numbers than any of the other World War II era Thompsons.

For a weapon so identified with the US Armed Forces, during the first 20 years of its existence, the American military had precious little interest in the Thompson submachine gun. As late as 1939 the US Army placed an order for a paltry 950 Model 1928 Thompsons; mostly to go in tanks and armored cars. One reason for such lack of interest was the Thompson's cost. According to the book The MP40 Submachine Gun by Mike Ingrain, in 1939 the price of a Model 1928 Thompson was $209.

Model 1921, 1928

Here's a nutshell history of the Thompson submachine gun as drawn from the book American Thunder II; The Military Thompson Submachine Guns by Frank Iannamico. The name and basic idea came from a retired US Army general named John T. Thompson. He formed a company named AutoOrdnance Corporation, but it had no manufacturing facility. Therefore, Colt Patent Firearms Company actually made the Thompson submachine guns for Auto-Ordnance but only to the tune of about 15,000.

They were designated Model 1921 and were made to exquisite quality standards. The US Navy adopted some Thompsons as the Model 1928 but they were actually Model 1921 s with the "1" overstamped with an "8". The reason for the change was the Model 1921 had a cyclic rate of fire of about 800 rounds a minute and the Navy wanted that slowed to about 600 rpm. According to the above book, all Thompson submachine guns sold until 1940 were based on those first 15,000 made at Colt.

When an entrepreneur named Russell Maquire bought the assets of Auto-Ordnance in the late 1930s some of those Colt/Thompsons were still in inventory. Sales had been that poor. As WWII was brewing up in Europe, Maquire ascertained there would soon be a market for military weapons. First he tried to get Colt to produce Thompson submachine guns again but Colt was already deep into military contract production. So Savage Arms took on a contract to first make Model 1928s, which soon evolved into Model 1928A1s The "A1" designated several changes with the most visible one a switch from a vertical to horizontal fore-grip. The first Savage/Thompsons were completed in April 1940.

Cost Cutting

As said above, 1939 Thompsons were very expensive firearms, albeit beautifully made ones. So efforts were made to both reduce price and manufacturing time. In the beginning a Model 1928A1 had an intricate Lyman folding peep sight, fins on the barrel, and a Cutts Compensator on the muzzle. Those first Model 1928A1 s cost the US Government $202.50 each. But both Savage and the US Army's Ordnance Department put their heads together in an effort to come up with a design better suited to military needs.