The Thompson Submachine Gun Page 6

  The dangerous but personable John Dillinger, posing with a Thompson and small automatic pistol. (© Bettmann/Corbis)

  Dillinger’s gang relied on massive firepower, as is evidenced by the haul put on display by the FBI after Dillinger was shot dead in 1934. Aside from the M1928 Thompson, of particular interest is the M1911 Colt automatic pistol (centre left) converted to fully automatic and fitted with a Thompson fore-grip and extended magazine. It would have been almost impossible to control when firing.

  As a result of the widespread condemnation of the killings in such a public place, there were changes at Auto-Ordnance. In October 1930, the board of management was replaced and a new president, W.B. Ryan Jr, took over. His secretary was a lawyer, A.F. Long, who immediately instigated a change in sales policy, suspending all civilian sales of the Thompson. Orders currently in process were permitted, but thereafter only military and law enforcement agencies could purchase the guns directly. This policy was to launch the gun into a new realm of crime-fighting.

  THE TURBULENT THIRTIES

  Of all the criminal groups that were to spring up in the 1930s, it was the rising breed of professional armed robbers that captured the public imagination. Indeed, one newspaper commented that robbery had grown almost into a national pastime. The hundreds of small county police forces spread across America began to find themselves at the mercy of gangs that were often better armed, and who had faster cars and the ability to move quickly from state to state to evade pursuit. It was one of the most violent periods in American history. In many respects it mirrored the cowboy era, but instead of gangs robbing banks on horseback, it was machine-gun wielding robbers using fast cars to plunder gas stations, post offices and small-town banks. Only the Bureau of Investigation was able to track criminals across the country as local police were, to their huge frustration, limited to state lines during pursuit. Many of the criminal raids were amateur affairs, but often hugely successful, as they targeted banks or post offices in remote communities that had few resources to track the bandits. One gang was estimated to have netted $130,000 ($780,000 or £485,000 today) in a series of raids across Texas, and none were ever identified or brought to court. Few had started out as career criminals, but soon names like Bonnie and Clyde, ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly, ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd, Harvey Bailey, John Dillinger and the Baker Gang became commonplace on the radio and in newspapers. Because of the lingering effects of the depression, myths soon arose about the Robin Hood nature of a few of these robbers, and occasionally some of it was even true. Charles ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd had come from grinding poverty and often gave money from his robberies to destitute families.

  Yet generally the truth was far less appealing, for many of the gang members were psychotic: Bonnie and Clyde would kill on a whim; ‘Baby Face’ Nelson, despite his child-like appearance, often shot bank guards for fun, and would kill a Bureau agent on sight; and John Dillinger killed seven men in 14 months. As they became richer, they were able to buy from commercial gunsmiths any firearms they wanted, and top of the list was soon the Thompson. County police forces, invariably under-equipped and short-funded, found themselves in shoot-outs where their shotguns and revolvers were no match for the Thompsons, rifles and semi-automatic pistols of these gangs. One of the most popular weapons was the fully automatic Browning Automatic Rifle (the BAR), whose .30-calibre bullets could penetrate engine blocks and even armour plate (it was the weapon of choice for Bonnie and Clyde, who never actually used a Thompson). But it was the Thompson-wielding gang members who began to imprint themselves on the public imagination. There even arose specific terms for the guns. A ‘chopper’ became a common soubriquet for a Thompson; professional gangs employed hired-in ‘Tommy-men’ like Fred Burke; and on the East Coast it was known as a ‘Chicago Piano’. The Thompson guns became synonymous with the crime wave sweeping the country, and the criminal’s overpowering advantage in weaponry was something that few local sheriff departments wanted to face, for doing so invariably left behind a trail of dead officers. When ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd and two companions, armed with two Thompsons and a shotgun, set out to free a captured fellow gang member named Frank Nash in Kansas City, they ambushed the police and federal agents from a distance of 5 yards (4.5m), killing five officers as well as their unfortunate prisoner. When eventually cornered in their hideaway in Florida in summer 1934, the Baker Gang used Thompsons with 100-round ‘C’ drum magazines to increase their firepower. The police surrounded the house and took no chances, firing no fewer than 1,500 rounds into the building, mostly with their own privately purchased Thompsons, thus ensuring Ma Baker and her son Fred did no more damage. One robber, George F. Barnes-Kelly, became known in the press as ‘Machine Gun’ Kelly, which was slightly surprising in view of the fact that he did not own a Thompson. In fact, as far as we know he didn’t even handle one until early 1933, when his then girlfriend, Katherine, bought one and taught him to use it. Fascinated by its potential, Kelly practised with it for hours (presumably somewhere very remote), until he could shoot accurately from the hip and knock walnuts from fence posts at 27 yards (25m) , but he never used one in a robbery.

  The capture of ‘Machine Gun Kelly’, who despite his name rarely used a Thompson. His guards are taking no chances and carry two Thompsons and a pump-action shotgun. (© Bettmann/Corbis)

  Indeed, it is hard now to look at this period without images of Tommygun wielding robbers in fedoras and raincoats battling in the streets against the beleaguered Bureau of Investigation but the truth was that the law enforcement agencies were shockingly ill-equipped during the early 1930s. While the Bureau possessed a large armoury of firearms, many were inadequate for this new form of gang warfare. Model 81 Remington rifles, in .30-06 and .35 calibres, and Colt Monitors, a commercial variant of the BAR, were certainly powerful enough, but had limited ammunition for full-auto fire. The Winchester and Remington pump-action shotguns were of course useful only for very close-range shooting, as were the .38 Colt and Smith & Wesson revolvers normally carried by agents. In firefights, agents often found themselves hopelessly outgunned by gangs:

  Federal agents had blocked the road when Floyd’s car skidded to a halt then executed a handbrake turn. The muzzle of a Thompson poked from the shattered rear window and another from the side window. Two long bursts sent officers diving for cover, killed two and wounded a third. Bullets from the agent’s Remingtons penetrated the car and wounded the driver, Miller, but it sped off while the agents tried to find a drivable car that didn’t have its hood and engine riddled by .45 calibre slugs.

  The Bureau of Investigation had appointed J. Edgar Hoover as its director in 1924, after his professionalism had been demonstrated during the IRA investigations. It was at his insistence that the Bureau became a separate law-enforcement agency and he was determined that it would be the smartest and best equipped in the whole of the United States. He fired many corrupt and inept agents and began a series of improvements, such as introducing an in-house crime laboratory, proper training programmes and organized, cross-referenced criminal records. He was incensed at the lack of government funding and the poor training, and lobbied Congress for proper financing. (The old Bureau of Investigation finally came under the control of the Department of Justice in 1935, and was renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation.)

  Aside from getting the right men, he wanted the right weapons too, and was furious at ‘Pretty Boy’ Floyd’s open killings of five agents during the bungled attempt to free Frank Nash in Kansas. When he asked the local agent what he needed to combat the violence, the unequivocal reply was ‘a machine gun’. Hoover promptly purchased one himself and posted it to Kansas. He was not a man to sit around when things needed doing, and he believed the Bureau’s armoury needed re-equipping and the agents properly training with their firearms.This belief was reinforced after a report on 22 April 1934 that the Dillinger Gang was staying at a remote country lodge in Wisconsin. An agent had to borrow half a dozen Thompsons, which he then handed out to officers who
had little idea how to use them. One policeman was wounded as he sat in a car trying to work out how it functioned; another opened fire on a car and group of innocent tourists, killing one and badly wounding two more; and many bullets from the agents’ Thompsons found their way into the normally quiet hotel. Subsequently, proper firearms training facilities were set up at the US Marine Corps base at Quantico, where the federal agency initiated its own shooting academy. Each agent had to shoot 20 rapid-fire shots with his pistol at 15 yards (14m), and ten slow shots at 25 yards (23m). Thompsons were used in single-shot and full-auto modes at 25 yards, and the Remington rifles at 200 yards (183m). Colt Monitors were then fired on full and semi-automatic at 100 yards (91m). All agents had to reach minimum accuracy standards. Hoover was determined to source still more Thompsons, although acquiring the necessary funding was an uphill struggle. It seems rather ironic that it was not until 1935 that the new FBI finally received 115 Thompsons, in specially supplied carry cases. By then the majority of gang members were either dead or in prison. But if anyone believed that there was no foreseeable future for the Thompson, they were about to be proved wrong.

  Jersey City Police aboard their Police Emergency Service vehicle in 1931, one examining an apparently brand-new M1921AC.

  A dramatic illustration of the volume of fire that the Thompson is capable of; here tracer fire from four FBI Thompsons converges on a single target.

  THE US MILITARY AND THE THOMPSON

  In the wake of the US Postal Service’s order for Thompsons in 1926, the US Marines decided that they had better re-examine the potential of the gun, as the Marine postal guards who carried it were unanimous in singing its praises. Even as they re-evaluated it, some guns sold to Mexico had already found their way into the hands of guerrillas and were instrumental in the taking of the National Guard fort at Pearl Lagoon, where massed fire from a dozen Thompsons were estimated to have caused some 250 casualties. The significance of this demonstration of firepower did not escape the notice of US Army observers, and the effectiveness of the Tommy gun in close combat was further reinforced in its first use by US troops in Nicaragua in the summer of 1927. After a coup d’état by Emil Chamorro, the American government sent a company of Marines equipped with 65 of the Postal Service Thompsons to fight a small war in a big jungle. What the soldiers discovered was that at closer range the heavy bullets of the M1921s would punch through the thick undergrowth, and flatten any living thing within range. The war, such as it was, was soon over, as the factions were quickly disarmed, but the positive outcome was that the Marines ordered 200 more Thompsons, on the basis of providing two guns per combat squad.

  These guns were very quickly put to further use when Marines were despatched to China in the wake of the civil war that broke out after Mao Tse-Tung was expelled by the Chiang Kai-shek government. The Marines, with their M1921s, showed very quickly how proficient the guns were in another form of close-combat: street fighting. One Marine commented that after they landed in Shanghai and came under fire from rebels, their Thompsons were used to great effect on their hiding places. While effective in the jungle, the Thompson had perhaps found its metier in urban warfare, and it taught the Marine Corps a valuable lesson in street-fighting tactics that it would need to recall before very long.

  Two Marines and two Nicaraguan National Guardsmen armed with Thompsons pose with a pair of Thompsons and the boots of a rebel leader – who was reportedly blown out of them by a burst from a Tommy gun.

  Adopting any new form of weapon in the armed services was always a slow process. Exhaustive tests had to be carried out and experts consulted, which invariably led to modifications being recommended. Alterations then had to be carried out by the manufacturers. This process could take years, and in the interim the requirements of the purchasers could well change. The US Cavalry had examined the M1921 in 1924 for possible issue to both mounted and dismounted units. As already noted, there had always been a problem in equipping the cavalry with long arms – rifles were too cumbersome, carbines had limited range and both were slow firing. The two types also required expensive parallel manufacturing processes, so the concept of a fast-firing, compact side-arm that could be universally issued was appealing to the Cavalry Board. The test results, however, were not encouraging. The board recommended that the Thompson not be adopted because:

  It was effective only up to 200 yards (183m).

  Cavalry often fought at longer ranges.

  Although useful for repulsing sudden assaults, it was only suited for wars against a civilized country.

  It was unsuitable for use when mounted and when dismounted, at close quarters, a pistol would be just as effective and more convenient.

  Equipping a squadron leader with a Thompson would rob him of his leadership qualities.

  That it was an undesirable weapon, suitable only for short ranges and was unsuitable for cavalry use.

  US Marines peacekeeping in China, 1927. The rearmost man holds an M1921AC Thompson and a pair of Browning M1917 medium machine guns provide considerable backup.

  As long as the cavalry commanders clung to the notion that there was a place on the battlefield for mounted troops when faced with machine guns and tanks, then it was unlikely that any new form of firearms would be adopted. Most of them probably still mourned the loss of the sabre, but times were changing fast, and the Cavalry Board was forced to re-evaluate the Thompson in 1931. This change of heart was mainly due to the rapid mechanization of the cavalry – engines were replacing horsepower, and the tactical requirements for cavalrymen were changing. They were increasingly used as advance scouts, highly mobile infantry combat units and for reconnaissance.The conclusions of the new test report were somewhat different to the previous one. It was grudgingly accepted that the submachine gun did have a role to play in warfare, but the Board stopped short of recommending wholesale issue of the Thompson. They wrote that ‘The Thompson gun be not adopted for general use in the cavalry … [but] in exceptional circumstances … consideration be given at the time to advisability of using this weapon … in armoured cars at the rate of one per armoured car. Twenty one Thompsons … Navy Model 1928, [are to] be issued to The Cavalry School … for test purposes.’

  Thus when in March 1932, the M1928 Thompson was standardized for ‘limited procurement’ for the US Army, it was not a wholehearted endorsement of the usefulness of the gun, but it was at least a crack in the brick wall that had previously faced Auto-Ordnance. This reluctance was in part engendered by the US military’s awaiting the issue of the new M1 Garand semi-automatic rifle. When it finally appeared in early 1936, tests showed it was an impractical weapon for use in armoured vehicles. So when in 1938 the guns were given the designation ‘Gun, Submachine, Caliber .45, Model of 1928A1’ the Thomson had overcome the final obstacle to being accepted for full-scale military issue. Even so, it was not until June 1939 that the US Army placed its first order for the guns with Auto-Ordnance, specifying 950 M1928A1s. There seems little doubt that the flurry of activity that followed this order was based on intelligence reports about events happening in Europe, and Auto-Ordnance realized that they would not be able to meet demand using their existing production facilities at the Colt factory. Although they had entered into an agreement with the Savage Arms Company for manufacturing under licence, they also purchased an old factory in Bridgeport, Connecticut, which was re-equipped to manufacture the Thompson.The timing was perfect, for by September 1940 the US Army had placed orders for 20,405 more M1928A1s, and further orders pushed this number up to 319,000. In order to control production more effectively, the US Ordnance Department divided the country into 13 manufacturing districts, of which New York and Hartford contained manufacturing plants for the Thompsons. Savage-made guns were rolling off the production lines by early May 1940 as part of an initial contract for 10,000 firearms. The newly formed Thompson Automatic Arms Corporation had the first completed guns ready for delivery from their Bridgeport works by August 1941, and were in full production by October.
Because of a lack of interest in the development of similar submachine guns by other Allied countries, the Thompsons had the field to themselves. On 7 December 1941, Japan launched its unprovoked attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, catapulting America into a war it did not want. Demand for all types of war materiel soared; ships, tanks, jeeps, small arms and clothing needed to be procured, manufactured and distributed, and the Thompson was no exception. Production figures show that 562,511 M1928A1 Thompsons had been produced by February 1943. From spring 1942, manufacture of the simplified M1 began, and a further 285,480 were produced with 539,153 M1A1 variants, up to the cessation of production in late 1944.