Guns Magazine By Mike "Duke" Venturino
Kahr Arms Tommy Gun
History of the best-known U.S. submachine gun
The Thompson submachine gun — better known as the Tommy Gun — has a long, mythical history in both popular culture and reality. Starting in 1962 gun-guys my age watched Sgt. Saunders pack his Tommy Gun all over France every week on the Combat TV series. More recently the movie The Highwaymen shows Kevin Costner as Texas Ranger Frank Hamer buying Thompsons over the counter at a Texas gun store when preparing to hunt down bandits Bonnie and Clyde.
In actual fact .45 Auto Thompson Submachine Guns saw relatively little action prior to World War II and big city gangsters (mostly in the Chicago area) saddled Tommy Guns with a negative reputation in the 1920s. Their crimes, such as the murder of seven individuals on Valentine’s Day 1929, were over-publicized by newspapers and cinema newsreels. When Great Britain declared war on Germany on September 3, 1939 their army was woefully short of weaponry. Regardless some British officers resisted buying Thompson submachine guns from the United States terming them “gangster guns.”
Consider this: The first 15,000 Thompson submachine guns were Model 1921s manufactured to beautiful quality standards in the Colt factory. A few thousand of them were still in inventory in 1939. Here’s another fact: General John T. Thompson, after whom the submachine gun was named, had almost nothing to do with its design and manufacture!
It was his idea hand-held machine guns would make ideal “trench brooms.” To this end he raised financing and founded the Auto-Ordnance Corporation, hiring engineers and draftsmen to design prototypes and having them made in Cleveland, Ohio. Until the early 1940s — after General Thompson ceased his connection with Auto-Ordnance — did the company actually have a factory. Ironically General Thompson and his descendants realized little financial benefits from the weapon named after him.
A great disappointment to General Thompson was during his lifetime, the U.S. Army showed scant interest in his brainstorm, a hand-held machinegun with a 10.5″ barrel capable of both semi-auto and full-auto function. Other calibers were experimented with but the .45 Auto was its primary caliber. Various ordnance boards tested Tommy Guns, found them reliable but claimed shotguns would be more appropriate for trench warfare.
More:
https://gunsmagazine.com/guns/rifles/kahr-arms-tommy-gun/
