The two early experimental models were the belt-fed Persuader, developed in 1918, and the Annihilator, which fed from a box magazine and was developed between 19. After the war, Thompson returned to Auto-Ordnance to work on what would become the Tommy gun. Payne had worked out the major bugs in his design, dubbed the Annihilator I, and its box and drum magazines, but it was too late to field prototypes in Europe. Work at Auto-Ordnance continued, and by 1918 engineer Oscar V. entered the war in 1917, Thompson re-upped and served as Director of Arsenals until war’s end. Thompson and Blish, a naval commander, teamed up to form the Auto-Ordnance Company in 1916, still in existence today as part of Kahr Arms. Studying several design possibilities, he was impressed with the delayed-blowback breech system designed by John Blish, working on the principle that two oiled surfaces in inclined contact will tend to seize under high pressure but slide past each other under lower pressure. Thompson began experimenting with what he called a “trench broom” for close quarters conflicts. World War I’s trench warfare illustrated the need for hand-held firepower. did not quickly engage, so Thompson retired and worked for Remington, in charge of setting up the Eddystone plant-the largest arms factory in the world at the time-which would later manufacture rifles for the Allies. When the Great War in Europe started in 1914, the U.S. He chaired the board that selected and adopted the M1911 Colt pistol. 38 Colt revolver’s battlefield inadequacies. Thompson later supervised development of the M1903 Springfield rifle and was in charge of the board that selected the. But thanks to Thompson’s personal shepherding, Lieutenant John Parker’s “informal” Gatling gun unit had 15 weapons and supplies of ammunition, in time to play a significant role in the San Juan charge. This was when other Army logistics were so bollixed up that the only horse in Teddy Roosevelt’s Roughrider “cavalry” unit for the charge up San Juan Hill was Roosevelt’s mount. He was chief ordnance officer for the campaign in Cuba and saw to it that 18,000 tons of munitions were where they needed to be, on time and without incident. Thompson had a distinguished career with the Army Ordnance Department. When it did, it rode that second wave straight into our history books.Īlthough his name is forever tied to the Thompson submachine gun, Brigadier General John T. The Thompson submachine gun was largely a creation of its time, and like many salient developments, it missed the first rising tide: the Tommy gun had to wait for its time to come.
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