Hi guys
Thanks for tuning in to another video on forgotten weapons.com. I'm Ian I am here today at the Rock island auction company. I'm taking a look
At some of the guns that they're going to be selling in their upcoming
April of 2016 premier auction, and I have here a Thompson gun.
Now yeah, I can hear you. You're saying that does not look like a Thompson gun. However, this is a Thompson T2.
The Thompson gun was a really expensive submachine gun.
The US Military and the British military
adopted them at the beginning of the World War II largely because there just weren't a whole lot of other options and they were
kind of stuck. The British in particular paid a lot of money - an excruciating amount of money for Thompson guns
especially early in the war. Now, as the war progressed the Thompson was simplified and simplified and simplified and the cost came down quite a
lot but even at the end
it was a pretty darn expensive gun. To put this in context: at the beginning of the war a thompson gun would cost
like a hundred and sixty eight dollars and change.
The US Military was buying browning 1919
belt-fed light machine guns or medium machine guns for
$55 so more than triple the cost of a 1919, just to put it in perspective.
Now, as early as 1939 the US government was trying to find a replacement for the Thompson, some better option
And they tested a whole bunch of different guns
Some did well some did not so well
Thompson, of course, was aware of this. They were quite happy making a lot of money on on their Thompson guns, however
They didn't want to lose
their income, you know, if the us government
ditches the Thompson submachine gun and adopts some replacement well
they wanted to make sure that replacement was also being made by Auto Ordnance, the company that made Thompsons, so
(for the company that owned the rights to the Thompson), so the auto Ordnance company submitted a
a potential replacement for the 1928 Thompson to the US military
This was submitted in 1942, and it is mechanically totally different from a standard Thompson gun
It's a Tube receiver gun it actually fires from a closed bolt
it's select fire based on a progressive trigger, so a short trigger pull would fire in single shot and a long
a full-length Trigger pole would fire in full auto
It did use standard Thompson gun magazines. I've got a 20 rounder in it here and
[it is] a really simple construction method you can see there's two wing nuts on the bottom here
And that's what holds this tube receiver into the stock so it's fairly simple to disassemble
Now these were manufactured only a handful of them (my understanding is five) exists today
Two of which are in private hands the other three in museums
and they were made in both 9-millimeter and 45 caliber the
the US government simply wasn't interested in the gun in nine-millimeter, never bothered to test it, but they did test the 45 caliber guns and
Unlike some of the other us military testing, for example the programs to develop the M1 Garand and the M1 Carbine,
the program that replaced the thompson gun wasn't a single test of a whole bunch of guns side-by-side
Instead they were testing guns individually as they were submitted so in fact by the time they were testing this gun they had already
Kind of, they'd already finished testing the gun that would replace it ultimately as the M2
Submachine gun however we can go through what happened at the trials for these guns
they put several thousand rounds through the gun after
750 rounds the Trigger housing cracked now. I believe this is the actual gun that was in US testing
Unfortunately, I can't take it apart so I can't show you that crack in the Trigger housing
But that was responsible for a number of malfunctions
But not all of them. In total in the test this gun had 60 different malfunctions
37 of them were attributed to that cracked trigger housing
So the T2 Thompson actually did pretty well in most of the testing
It was subjected to a sand and a mud test and it passed both of those better than, well, better than the M2
that would eventually be chosen instead of this gun
that's of course largely because the magazine seals up the bottom and it fires from a closed bolt
So the ejection port is pretty well sealed up. There's not a lot of ingress area for things like mud and sand
when they did long range semi-automatic shooting with it at 100 yard it was also better than the M2
It was a pretty darn accurate effective gun. And again, I would ascribe that to the the closed bolt nature. Open bolt
semi-automatic guns when you pull the trigger the bolt has to jump forward this long distance
and it's really an acquired skill to shoot one of those accurately because you got a lot of
stuff moving around while you're trying to hold the gun on target before it fires
the problem for this gun came in the full auto testing. They brought the target into 50 yards and they were shooting bursts and
one of the big problems they had was
because of this slanted butt plate the gun tended to slide off [of] the shooter's shoulder, and
they they had trouble getting good accurate groups on target as a result. Now, of course, it also had a lot of
malfunctioning issues. Like I said, 60 problems
37 of them attributed to this parts breakage
but
then again, parts breaking isn't really an excuse that you want to use. You oughtn't have parts break on a testing gun anyway
in the first place
So ultimately this gun was was dropped from competition because of the full auto
issues, the effectiveness in full auto, and because of the parts breakage. Really, this trigger mechanism - while it's kind of cool -
was too complex for the gun
So the gun that replaced this has a kind of an interesting story to it as well. It was the M2
Submachine gun developed by a guy named George Hyde and manufactured by the Inland Corporation. Hyde is not one of the better known
US gun designers
but he really has a lot of work to his credit and he ought to be better recognized than he really is. And
of course inland is the same company that would make a whole bunch of M1 carbines.
now
Weirdly the the M2 was in service only very very briefly. Only about 500 of those were made
They had some issues getting them into production and by the time they had started producing guns
They had actually gone through and developed the M3, which is the Grease Gun, which we're much more familiar with
So the grease gun replaced the M2 really before the M2 had a chance to ever be issued and used
anyway
We want to focus on the Thompson prototype here, not the other guns
So why don't I bring the camera in and show you a couple of the details of this guy?
All right, a couple features we can take a look at. Let's just start right where we are, the magazine release is
this simple Spring-loaded metal tab
I have a 20 round magazine in the gun because that's what it was tested with so that's kind of the the appropriate visual.
This actually doesn't come with the gun. I pulled this out of a drawer, so I could show you what it should look like here.
Bolt handle is actually a bit reminiscent of theThompson - very simple. This is a tube receiver
straight blowback mechanism
as I mentioned it does fire from a closed bolt, so it doesn't lock open.
And it does not lock open on an empty magazine either
Now, the way that this works - it's hammer fired. Unfortunately, like I said, I can't take this apart to show you, however
There is an auto sear that trips at the very end of travel of the bolt
So if I fire a single round, and I only press the trigger a little way
Let's see
There we go. Now, when I cycle the bolt
I will have to release the trigger before I can fire a second time because it is semi-automatic
however
if I pull the trigger back all the way
Now when I cycle the bolt there's an auto sear that will trip and drop the hammer when I get to right about here
there it is
and
again until I release the trigger
and then it closes without that click, so this is an interesting and (kind of) creative system
unfortunately it's fairly complex. It probably would have been a bit expensive to make
And it's probably
responsible for a lot of the malfunctions that the gun experienced in testing
I mentioned that this gun had trouble in testing because the butt plate would slide off the shooters shoulder. You can really see here
this is a substantially angled butt plate
Why auto ordnance chose to use this design?
I don't know
It seems like they really kind of handicapped themselves unnecessarily by not just having a straight vertical butt plate
The rear sight here has both a notch and an aperture option
I don't know exactly what the ranges were for those, but you could take your pick
I think the aperture is probably the better solution and
It had a front sight
Actually pretty reminiscent of the standard Thompson gun
Stuck out there on the end of the barrel
I really get a kick out of the [fact] that they actually used wing nuts. Yes, as an attachment method
to hold the stock to the tube receiver
I I kind of have to believe that had they actually put this into production, had it been adopted
they would have come up with something that got in the way a little bit less. I can only imagine
that slings and other web gear is going to be really kind of awkward with these things sticking out the bottom of the gun, but
That's what they were using
And of course here are our markings
Thompson Submachine gun T2
there. Caliber 45 made by the Auto Ordnance Corporation of Bridgeport, Connecticut US
Those are the only markings on this gun by the way
Well, thanks for watching guys
I hope you enjoyed the video
Like I said, there are only a handful of these ever made and and only a smaller handful in private hands
So, (it's) something we don't get a chance to take a look at very often. If you'd like to add this to your own collection
I don't know if it would be too wise to shoot it with broken parts
But it is cool to have one of the guns that was actually used in army testing. At any rate, if you take a look
at the description text below
you'll find a link to Rock island catalog page on the gun you can take a look at their pictures and their
Provenance and description and if you just can't live without it place a bit online or come up here and participate live in the auction
Thanks for watching
I hope the captions helped. I intended this for non-native English speakers and English speakers alike. <3 I love forgotten weapons