The "Tommy's" Thompson

In simple terms, the chief inspector was questioning the necessity of the Blish lock, as the counterbalancing weight of the breech-block and its recoil spring, matched to the cartridge performance, should in theory provide sufficient delay on opening when operating on a straightforward, blowback principle. Indeed, the Small Arms staff at Enfield predicted the alteration of the design of later Thompsons by removing the Blish lock completely and then firing the gun remotely under safe conditions. The results were instructive: “The rounds were fired, both ejection and extraction being satisfactory. The gun functioned well and the condition of the spent cases was found to be identical with that of the spent cases … fired with the wedge assembled to the gun.” There was also doubt about the efficacy of the drum magazines: “The 20 round box magazines are much simpler than the drum magazines and appreciably lighter for the same number of rounds, 5 empty box magazines holding 100 rounds in all weighing 2 pounds as against 3 pounds, 2 ounces, for the 100 round drum and 2 pounds, 8 ounces for the 50 round drum. The box magazines are simpler for packing and transport.” There were a few reliability problems when the Thompson was tested, mostly with ammunition failing to fire (not necessarily the gun’s fault) and some ejection problems.

But overall the British report praised the Thompson: “The weapon is handy, compact and is designed in a manner convenient for manufacture.” But there were no orders forthcoming, the British government being reluctant to spend money re-equipping the army with a gun that was relatively expensive, unproven in combat and against its guiding principles of not issuing light-automatic arms to soldiers. This was, after all, the same army command that had insisted that the Lee-Enfield rifle be fitted with a magazine cut-off “to prevent the unnecessary expenditure of ammunition,” and which refused to countenance the issue of semi-automatic pistols to their soldiers during the Great War for similar reasons. The prospect of actually issuing the soldiery a gun capable of such high rates of fire horrified many at the Board of Ordnance, and in the wake of the public’s distaste for anything involving military expenditure after 1918, there was little chance of Britain adopting the Thompson. Nearly two decades later, that was to change.

When war broke out in September 1939, few, least of all those in Neville Chamberlain’s government, had even the remotest idea of the enormity of events that would soon unfold. The “phoney war” period was one of gathering forces, stockpiling existing arms and frantically ordering more. The Bren gun was in service along with the indomitable Lee-Enfield rifle, but the British Army, consistently underfunded in the 1930s, was bereft of light-automatic arms. Conveniently forgetting its earlier evaluation of the Thompson as “that tatty American gangster gun” after earlier testing, the Board of Ordnance requested that the government sanction the purchase of “as many Thompson machine carbines as possible.”

With the election of Winston Churchill as prime minister in 1940, things began to move quickly. Churchill, an ex-soldier and an arms enthusiast, was also a believer in the Thompson, publicly paraphrasing the “Time” magazine comment that “General Thompson’s gun may be, pound for pound, the most devastating weapon devised for war.” He immediately sanctioned the acquisition of Model 1928 guns, and the British Purchasing Commission, based in New York, placed the order in February 1940.