The submachine gun.

Did it? We were so much later than others?

Submachine gun - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I don't think we were so late to adopt

 

The Brits took all the Thompsons they could get, at least until they came up with the STEN gun (among others, no doubt). The US Army was slow to pick up on the Thompson, too, although the Navy Dept. bought a couple thousand fairly early on, for the Marines. I don't have the reference book any more, but I don't think the US Army bought any subguns until it was obvious that war was inevitable('40 or '41), then they bought the Thompsons and Riesings(soon dumped) until they came up with the M3 and M3A1s.

 

Yeah, the old gangster drum-fed Thompson with the ejector thingy on the top (note the professional edicate) looked cool! And they did use it! I think it's the Tompson 1928, what I wonder is why didn't they keep that design, 100 round drum and 600 RPM, it's a nice gun.

Oh yeah this is about the British isn't it....
Well they probably didn't really need a SMG until WWII, and they spent alot of there resources on radars and the RAF,the Lanchester was even an RAF project (at first). I guess there just wasn't a need for SMG's.

But I'm not sure, in fact I'm not sure of anything I said. I hope i'm right.

 

The tommy gun (pre war) was more expensive to make,and they rid of the expensive parts of the gun in order to streamline production.Also the drum fed ammo had a tendency to jam,probably not more so than other sub machine guns.

 

Actually, the version of the Thompson SMG the US Government ended up buying was a bit different than the drum-fed version of the '20's. The Gov't went with a cartridge-fed version that only carried about 30 rounds per clip. And that pretty front wooden stock was replaced by a metal one (cheaper to make, and it didn't break when you threw it in the back of a Jeep), though they did keep the wooden butt stock. The bad thing about the Thompson was the ammo: it fired the same ball ammo as the M1911A1, which only had a muzzle velocity of around 900 fps on a good day; not very accurate at anything over 100m. The BAR was a much better weapon for combat conditions (and the Sturmgewehr 44 was even better).

 

I think a more interesting question is 'Why didn't the Japanese develop an SMG. Considering that a lot of their fighting was close quarters in jungle conditions, it would have been an ideal weapon.

 

Excellent question, to which I do not have the answer. If I had to guess, though, I would say they had trouble developing a reliable SMG, considering the conditions they were fighting in (swamps, jungles, marine environments, etc.).

 

The japanese developed a SMG and started with the delivery to the japanese army in 1942.

Type 100, 8mm.


Japan just didn't had enough industrial facilities and they needed them to produce other stuff.

They didn't produce them in big amaounts, only something around 30.000 Type 100 in 3 different versions.

 

The BAR of course was a more effective weapon under certain circumstances than the Thompson gun but they were two different animals. The BAR was a squad weapon, a portable light machine gun but very heavy and bulky(had to be in order to have any accuracy with the powerful 3006 rd) often was used with a bi pod. The Thompson was a light hand held easily carried, both weapon and ammo, short range weapon with a lot of firepower. It was never intended to be used much beyond a hundred yards. It was succesfully used in ww2, Korea, Malaya, Indo China, Vietnam and other venues and is probably still in action today somewhere.

 

Actually the Japanese infantry weapons were not particularly advanced or effective compared to the US or Brit weapons.