John T. Thompson

American army officer and businessman

• Born: December 31, 1860
• Birthplace: Newport, Kentucky
• Died: June 21, 1940
• Place of death: Great Neck, Long Island, New York

Thompson, in collaboration with Theodore Eickhoff and Oscar Payne, conceived the American version of the submachine gun.

Primary field: Military technology and weaponry

Primary invention: Thompson submachine gun

Early Life

John Taliaferro Thompson was born December 31, 1860, to Lieutenant Colonel James Thompson and Julia Maria Taliaferro. John had one older sister, Frances. James Thompson graduated from West Point in 1851 and was a distinguished artillery officer during the Civil War, but in 1869 he left the Army and began an academic career teaching military science at Indiana University. By age sixteen, John Thompson had decided to pursue a military career. He graduated from West Point in 1882, eleventh in his class. That same year, he married Juliet Estelle Hagans. Within a year their son, Marcellus Hagans Thompson, was born. Like his father and grandfather, Marcellus would graduate from West Point and enter the Army. Upon commissioning, John entered the Army artillery, and between 1882 and 1889 he was trained in engineering and artillery. In 1890, he transferred to the U.S. Army Ordnance Department.

Life’s Work

In 1898, Thompson was promoted to lieutenant colonel and appointed chief ordnance officer for the U.S. Expeditionary Forces in the Spanish-American War. While chief ordnance officer, he recognized that the Army’s small arms were obsolete and that there was a need for standardized weaponry and a need to increase the firepower of the individual soldier. This realization prompted his search for an efficient, rapid-fire personal small arm.

Thompson was appointed chief of the Small Arms Division of the Army Ordnance Department in 1907. In this capacity, he supervised development of the highly successful M1903 Springfield rifle. While with the Ordnance Department, Thompson carried out extensive tests on rifle and pistol cartridges, resulting in the U.S. armed forces adopting the standardized .30-caliber rifle cartridge and .45-caliber pistol cartridge, which remained service standards through the 1950’s. Thompson was also an advocate of the Gatling gun as an infantry weapon because of its ability to concentrate firepower.

Because of his insistence on the need for sustained firepower and automatic weaponry, Thompson was considered a radical thinker within the Army, which at the start of the twentieth century was still dominated by aging nineteenth century cavalry commanders. Traditional military tacticians emphasized numerical superiority, whereas Thompson believed that firepower was a practical substitute for manpower. Because it was peacetime, the Army felt no need to pursue development of automatic weapons, though European nations were actively purchasing machine guns, automatic rifles, and semiautomatic pistols designed by Hiram Percy Maxim, John Moses Browning, Isaac Newton Lewis, Hugo Borchardt, Benjamin Hotchkiss, Georg Luger, and the German arms manufacturer Mauser. Thompson became frustrated with the Army, feeling that his military career was not allowing him the chance to design similar automatic weapons. In 1914, Thompson retired from the Army to become a consultant to the Remington Arms Corporation.

While the Remington job was interesting and challenging, Thompson used his evenings to design a simple, dependable, self-operating breech mechanism for an automatic weapon. In 1915, he contacted John Bell Blish, a retired naval officer who had designed and patented a blowback breech self-actuating mechanism. Thompson decided to design an automatic weapon around this delayed blowback system. In 1916, he founded the Auto-Ordnance Corporation, backed by money from Thomas Fortune Ryan, a supporter of the Irish Republican Army(IRA). Thompson, along with engineers Theodore Eickhoff and Oscar Payne, worked to develop a handheld automatic weapon during the course of World War I.

Thompson recognized the need for a handheld machine gun that could lay down sustained fire as a soldier advanced across open terrain or for use to clear enemy trenches. In 1917, as the United States entered the war, Thompson was recalled to active military duty and appointed director of arsenals. In 1918, he was promoted to brigadier general. Production of the first Auto-Ordnance automatic guns, nicknamed the “Persuader” and “Annihilator,” arrived too late to be used in action during the war: The first shipments were dock-bound when the Armistice was signed. In 1919, Thompson was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for his meritorious service in design and production of arms and ammunition to the U.S. Army and released from service. That same year, his son, Marcellus, resigned from the Army and became vice president and general manager of Auto-Ordnance.

During 1919, the prototype Thompson submachine gun was produced and by 1920 was undergoing testing by the U.S. government. Test results were impressive, but no service recommended adopting the weapon. Auto-Ordnance realized that it was difficult to market submachine guns during peacetime, so the company began an extensive advertising campaign using the mottos “The most effective portable fire arm in existence” and “On the side of law and order.” This marketing strategy resulted in mixed sales of the Colt-made M1921 Thompson submachine gun: While there were steady sales to law enforcement, many guns found their way into the hands of criminals, and a number of Thompson guns were smuggled into Ireland and used by revolutionaries against British forces.

The Thompson gun faced several additional peacetime marketing problems: The gun sold for around $200, at a time when postwar surplus machine guns sold for about $10. Also, the Thompson fired the .45 ACP (automatic Colt pistol), a pistol cartridge deemed obsolete as early as 1911 and used by no other military powers but the United States. During the 1920’s, the gun was readily available to Prohibition Era gangsters, Irish rebels, antiunion mine owners, strikebreakers, and enforcers. By the economically depressed 1930’s, the reputation of the Thompson gun’s image was mythically linked to professional criminals and gunmen. By the late 1930’s, Europe verged on war, and orders for the M1928 started to arrive from Great Britain and France. However, Colt refused to manufacture the M1928 because of its perceived criminal reputation. As a result, Auto-Ordnance signed a contract with Savage Arms Company to produce the first truly military Thompson submachine guns. Savage made its first delivery in April, 1940, and by late 1940 the war in Europe was fully engaged. Britain, France, and Russia ordered hundreds of thousands of Thompson guns.

For nearly twenty years, Thompson and his investors had been distressed and plagued by their submachine gun’s scandalous reputation. On June 21, 1940, Thompson died; he would never see his invention help free the world from the terrors of World War II. Throughout the war, the Thompson submachine gun went through several redesigns to simplify manufacture, lower cost, and adapt it to combat conditions. The Thompson gun proved a solid, reliable weapon especially suited for European and Pacific battlefields: Though it was heavy and sand could clog it, the gun had excellent stopping power, one soldier could lay down immense firepower, and its distinct firing sound intimidated the enemy. The “Tommy gun” became a favorite of elite fighting forces such as rangers, paratroopers, and special operations groups, and it was issued in great numbers to infantry and armored groups. Numerous wartime stories relay how the Thompson gun’s single-handed firepower saved the day.

Impact

Military historians credit Thompson with modernizing American infantry ordnance from 1900 through World War I. Thompson’s M1921 gun is the first weapon deemed a “submachine gun,” a term Thompson coined. The Thompson gun is considered to have one of the most distinct and recognizable designs in firearms history. The use of Thompson guns, and other automatic weapons such as the Browning automatic rifle (BAR), by criminals resulted in the National Firearms Act of 1934, which aimed to keep such weapons out of the hands of Depression Era bandits. During World War II, more than 1.5 million variations of Thompson submachine guns were produced. Many veterans consider it the best weapon of the war. The Thompson submachine gun remained in military and police use well into the 1960’s.

Bibliography

Cox, Roger. The Thompson Submachine Gun. Athens, Ga.: Law Enforcement Ordinance Company, 1982. This out-of-print book contains one of the most definitive accounts of Thompson gun history.

Helmer, William. The Gun That Made the Twenties Roar. New York: Macmillan, 1969. Considered the quintessential reference on John T. Thompson and the Thompson submachine gun. A richly illustrated book, it also contains a copy of the original handbook for the Thompson Model 1921.

Hill, Tracie L. Thompson: The American Legend—The First Submachine Gun. Cobourg, Ontario, Canada: Collector Grade Publications, 1996. A very detailed book on the Thompson gun, listing every prototype, model, and variation. There are hundreds of photos and diagrams, and the book covers the social, political, and military implications of the Thompson gun.

Mullin, Timothy J. Fighting Submachine Gun, Machine Pistol, and Shotgun: A Hands-on Evaluation. Boulder, Colo.: Paladin Press, 1999. Contains field tests, evaluations, and comparisons of five variants of the Thompson gun. A well-illustrated reference.