From: Gordon.W.I. McMillan (gwim2@student.open.ac.uk)
Date: Sun Apr 21 2002 - 01:01:10 PDT
Hi Joe,
the Thompson history is long and impressive, it's still in production in a
modified form, though the quality may not be up to the Colt-produced
originals, and the Irish connection goes right back to the start, in fact
a lot of the prototypes ended up in southern Ireland right back at the
start of production. I have a little bit of the information on-line in
one of my university articles;
http://www.gwim2.free-online.co.uk/d214.htm (you'll have to scroll to or
click on the bit about the Thompson) and if you want to read more there's
a few on-line sources;
http://www.nfatoys.com/tsmg/tcn/
and
http://www.machinegunbooks.com/cgibin/ikonboard/forums.cgi?forum=1
The British started with a negative attitude (because they faced it in
Ireland mostly, plus 'not invented here') but they lapped it up by the
boatload early in WW2 and it was standard kit on most of the AEC armoured
command vehicles, for example. The example in Andreas photo is probably a
mid war one as the British had a preference for the vertical foregrip
rather than the 'navy model' horizontal grip in the image.
Why have a 0.30 rifle in your MB universal rifle bracket when you can have
a Tommy Gun ?
Gordon
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