The Tommy Gun

Observation Post, Volume 1, Issue 32, 24 December 1942, Page 1

The Tommy Gun

Never has Chicago’s gangland been so excited as it was when one cold Feb-rus-iy morning in 1930 when ‘‘Scratch” Phipps, bosom pal of Al Capone ,was put on the spot. It was not Phipp’s death which excited the underworldthere was nothing particularly unexpected about that i —but the method of the killing. He had 1 been fiddled with cartridges from a new and deadly type of machine gun. Within forty-eight Hours nearly every trigger man in town was breaking his neck to get hold of a similar weapon. When news of this reached a normally quiet, law-abiding retired army officer named John Taliaferro Thompson he snorted with rage. "I spent the best years of my life perfecting this gun so that the U.S. Army could better defend law and order, and now it becomes a gangsters’ ‘gat’,” he complained. For the weapon which, the gangsters had “discovered" was the Thompson sub-machine gun, perfected some years earlier and which is now being issued at the rate of 5000 a month to the British Army. I' Gangsters soon found that BrigadierGeneral Thompson had not wasted the 32 years he had spent in experimenting with guns and rifles. At ranges from 50 to 75 yards his gun—called a sub-' machine gun because it is smaller than the regulation military machine guns—, was terribly lethal. ■

USES Gangland used the Tommy, gun with discretion. It was found to bo a shade too clumsy for ordinary “stick-ups" ! but ideal for street bumping-off jobs. You might plug a man with a revolver and he might still live. But no one ! could survive thirty rounds in four sec'onds from a Tommy gun. /; In 1919 the United States Government awarded Thompson the ■ Distinguished Medal for his work in the small arms division. But when the gangland killings soared to. new heights the public was not so sure that Thompson could be called a benefactor. , However, the gangsters could not always get hold of the guns in quantity. The police could, and what is more their models were brand new. , Military use was made of the gun early in the present struggle, when both sides adopted it for patrol work. • It was found to be particularly effective in clashes in No-Man’s Land. Because the gun is so,light— weighs just over 11 pounds—and measures only 33 inches overall, Goering adopted it for his parachute troops. . Now Britain is receiving large quan- ' tities of the gun from the John Thomp- ) son Corporation in New York to assist in dealing with enemy parachutists. 1 The normal output of 5000 a month is ' being greatly speeded-up. .■