THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE THOMPSON SUBMACHINE GUN

                                                                                

                                                                                      by      

Theodore H. Eickhoff

Cleveland, Ohio

    

      General John T. Thompson, then “Colonel Thompson”, was stationed in the Office of the Chief of Ordnance in Washington D.C. when I graduated in June 1908 from Purdue University. After passing a Civil Service Examination, I entered upon a position of Electrical

and Mechanical Draftsman in the Office of the Chief of Ordnance in

September of that year. Colonel Thompson was in charge of the Small Arms and Equipment Division; my assignment was in the Artillery Division. The following year Col. Thompson requested the transfer to his division of a draftsman whom he could use to undertake a study of the then-existing automatic rifles being developed in the United States and abroad, and to study all military rifles used by the Nations of the world. Upon my volunteering for the transfer I was assigned to the Small Arms and Equipment Division. This was the beginning of my association with Col. Thompson.

       At that time there was a keen competition between the Colt’s

Patent Firearms Mfg. Co. with their caliber .45 Browning Automatic

Pistol, and The Savage Arms Co. with their caliber .45 Savage Auto-

Matic Pistol, to get their respective pistols adopted by the army as

the standard side arm. Previous competitive tests had eliminated all

other automatic pistols submitted for test, leaving Colts and Savage

alone in the field. However, in those previous competitive tests,

both pistols fired caliber .38 cartridges; now they were to submit

pistols firing a newly adopted caliber .45 cartridge.

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        This change in cartridges had a bit of interesting history.

         During the Spanish-American war, when fighting the Moros in the Philippine Islands, the stamina of these natives was such that the caliber .38 revolver bullet would not stop them; they came rushing on our men charging with their bolos. Up to that time, the

Caliber .38 revolver had been the standard side arm of the army. A

heavier bullet was demanded by the army, and was developed by the Ordnance Department. Col. Thompson had been a member of the Board of Officers in the competitive test of automatic pistols, and also a member of the Board of Officers testing the new caliber .45

cartridge with it’s 230-grain, cupro-nickle jacketed, blunt-nosed,

lead-cored bullet. Among other tests of the bullet that were made,

leading up to the adoption of the caliber .45 pistol cartridge, was

a study of its stopping power by firing the bullet into live animal

tissue at the time of slaughter. About the best description of the

stopping power of this new bullet was given by the man who had been accidentally shot in the shoulder; he said, it felt as though about a dozen men had rammed him with a telephone pole carried on their shoulders.

          Each of the contestants, the Colt Company and the Savage Arms Company submitted caliber .45 automatic pistols to the Ordnance Office for preliminary tests. They were fired at a near-by rifle range until a “bug” developed. I was assigned to witness these

tests, keep a record, and make a report thereon. Further development refinements were made by the respective companies and the pistols resubmitted. Ultimately endurance firing reached a point where it was considered the pistols were ready for a final official competitive test.

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      Each company delivered a pistol to the Ordnance Office, and I

was given the assignment to travel to Springfield, Massachusetts,

and personally deliver these two automatic pistols to the Commanding Officer of the Springfield Armory for a final competitive test. In this test the Colt Browning Pistol won out and in 1911 the Colt Browning caliber .45 Automatic Pistol was approved by the then

Secretary of War, William Howard Taft, as the standard side arm for

the army

        Shortly after I entered the Ordnance Office the Wright Brothers

made the first public demonstration of their “heavier than air”

flying machine. The demonstration took place at the Ft. Myer

Cavalry Drill Grounds, across the Potomac River from Washington. It

was my privilege to attend that notable event. All foreign military

attaches stationed in Washington, were out in their full military

regalia. It was a very festive, clear autumn day. At the end of

the field a fly tent had been erected to serve as a grand stand for

the chief observer, the Secretary of war, William Howard Taft. At

the appointed time the Wright plane was launched from a specially

built platform, erected for the purpose. The flying machine

consisted of two horizontal canvas planes held together by a light

framework extending to the rear to support vertical and horizontal

control vanes. The engine was mounted between the planes on the

framework, and the operator, Mr. Wright, sat next to the engine.

The fans were driven by link-chains. The plane rested on light

skids like that of a sled.

        On the take-off an impetus was given to the airplane by the release of a heavy weight which fell to the ground, which, with a

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rope guided over pulleys, had been hooked to the front of the

airplane frame, and at the end of the sloping ramp was automatically

detached. With the engine running, driving the fans, the plane slid

down the 30-foot ramp, skidded on the ground a bit, gradually gained altitude, and made about a dozen laps around the drill field at an altitude of about 50 feet and then landed safely on its skids.

During the flight the operator could be well observed; a girl

shrieked “Oh look, he is wearing tan shoes”. The afternoon’s

performance was a grand success, and all the world knew that man

could fly in a heavier than air machine.   

        In those days congressional appropriation for development work were very meager. World War I broke out in 1914, and France and Germany battled in the air with air planes. The congressional

appropriations for the development of air planes here at home, up

to the time of our entry into the conflict in 1917, had amounted

to only a few hundred thousand dollars as General Pershing relates

in his book on World War I. When we ultimately got into production

of arms and equipment for the war, 600 million dollars were

appropriated for air planes, but, as General Pershing points out,

no American-built plane ever reached the fighting front.

           Incidentally, as a matter of historical interest only, the

following year I joined some officer companions for a boat trip down

the Chesapeake Bay to Norfolk, Virginia, to witness the homecoming

ceremonies of the U.S. Battle Fleet, at Hampton Roads, which had

been sent around the globe by President Theodore Roosevelt.

 

        Not long after the beginning of World War I, Colonel Thompson

retired from the army and accepted a position as Consulting Engineer

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with the Remington Arms Company which had built a new plant

Eddystone, Pennsylvania, for the manufacture of Enfield Rifles for

the British. Sometime later, I found myself resigned my position to try

my hand in the commercial or industrial fields.

         In the summer of 1916, Col. Thompson sent me a telegram to

come to Chester, Pennsylvania and meet him at the railway station.

At the appointed time, I made my appearance there, dressed in my

Best and wearing a stiff hat, which was popular in those days. To

receive a request from an Army Colonel, to meet him for a interview,

was an unusual and great experience and I put on my very best manners.

         Col. Thompson was at the railway station when the train arrived;

and, after a cordial greeting of old time friends, we stepped into

a Winston-six, which was the finest in that era, and a chauffer drove

us through the country-side to the Colonel’s country home near

Media, Pennsylvania.

         Those were the days of the dying chestnuts. On the train to

Chester I had noticed innumerable dead tree trunks among the beauti-

fully green hillsides; and now driving in an auto through the

countryside, those dead tree trunks were more pronounced. In the

yard of the Colonel’s home there were about eight huge stumps which

were all that was left of a grove of stately chestnut trees. Upon

inquiry I was informed that all those dead trees I had seen were the

result of the chestnut blight. That was the first time I had heard

about the chestnut blight, and saw first hand what a terrible

devastation it produced. Only a few years later this awful disease

ravaged Ohio also.  

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        During our drive to Media, the Colonel explained that the real

reason for his retiring from the Army was to attempt to get private

capital interested in the development of an automatic should

rifle for the Army; that congressional appropriations for this

purpose were next to impossible. The acceptance of a position as

consulting engineer for the Remington Arms Co. in the manufacture

of the Lee-Enfield rifles was merely incidental. He seemed quite

exhuberant about progress in the manufacture of the rifles and was

particularly elated about the production of barrels which had just

been brought up to 200 per day. “Barrels” seemed to be uppermost

in his mind and his mind was saturated with “barrel making.”  I,

on the other hand, had during the previous autumn he ped my mother at home operate a customs cider mill where the neighboring farmers and orchardists bring their apples to have cider made. One of the headaches of this operation was to provide an empty supply of

“barrels” to contain the cider. My mind was still saturated with

“cider barrels.” Somehow my mind was slow in orienting itself from

cider making to rifle making, and with the Colonel’s frequent

reference to “barrels” I was just about to ask him as to where all

those barrels were being used. But fortunately, before asking the

question, a quiet voice within me said, “ why you dumb-bell, wake up;

orient yourself and be quick about it; he is manufacturing rifles,

and obviously he is talking about ‘rifle barrels’ ”.

         In the quiet of his home, Col. Thompson related that his great

Ambition was to develop an automatic shoulder rifle for the Army,

Within the prescribed limits of weight. He had searched the

Existing patents and had found the Blish patent which, he was

Confident, could produce the satisfactory automatic breech action

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within the weight limit, and he felt confident of financial backing

which he was presently negotiating, and was now ready to engage an engineer to undertake the development work. He offered me the job of designing and engineering an automatic shoulder rifle. He

explained that he had learned that I had left the Ordnance Office

and felt free to make me this offer. As I had made no permanent

connections since resigning from the Ordnance Office, I willingly

accepted. After closing up activities I was engaged in, I

presented myself within a few days to begin the activities of

developing an automatic shoulder rifle.

        Col. Thompson arranged that I make my living quarters with the family and carry on the design work in a room provided for the

purpose. I studied the Blish patent and we fires a few shots from

a pistol that Commander Blish had made, based on his patent.

      Commander Blish had been stationed on a battleship on which

The heavy guns had been fired numerous times, with full charges,

without any mishap. On one occasion, however, during target

Practice, while firing reduced charges, the breech block, of the

Interrupted screw-thread type, opened, resulting in some casualties

among the gun crew. Commander Blish offered the explanation for

this  mishap that at the high pressure of a full charge the breech

was immovably locked, by a “super-friction”, or an “adhesion,”

while at the lower pressure of a reduced charge such “adhesion”

did not exist; consequently, the breech unlocked on the inclined

angle of the screw thread. He foresaw the possibility of building

an automatic gun on this principle, applied for a patent and was

granted  Patent No. 1,131,319 dated March 9, 1915. It was on the

basis of this patent that we undertook the design of an automatic

shoulder rifle.

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  Col. Thompson readily agreed to the suggestion that we first

design and build a testing apparatus or “Trial Mechanism” with which

to try out the principle,  study the action and make determinations.

When the design was completed he asked the Warner & Swasey Company of Cleveland, Ohio, to make this mechanism for us. He was personally acquainted with Messrs. Warner, Swasey and F.A. Scott, in fact he was on very friendly terms with them. The Colonel had very great confidence in the company to produce only the highest quality of workmanship, and he wanted the mechanism to be of the highest quality.

        In due course of time, the mechanism was ready for testing; and I was sent to Cleveland to initiate the tests. I made two or three

prolonged visits to Cleveland and soon became permanently stationed in Cleveland. The mechanism gave promise of functioning, but tests always led to changes and improvements.  After a long series of tedious and exasperating tests we discovered that the

difference between satisfactory functioning of the mechanism, and

non-functioning, was a matter of a slight lubrication on the

caliber .30 rifle cartridge we were using. This was the standard

U.S. Army rifle cartridge. After knowing this and applying a very

slight lubrication to all cartridges, we could produce satisfactory,

reliable functioning indefinitely.

        Now to get a picture of this organization of the Auto-Ordnance

Corporation, we will go back to when I first came to Chester to

meet Col. Thompson.

         The Colonel’s family consisted of Mrs. Thompson and one son, named Marcellus, who at that time was a Major in the Artillery Unit

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of the Army. He had only recently married the only daughter

of Col. George Harvey who had been U.S. Ambassador to the

Court of St. James and was editor of the North American

Magazine. Whether the Thompson family and the Harvey family

were friends before the marriage of their children or was as a

result of the marriage I never learned. Col. Harvey was a

close friend, and I think, an advisor to the New York

financier Thomas Fortune Ryan; and it was apparently through

the good offices of Col. Harvey that Col. Thompson succeeded

to get Mr. Ryan interested in his venture to develop an

automatic shoulder rifle and to back up the venture financially.

        Soon after I  was started on the work the organization of

the Auto-Ordnance Corporation was accomplished. Col Thompson

discussed with me the choice of a company name which was

ultimately agreed upon as “Auto-Ordnance Corporation.” It

was arranged that all my work was to be carried on in utmost

secrecy. I was not even to reveal the name of the company,

but to transact all business in my own name. My salary was

paid monthly by Mr. H.H. Vreeland, Mr. Ryan’s Office Manager

at his New York office. I was to make frequent reports of

progress to Col. Thompson and to make a monthly report of

expenditures. with a request for funds for the coming month,

to Mr. Vreeland.

        

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At about the time when I was worked continuously at Cleve-

Land, the U.S. entered into W.W. I. Col. Thompson was

called back into Military Service as a Brigadier General.

At Cleveland, I had established my own office at 5716 Euclid

Ave., not far from the Warner & Swasey Company; and was

adding personnel to the office. The Warner & Swasey Company

became very busy with war work and urged us to “farm out”

what machining had to be done to various small machine

shops. Ultimately we acquired a few essential machines

and operated our own machine shop.

Some time later a young man by the name of Oscar V.

Payne, who had been doing Patent office work, applied to

General Thompson for a position in the Ordnance Office

for Automatic rifle design work. General Thompson referred

Mr. Payne to me and we arranged to have him come to

Cleveland for an interview, with the results that he

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was added to our staff.  He proved to have a remarkable ability to

take an assignment, brood over it for several days, and come up

with alternative proposals carefully giving all the “pros” and “cons”

for each so that the making of a decision for proceeding was very simple. In addition he was an excellent artist who could reduce

his ideas to clear, simple sketches readily understandable.

      While living with the Colonel before coming to Cleveland I got

well acquainted with the Colonel’s chauffer, George Goll.  He

hailed from Bangor, Pennsylvania, of Pennsylvania Dutch stock, a

very likeable young man. He was cheerful and always saw the funny

side of things. He would have been a success as a comedian on the

stage, on radio or television. After we got acquainted he confided

that when he first saw me at the railway station at Chester,

Pennsylvania, he felt sure that his was the honor to be driving the

Colonel with the Secretary of War as guest. In course of time he

was drafted into military service and upon his release after the

armistice, he joined our organization at Cleveland. He had the

remarkable ability and tenacity, if any mechanism was not working

well, to check all parts against the drawings and find where any

dimension was slightly off.

         When the group at Cleveland became convinced that the caliber .30 Army rifle cartridge defiantly would not function with the

Blish automatic bolt action without lubrication, I made a personal

report thereon to the now “General” Thompson. But prior to making

that report we had made a careful study of all types of cartridges

and had developed what we called the “coefficient of ejection” for

all the popular makes of cartridges. This coefficient was nothing

more than the ratio of the effective thrust area of the chamber

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powder pressure against the bolt, versus the area of the cartridge

case pressing against the chamber by the inflation of the cartridge

case under the high chamber pressure. In simple words, it was the

quotient obtained by dividing the area of the mouth of the cartridge

case by the exterior surface area of the cartridge case contacting

the chamber.

       

        The U.S. caliber .30 rifle cartridge that we were using had the

poorest coefficient of .025; whereas the caliber .45 pistol ball

cartridge, used in the recently adopted Automatic Pistol. Model of

1911, had the highest coefficient of .150. This is the cartridge

that I had seen used so much in testing automatic pistols while in

the Ordnance Office years before, and I felt quite partial to this

cartridge.

       We had also, before reporting to General Thompson, made

extensive tests with the caliber .30 rifle cartridge by coating

them with various kinds of waxes and found that a wax coating on

the cartridge case answered all requirements of lubricating the

cartridge case. These waxed cartridges functioned reliably and

dependably in the test mechanisms. Our thought was that in the

manufacture of cartridges a simple waxing operation could be added

and all cartridges be waxed.

       When I personally reported to General Thompson that the caliber .30 rifle cartridge defiantly would not function with the Blish

bolt action in the dry state, but that a slight lubrication on the

cartridge case was required to obtain reliable and dependable action, he did not seem greatly surprised but seemed to have anticipated such a verdict, having kept in close touch with our progress by

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almost daily reports and frequent telephone calls. Then I explained

the “coefficient of ejection” to him and pointed out that the

caliber .30 cartridge we were working with had the poorest

coefficient, while the caliber .45 pistol ball cartridge had the

highest coefficient; and recommended that the caliber .45 pistol

ball cartridge be tested in a trial mechanism to determine whether

it could function satisfactorily without lubrication.

       Those were the days of trench warfare on all the battle fronts,

and he had apparently given the matter considerable thought; he

was ready with an answer and a directive. He said “very well,

try out the caliber .45 pistol ammunition immediately to determine

it’s functioning, and if those cartridges function satisfactorily

without lubrication, design and build a machine gun using the

caliber .45 pistol ball cartridge, a gun that can be fired from the

hip; we will call it a “trench broom”. With that he stood up and

gestured with his arms as though he were actually firing a Thompson

Submachine Gun from his hip as it was finally developed. For the

time being, we were to let work on the automatic shoulder rifle\

rest and push the development of a pistol ammunition machine gun

with the utmost speed.

        Back at Cleveland we soon made determinations with our Testing Mechanism that the caliber .45 pistol ball cartridge would function satisfactorily with the Blish Bolt action, without lubrication, as  we had anticipated; and we made determinations of the wedge angle.

The assignment to design the gun was given to Mr. Payne. In our

rifle design work we had become accustomed to keep the weight of

parts to and absolute safe minimum, so quite naturally we also

designed the machine gun as light as possible. In design we

used a web belt to feed the cartridges into the gun.

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   In very good time we had the gun ready for testing; but then

our disappointment began. The gun would fire two or three shots

automatically and then jam. We spent considerable time making

adjustments and refinements, but always there was the sound of two

or three encouraging shots and then a jam. Finally we came to the

conclusion that the gun parts were entirely too light and the

movement of the parts entirely too fast to drag into position a

belt of heavy cartridges. We decided to wipe the slate clean and

start allover again, making the parts as heavy as we dared, abandon

the belt feed, using a box magazine feed of 20 cartridges. This

we later supplemented with drum magazines of 50-cartridges and

100-cartridges capacity. Our hunch to design the gun heavier

worked out beautifully and just as the World War I Armistice was

signed, Nov. 11, 1918, we had a Pistol Ball Cartridge Machine Gun

ready for production.

         In drafting room and shop parlance we had referred to our first

design of gun as “The Persuader”. The second heavier design we

called “The Annihilator”. But now the time was ripe to give the

child an official name. General Thompson objected to calling the

piece a “machine gun”. All Machine Guns at the time fired rifle

cartridges and he argued that this gun was not in the category with

that class of machine gun. We considered the term “Sub-Machine Gun”

to indicate that it was of a lower category than a rifle cartridge

machine gun, but considered the possibility of the term “sub-

machine” creating confusion with the designation “sub-caliber”. I

contended that the term “sub-caliber” was known only in military

parlance where in target practice small ammunition is fired in

adapters from big guns merely for training purposes, and that the

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term ‘sub-caliber’ is not known to the general public. The General

finally conceded to the use of the term “sub-machine”; but now the

question remained whose name should it take. He proposed to call

it “The Ryan Submachine Gun.” When this matter was brought to the

attention of Mr. Ryan for his consent he said very brusquely, “I’m

no military man and what is more I know nothing about guns; General

Thompson is a military man, knows guns, and is well know; we will

call it “The Thompson Submachine Gun.”

       With the submachine gun complete, we resumed the design of

the Autorifle. for the first time the General over-ruled my recom-

mendation, which was to wax the cartridge of lubrication. He

instructed us to provide small oil-pads in the magazine of the

rifle to furnish the necessary lubricant to the cartridge. This

disappointed and disheartened me very much; to necessity of

lubricating the cartridge would be a very great handicap for any

rifle we might produce.

      As a result of our experience with the submachine gun we

started afresh with the design of a rifle. Here there were greater

pressures to content with and greater speeds of moving parts.

Instead of using a separate wedge we went back to the gun that

Commander Blish first observed and decided to use a bolt with lugs

of the screw-thread type using the appropriate angularity.

Eventually we had an automatic shoulder rifle designed and built

and with appropriate lubrication of cartridges, the rifle

functioned satisfactorily

         At this juncture, in the fall of 1920, we were instructed to

discontinue our machine shop and office in Cleveland, release all

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personnel and a selected few to move to Hartford, Connecticut.

Negotiations had been under way for some time with the Colts Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company to manufacture a limited number of submachine guns for the Auto-Ordnance Corporation and we were to be available at their plant for any engineering assistance they may need.

           Not long after we were settled in Hartford, Connecticut,

Oscar V. Payne left the Auto-Ordnance Corporation to take a

position with Crompton & Knowels loom Works at Worchester, Mass.

That left only George Goll and myself of the former Cleveland

organization remaining with the company.

         The Colts Patent Firearms manufacturing Company were getting along with their orders from the Auto-Ordnance Corporation in  manufacturing submachine guns. Sales, however, did not meet

expectation and we were called upon to design and build temporary

racks for storing guns after they came off the production line

and passed our company’s inspection.

        We had gone through World War I, which was popularly hailed

as the War to end all Wars. The future of the gun business did not

look bright, and I entertained a desire to get into Industrial

Work, so in the summer of 1924 I resigned my position with the

Auto-Ordnance Corporation and joined the Trundle Engineering Company of Cleveland, Ohio, as a staff engineer.

          After leaving the Auto-Ordnance Corporation, I was in

occasional correspondence with the company regarding the design of an autorifle for the British Cartridge. However, my personal

correspondence with General Thompson was more frequent, and

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continued until the time of his death.

      

          Occasionally I would hear bits of news about the Auto-Ordnance Corporation until finally General Thompson sent me a clipping of the Time Magazine, issue of June 26, 1939, where, on page 67, in the Business & finance Section, under the heading of “Munitions” and sub-heading “Chopper”, there appeared a concise article on the history and demise of the Auto-Ordnance Corporation. Mr. Ryan had died in 1928, Manhattan’s guaranty Trust Company became executor, Elder statesman Elihu Root, the lawyer of the Ryan estate, in kindly Pacifist Root’s scheme of things, quietly put Auto-Ordnance on the shelf.

        Colonel Marcellus Thompson died in October 1939 and General Thompson died in June 1940.

          Russell Maguire acquired the interest that was formerly held

by the Ryan estate and, as I understand, reaped quite a harvest on

the production of Thompson Submachine Guns during World War II.

THE END