Submachine gun oddity

In looking at old photos and war movies, I notice that the American soldiers all used lower capacity stick magazines in their Thompson submachine guns. Still older photos seem to indicate that American gangsters and police used the heavier, higher capacity drum magazines. So drum type magazines were available, but I don't see them used.

Russians in World War II, and later Chinese in Korea also made extensive use of a submachine gun that also supported both drum and stick magazines - the PPSh41. Yet all the photos of them indicate that they made heavy use of the drums, perhaps much more than the sticks.

Does anybody know (or just want to speculate on) the reasoning behind these different choices?

Never having handled a weapon like that, and never having been in combat, I can only guess at what I'd want, but I kind of think that if I had to fight I'd want all the bullets in my gun that I could get.

My dad used the Thompson in the South Pacific and said the stick magazine rarely jammed, unlike the drum. He also found them easier to reload.

Scouts trained on Thompsons learned to fan bursts of three to 'explore' a suspicious area. whereas gangsters (in the 1920s and now) just carelessly spray all over. This wastes ammo and also exposes your position.

I am not sure why the Russians and Chinese used the drum

The US shipped thousands of Thompson submachine guns with the drum type magazines to Russia in Autumn 1942. There are pictures of the Russians defending Stalingrad using said

Stephen Ambrose notes that a new 30-round magazine introduced in early 1944 and carried in combat on D-Day was so heavy, the stick would drop out of the gun. Soldiers combat loaded the 30-round mag with 20 rounds so it wouldn't fall out.

Thompsons came with 20-round stick, 50-round and 100(!)-round drums. Nicolas Cage is shown using a 50-round drum in the opening of the otherwise laughable WINDTALKERS. Winston Churchill was shown with a British 'Tommy' gun - where the British got their 'tommy' nickname, possibly - in a photo that was reproduced by the Germans as a gangster wanted poster. The Americans were issued 50-round drums in Summer 1942 for Guadalcanal.

However, the 50-and 100-round drums were so heavy, the gun could not be accurately fired - the weight of the gun, combined with the muzzle climb, would cause erratic fire, even at 50 yards. Later deployments by British and Americans from 1943 on used 20-round sticks to prevent weight and muzlle climb from limiting accuracy. Also, the drums had a tendency to jam. The Russians replaced the 71-round rum for the PPSh with a 35-round curved stick for the same reasons. Notably, the Thompson M3 'grease gun' did not have the capability to use a drum, but that also may be that it was engineered to use both .45 pistol and German 9mm with a different barrel. The German 9mm only came in a stick for the MP38/40.

Now, you could argue that you can't be accurate with a submachine gun, but hey, that's another thread.

If I was to guess, the Army probably thought that soldiers with 50-round drum magazines would waste ammunition, not the first time the Army made such a call. The smaller magazine is lighter and easier to carry with a sling. Additional magazines are easier to carry.

The post that the smaller magazines were less susceptable to jamming makes

The drum magazines were heavy, bulky to carry, much more prone to jamming, expensive and very slow to reload.

Also, only the earlier versions could use them. The M1's which were the most common version in WWII could not.

Scott Peterson

There are at least two major reasons.

1. The staggered row box magazine is much easier to produce, maintain, and less prone to malfunction than a drum magazine. Note that the Germans also used primarily a box magazine on their SMG's.

2. The Thompson is chambered for .45 ACP, a very heavy pistol cartridge and a 30 round box magazine of .45 ACP weighs as much or more than a drum of 7.62mm or 9mm ammo.

For Example the German MP40 chambered for 9mm Parabellum used a 32 round staggered row box magazine and weighed in at 8.87 - 10 Lbs depending on the model.

The Soviet PPSh was chambered for the 7.62mm and used either a 25 round box, or 70 round drum, loaded with the box magazine it weighed 8.25 lbs and 11.5 lbs with the 71 round drum meaning the loaded drum weighed in the 4.5 to 5 lb range.

The M-1 Thompson weighed in at 10.45 to 10.75 lbs and could use either a 20 or 30 round staggered row box magazine or a 50 round drum (on the M-1928A1 only). I just weighed a box of 50 rounds of .45 ACP and it came in at 38.4 ounces or about 2.5 pounds, just for the ammo and about another 2 plus for the magazine. So a Thompson with a loaded 50 round drum should weigh in at about 13-15 pounds. It is much handier with the smaller box magazines, more reliable and when you are shooting a 230 grain bullet at 930 fps, you do not need nearly as much ammo as the Thompson was designed more for aimed burst fire than for area spray.

Data from Brassey's Small Arms of the World, other experience from using most of the US Army small arms starting with the M-14 and forward except for the newest toys (they can put the Beretta where the sun don't shine, I'll keep my M-1911A1).

: in their Thompson submachine guns. Still older photos : seem to indicate that American gangsters and police used : the heavier, higher capacity drum magazines. So drum : type magazines were available, but I don't see them used.

: Does anybody know (or just want to speculate on) the : reasoning behind these different choices?

If my understanding, there were a couple of reasons. Primarily, the drum was more fragile/easily jammed. ISTR for example that the drum in particular, if given a hard knock (by diving for cover, perhaps) it would get out of alignment and not feed correctly. Similarly, in the larger drum with its different spring mechanism, there was more vulnerability to dirt, ice, etc. In addition, loading a drum took longer and was more difficult. The Thompson was popular for its firepower, but it really wasn't designed as a military/field weapon. A bit heavy, a bit complex, took a bit too much TLC. But it cranked out bullets and hit hard...

The drums were quite complex designs, with a lot of small fiddly parts that could break down much fater than a stick mag. They were fine if all you had to do was keep them in a violin case in the back of car, but hauling the gun around in the rain and mud would rapidly ruin the mags or make them unreliable. They were also very heavy and rattled a lot.

There were two types of mags for the Thompson, the short 20-round version and the long 30-round one. Many preferred the shorter one as it was less prone to jamming, also they often only loaded 18 or 28 rounds as the last ones were hard to get in and could jam the weapon.

The Soviets wanted a lot of short range firepower in the hands of their infantry and issued drum-fed weapons. But as the war progressed and new SMG types were introduced, they gradually switched to simpler, lighter mags.

'Spray and Pray' tactics are not very good. Most armies, even today put the emphasis on aiming over firepower. Shooting a weapon full-auto that isn't a proper machinegun is generally a waste of bullets in most cases. Also quartermasters don't like it when you use up all that nice ammo you stockpiled. With the emergence of automatic weapons the amount of casualties per rounds spent has gone up dramatically.

SMG's are good for close quarter fighting in built up areas. And a good ammo capacity can be useful in a tight spot, but a good soldier may need only a few bullets to kill somebody, while a bad one might empty his clip in the first enemy he spots. Both are dead, but a lot of ammo was wasted and the other guy isn't 'deader' because of it ...

The Thompson was redeisgned to eliminate the drum. Most of the ones used in the war couldn't take a drum magazine.