Having spoken with Freddy Clifford, we no longer believe that this gun was formally trialled by the Small Arms Committee. It may well have seen informal testing of some sort but not officially.
A lot of the UK's greatest inventions can be attributed to Blokes in Sheds: The Accuracy International rifle platform. The TVR Griffith 500. Colin McRae and Richard Burns. James May.
@@JonathanFergusonRoyalArmouries Also, a better microphone, or better sound editing. This video is very quiet. Some closer camera views would be nice too.
I knew Mark Dineley as a customer in the photographic shop I worked in during the mid 1970's in Salisbury, he collected Leica cameras and I once remember selling him a wartime pair of Russian binoculars which had a compass built into them. He was small in stature so perhaps that's a link to the size of the SMG?
The safety detent is reminiscent of a BAR. In that gun the purpose is that you can switch from semi auto to full without accidentally going all the way to safe when approaching enemy trench in ww1
@@jwwalker688 It was designed to be used in WW1, but it didn't get the chance cause the war was over before it got used, I'm sure that if the war would've taken another 4 years it would've been used
@@jwwalker688 That simply isn't true. It was used in combat by the US in WWI, but only in fairly small numbers because it only entered mass production in mid-1918. By the time large numbers were produced, delivered, inspected, shipped to Europe, sent to units, units were trained, and then went into the line with them, the war was over. There would also be no reason to keep it secret since there wasn't any new concept or anything. Gas operated machineguns weren't new and the automatic rifle concept was pretty clear with the Chauchat.
This brings back a surprising memory: When I was a kid, a friend of mine had a toy Thompson that was about that size. It was the best-made toy gun I've ever seen in my life--almost more of a model than a toy, in terms of how detailed it was, but as rugged as a toy ought to be. It even had the detachable shoulder stock.
A suggestion for future videos - consider moving the static, head on camera closer to the table. Presently, there's a lot of unused "dead" space in the shot, and coming closer allows us to see more detail, more clearly without making the close-up shots obsolete. You could conceivably, then, have more space to adjust lighting to boot. Still, quite an interesting video!
You missed an opportunity to say one could 'end them rightly' by throwing the endcap, in the same way some have said screwed sword pommels were used as improvised projectiles. (and was also included in an old treatise, but I can't recall whether it was Talhoffer, Lichtenauer or another old fencing master).
A pommel strike is when you hold the sword , mostly a two-hander or bastard sword, the other way around and hit the opponent on the helmet on topf of the head. Its devastating and can knock them out. Thats what the treatises are about. As normal sword strikes cannot defeat the armour. You try to find the gaps in the armour which is incredible difficult. Only maybe Don Quijote would throw a pommel. Sounds like bad craftsmanship too me if you could so easily remove a pommel during a fight. TLDR: you use the sword as poleaxe.
@@kleinerprinz99 Yes. It's an old joke and modern meme. Kind of in the same vein as Katanas being able to cut the world in twain because they're so sharp, Chuck Norris being the hardest man in the universe, and Russian-made Ak47s being physically indestructible.
Can we have more close-ups, better-lit, please? It's hard to see some of the details of the pieces when much of the picture is background and the contrast is limited.
Very interesting firearm, thank you for showing it. For a bit of feedback, it was hard to make out almost any details as the video overall was very dark, maybe some additional lighting would help as the room in general appears poorly lit (from a video production point of view at least). Cheers and beers from Aus
A few years back I bought a very large and heavy 22/250 with a Mauser bolt and highly figured Walnut stock. The barrel and bolt assembly was chromed. The barrel has 1 in 12 rifling and is inscribed 'R B PYBUS of Derby' It weighs an absolute ton and is insanely long, Brown Bess long! I've tried to find out information about this rifle but there seems very little.
The magazine was probably custom made, just like the rest of the gun. As you said, he seemed determined to make everything from scratch, even the finally adjustable rear sight. Also, a typical handgun magazine would be too small for a submachine gun.
Thanks for the video, another interesting snippet from firearms history. Couple we have a little more light or a lighter coloured table cloth so we can see more details of the firearm next time though?
I'm imagining the charging handle to be very Swiss rifle esq, maybe like some of the straight bolt rifle or maybe the stgw 57? (Only made of wood) Very funky little thing all together
A wood and black steel gun on a black tablecloth, in a darkened room, against a background of more wood and black steel. The ambience was good, and you showed nicely, but at times it was difficult to tell if there was a gun on the table in front of you (an exaggeration but, detail visibility was an issue). A better contrasting tablecloth, or better spot lighting of the firearm being profiled would help your presentation. Even when you held the gun, in the low lighting, much of the detail blended into the dark background of your clothes. Don't change your clothing, they're fine. Change the lighting. You mentioned in your earlier videos, that there were security concerns surrounding the filming setting. If this is still a concern in regard to the lighting, this can be overcome by spotlight positioning and angle. Otherwise, your videos are very enjoyable. Thank you.
I'm loving these videos, but the lighting could really use improvement. Between the dark tablecloth, Jonathan's dark shirt and blazer, and the dark walls and ceiling, the details of the dark gun fade into, well, darkness. I'm squinting at shadows trying to see the features being pointed out.
MORE LIGHT, leave the gun on the table so the camera doesn't have to deal with shaky focus. Keeping it on the table also means your hands won't be in the way. Take it apart, do closeups, let's see it. I don't need to see the dude, the whole table, the whole room and two bright blue gloves where the gun should be. I want to see the gun, all the details and how it works.
@@aac7183 A white table cloth would be distorted by the camera white balance setting and come out grey. He can start with adding light, setting the gun down so the view is unobstructed and the focus has a chance.
@@12345NoNamesLeft . I appreciate your point . I mentioned a lighter table covering not specifically white . A lighter room would certainly help , looks like they film it in a basement with one bare lightbukb hanging from the ceiling .
No that would be the Volunteer Enterprises Commando Mk45. I'd know I owned one in the mid 1980's. Looked superficially like a Thompson but that's where it ended. I saw one once again fairly recently in a shop and when I picked it up I saw how dinky it was in my hands anymore and remembered why I sold it off in the first place.
I was actually curious about this meme. I hated the sound of my milspec buffer spring scraping against the inside of the buffer tube, so when I ordered a replacement coated spring I got a copy of it from Aliexpress, and it was so much cheaper that I added a weighted buffer, ambi charging handle and a blatant ripoff of a magul non-wobbly stock, all for basically the same price as just a spring from CTD. The end result of the cheapo chinese ripoff hardware actually ran really well and I put around 400 rounds through it that day at the range as I was sighting in the new red dot I got (not a cheapo copy with the laughable plastic lens, those are total garbage). I pulled the cheapo gear off before cleaning the rifle and putting it back in the safe, I wouldn't trust it not to break when I needed it... But in a pinch, just to play with? The Aliexpress gear was surprisingly solid. I'll keep it all around in case my legit Magpul furniture and upgraded spring and buffer gives me problems.
Could nobody at the Royal Armouries find a shilling in their pocket to put in the electricity meter? A Black tablecloth, in a darkened room, with a very dark coloured exibit, doesn't actually allow us to see very much of what you are showing us, and spoils what would otherwise be a very interesting video. Ian over at Forgotten Weapons uses a much lighter background and much improved lighting so we can actually see what is being shown to us, please follow suit Jonathon
The dark actually allows better contrast to see the markings on the firearm. Same reason Ian tends to use a black tablecloth when possible. If you give too much white in the background it blows out the subtle manufacturing marks. That all said, they could use some more light.
The Thompson submachine gun has its bit of wackiness being based on the Blish Principle. The concept of the adhesion of dissimilar metals under pressure didn’t have a lot of evidence to support it.
4:14 My parents took me to a World War II airshow as a kid, and there was an exhibit on paratroopers and paratrooper weapons. First time I ever handled real guns in my life. I picked up an M1A1 Thompson [and I was already very skinny and short for my age] and it shocked me by how heavy it was. The presenters laughed and said “they carried real men’s guns back then”. Ever since then, and learning that the Thompson weighs 10 pounds empty, I’ve been working out upper body strength to where carrying a 10 pound gun shouldn’t be an issue. I’m now 21 and somewhat confident I could use a Thompson in battle.
The reasoning behind the selector might be to make it easier to select semi auto without going into safe? Btw the swedish BAR's did have a deten that had to be depressed to get from safe to fire. My personal theory is that this is because they were initially intended for cavalry and bike troops that carried them on the side of the horse/bike and you certainley don't want a gun going of safe on a horse in full gallop. A better soulution would probably have been to carry the guns without magazines but the pictures i have seen from the forties definitley show them with mags inserted on packhorces and bicykles (btw the cavalry was used as fast traveling infantry, usefull in a long country with lots of areas without good roads at the time.)
IIRC the early BARs had a similar selector that had to be very deliberately put on safe with an additional motion, because they were worried someone trying to blast Germans out of a trench might inadvertently flip it to safe and get killed when the gun wouldn't go boom-boom.
This is a firearm that I never knew existed. I always love viewing a presentation about (to me) obscure firearms. However I do have a constructive criticism about this presentation. It is so dark that I could not see the action details of this firearm, that Johnathan is pointing out. I think this has happened because of a combination of three things. One there where no lights on. Two Johnathan is wearing a very dark suit. And three, this gun has a very nice dark blued finish. And so I felt a bit frustrated about this very low light obscured presentation.
@@wallythewondercorncake8657 to be fair they weren't in sheds. they had been gathered together by the government and given funding and facilities. the department of miscellaneous weapons development (a.k.a. the wheezers and dodgers) had many such men in it's ranks.
For the cocking handle, think Mauser toggle bolt style but with the thick knurled disks made of hardwood with a centre hollow steel sleeve that the mounting bolt runs through, leaving a two finger grip with the blade of the bolt handle running in the middle. And for the magazine, try a colt 1903 pocket hammerless .32 acp one. Just a thought, I can sort of remember another firearm that used that type of magazine .
That's been fascinating me too. The overall curvature looks more like a muzzle loading duelling pistol though, but I doubt if one was the inspiration. A more likely source might have been WW1 machine guns such as the French 1914 Hotchkiss or the German MG 08/15.
I wonder... the selector design being from the BAR and the caliber 32acp, I wonder if Dineley wanted to do a speculative design on the 32 acp "trench-broom" that Browning thought of during ww1, which didn't get the attention of the US army, being focused on what will become the Pedersen device.
Were there any specific reasons why the British military took submachine guns less seriously as a weapon type before the Second World War than the German military?
Wasn't it just seen as something rather unseemly? After all we referred to the Thompson as a "Gangster Gun". Plus with a professional standing army where rifle handling & marksmanship were key; think "Mad Minute" maybe the submachine gun just didn't fit into the doctrine of the time. Then we lost a lot of those trained troops; and their weapons at Dunkirk & had to rethink things somewhat. A bit like our early views on submarines as being "small, scruffy and silly" or as Admiral Arthur Wilson stated that 'submariners are nothing more than tradesmen and submarines are underhand, unfair, and damned un-English.' & that captured personnel should be hanged as pirates.
@Robert Stallard I am aware that MP40s are overrepresented in Hollywood WW2 movies but still the German military adopted submachine guns as standard weapons well before WW2 and the British military only in 1940 and started to use them more widely only after Dunkirk.
@@hendriktonisson2915 If you look at photographs in the excellent book "Mai 40" which documents on film the battle of France you will note almost a complete lack of MP40s in the hands of troops from the Heer. They were of extremely limited issue to the specialist storm troopers and paratroopers, there are very few documentary photos of MG34s in action either. The German infantry that marched and rode bikes or horses into France did so armed with WW1 vintage G98s, new K98s and MG08s on tripods. France was a limited testing ground for new doctrine that would follow later.
The 21st century US has what are referred to as recreational machine guns. Small caliber, pleasant to shoot, and with a cheap ammo cost relative to the regular guns. Relative being the key word when going through hundreds of rounds.
Anyone thinking a gun that works completely differently than how it was designed and built to work, is definitely a wacky weapon, and the Thompson is just that
I always scratch my head at .32 acp submachineguns. I sort of get it with something as small as the Scorpion, but with a full sized subgun there's no reason not to go at least 9mm.
RK Wilson mentions a submachinegun on page 302 of "Textbook of Automatic Pistols" which is almost certainly the Dineley in question. He mentions a U-shaped magazine, similar to one used in a machine-pistol developed by Societe Union of St Etienne, and an "unimaginably high" rate of fire. The only other thing I know about this is that it supposedly used a cut-down Ross rifle barrel and never went past the experimental stage. Cheers Jonathan!
4:15 "there are no child sized thompson guns" well there was that .22 cal submachinegun thingy Ian from Forgotten Weapons did, name escapes me right now, but....
The sad part isn’t so much the man putting a monogram on firearms he owns. It’s that his heirs cannot legally possess that firearm as an individual if it is still a activated firearm.
Hi, the long tradition of blokes in sheds is alive and well in Australia, of course. You may even have an example or two of such 9 mm machine guns in your inventory?
Think they could have sprung for an extra spotlight or? 😂 bit dark in that room Maybe they just lock Johnathan down in the gun basement so he can make videos in huge blocks 😂
I gotta disagree with Jonathan here, the Thompson is a very wacky gun. I don't know of any other mass produced guns which used a locking mechanism that was based on a completely flawed hypothesis.
Are you sure that it's .32 ACP, and not the .30 caliber for the Pedersen device? Something that would use a 40 round stick magazine would make a lot more sense.
Having spoken with Freddy Clifford, we no longer believe that this gun was formally trialled by the Small Arms Committee. It may well have seen informal testing of some sort but not officially.
I read the "Disney sub machine gun" at first. Then I started to think about how it would look like if the seven dwarfs ran a bootlegging business.
It's small enough to be used by dwarfs and other diminutive mythical creatures.
Which part of that is not true? Ohhh Dineley 😂
I swear I read and thought the same thing 😂
I thought it was gonna be some weird custom ordered Thompson for Disney's security guards
same, Disney gun just seems right
This is the first gun i've seen that allows one to "End Him Rightly".
Especially since Jonathan already suggested to throw the end cap at the enemy.
I'm glad I'm not the only crossover enthusiast from the world of medieval weaponry and martial arts!
@@jevans80 I can almost guarantee Jonathan has seen a Skall video or two.
Came here to find this comment. Finally, a gun with a pommel 😂
A lot of the UK's greatest inventions can be attributed to Blokes in Sheds:
The Accuracy International rifle platform.
The TVR Griffith 500.
Colin McRae and Richard Burns.
James May.
I want James May to build me a shed.
@@rinoz47 Why? his stupid mates would just run it over with a JCB.
Lotus cars, RR, caterham, Morgan. Sheds are a wonderful thing.
@@handlesarefeckinstupid When you think about it, RSAF Enfield was just a big shed.
@@rinoz47 nah, he would be too busy arranging his tools.
Hi Jonathan, love what you are covering in these clips.
However, please use better lighting so we can see the details of what you are showing us.
Who said that? Only kidding, I'll mention it to the team :)
@@JonathanFergusonRoyalArmouries Also, a better microphone, or better sound editing. This video is very quiet.
Some closer camera views would be nice too.
Maybe just a lighter colored cloth on the table, so the gun stands out a bit more.
Good content as usual, but ... the video/room is so dark that all can be seen Jonathan Ferguson holiding a strange object.
I knew Mark Dineley as a customer in the photographic shop I worked in during the mid 1970's in Salisbury, he collected Leica cameras and I once remember selling him a wartime pair of Russian binoculars which had a compass built into them. He was small in stature so perhaps that's a link to the size of the SMG?
The safety detent is reminiscent of a BAR. In that gun the purpose is that you can switch from semi auto to full without accidentally going all the way to safe when approaching enemy trench in ww1
The BAR wasn't used in WW1 to keep it from enemy hands.
@@jwwalker688 Well that was the intention of the design
@@jwwalker688 It was designed to be used in WW1, but it didn't get the chance cause the war was over before it got used, I'm sure that if the war would've taken another 4 years it would've been used
@@zupperm I'm not doubting you.
@@jwwalker688 That simply isn't true. It was used in combat by the US in WWI, but only in fairly small numbers because it only entered mass production in mid-1918. By the time large numbers were produced, delivered, inspected, shipped to Europe, sent to units, units were trained, and then went into the line with them, the war was over.
There would also be no reason to keep it secret since there wasn't any new concept or anything. Gas operated machineguns weren't new and the automatic rifle concept was pretty clear with the Chauchat.
I love this channel and Jonathon, but the dark jacket and tablecloth and backdrop makes it kinda hard to see fine details.
More light, and more video of the piece, please.
This brings back a surprising memory: When I was a kid, a friend of mine had a toy Thompson that was about that size. It was the best-made toy gun I've ever seen in my life--almost more of a model than a toy, in terms of how detailed it was, but as rugged as a toy ought to be. It even had the detachable shoulder stock.
I’d be happy to send a light so we can see the firearms . They sound really interesting.
A suggestion for future videos - consider moving the static, head on camera closer to the table. Presently, there's a lot of unused "dead" space in the shot, and coming closer allows us to see more detail, more clearly without making the close-up shots obsolete. You could conceivably, then, have more space to adjust lighting to boot. Still, quite an interesting video!
Lighting is poor too. This is very dark.
You missed an opportunity to say one could 'end them rightly' by throwing the endcap, in the same way some have said screwed sword pommels were used as improvised projectiles.
(and was also included in an old treatise, but I can't recall whether it was Talhoffer, Lichtenauer or another old fencing master).
Wasn't that just medieval writers being funny? Adding humorous images to an otherwise serious book seems to have been a thing back then.
A pommel strike is when you hold the sword , mostly a two-hander or bastard sword, the other way around and hit the opponent on the helmet on topf of the head. Its devastating and can knock them out. Thats what the treatises are about. As normal sword strikes cannot defeat the armour. You try to find the gaps in the armour which is incredible difficult. Only maybe Don Quijote would throw a pommel. Sounds like bad craftsmanship too me if you could so easily remove a pommel during a fight. TLDR: you use the sword as poleaxe.
@@kleinerprinz99 Yes. It's an old joke and modern meme. Kind of in the same vein as Katanas being able to cut the world in twain because they're so sharp, Chuck Norris being the hardest man in the universe, and Russian-made Ak47s being physically indestructible.
I didn't want to be TOO on the nose with that one ;)
@@JonathanFergusonRoyalArmouries it's a tesco great value thompson, build in a shed, an "end it rightly" meme could be a selling point here
Thanks Jonathan and team. It was good to learn that at least some British firearms enthusiasts were trying to promote submachine guns in the 1930s.
Sooo, the endcap is a pommel? You know, one with which you can end him rightly?
Rear grips reminds me more of a classic revolver grip than any SMG I've ever seen before. Interesting!
Kinda does look a bit like a Colt SAA or some of those late 19th century military revolvers
Can we have more close-ups, better-lit, please? It's hard to see some of the details of the pieces when much of the picture is background and the contrast is limited.
Me: I want a Thompson sub-machine gun
Mom: We have a Thompson sub-machine gun at home
Thompson Sub-Machine gun at home:
It would be nice with a close up of the weapon on the table. You do move it around a lot.
Very interesting firearm, thank you for showing it. For a bit of feedback, it was hard to make out almost any details as the video overall was very dark, maybe some additional lighting would help as the room in general appears poorly lit (from a video production point of view at least). Cheers and beers from Aus
@Royal Armouries can you figure out the problem with trying to show us text stamped in to a black receiver in the dark?
A few years back I bought a very large and heavy 22/250 with a Mauser bolt and highly figured Walnut stock. The barrel and bolt assembly was chromed. The barrel has 1 in 12 rifling and is inscribed 'R B PYBUS of Derby'
It weighs an absolute ton and is insanely long, Brown Bess long!
I've tried to find out information about this rifle but there seems very little.
I love these old one-off guns. Especially one that was actually finished nicely.
The magazine was probably custom made, just like the rest of the gun. As you said, he seemed determined to make everything from scratch, even the finally adjustable rear sight.
Also, a typical handgun magazine would be too small for a submachine gun.
12.27 "End Him Rightly"
Thanks for the video, another interesting snippet from firearms history.
Couple we have a little more light or a lighter coloured table cloth so we can see more details of the firearm next time though?
Is the room rather dimly lit or is it just me? seems way too dark for making a video
Is anyone else having audio issues? I can't hear him at all
I turned my TV volume up from 20 to 90
I'm imagining the charging handle to be very Swiss rifle esq, maybe like some of the straight bolt rifle or maybe the stgw 57? (Only made of wood)
Very funky little thing all together
I love how crunchy the audio is on this video, it makes him sound like Robocop
It would be nice to see you fire these weapons occasionally Jonathan. :)
Every one of your videos that I see I regret giving up my job as a historian at a museum to teach history to middle schoolers
A wood and black steel gun on a black tablecloth, in a darkened room, against a background of more wood and black steel.
The ambience was good, and you showed nicely, but at times it was difficult to tell if there was a gun on the table in front of you (an exaggeration but, detail visibility was an issue).
A better contrasting tablecloth, or better spot lighting of the firearm being profiled would help your presentation.
Even when you held the gun, in the low lighting, much of the detail blended into the dark background of your clothes. Don't change your clothing, they're fine. Change the lighting.
You mentioned in your earlier videos, that there were security concerns surrounding the filming setting. If this is still a concern in regard to the lighting, this can be overcome by spotlight positioning and angle.
Otherwise, your videos are very enjoyable. Thank you.
I'm loving these videos, but the lighting could really use improvement. Between the dark tablecloth, Jonathan's dark shirt and blazer, and the dark walls and ceiling, the details of the dark gun fade into, well, darkness. I'm squinting at shadows trying to see the features being pointed out.
After this episode was recorded and Jonathan came home from work and his wife asked him how his day has been.. He answered with “Like a Thomson”
“Blokes in Sheds” should be the title of Jonothan’s next book
Worth noting that the original bar had a similar safety design
MORE LIGHT, leave the gun on the table so the camera doesn't have to deal with shaky focus.
Keeping it on the table also means your hands won't be in the way.
Take it apart, do closeups, let's see it.
I don't need to see the dude, the whole table, the whole room and two bright blue gloves where the gun should be.
I want to see the gun, all the details and how it works.
I agree the video is very dark making detail difficult to discern . A lighter table cover would be a start
Must be the energy shortage
@@aac7183 A white table cloth would be distorted by the camera white balance setting and come out grey. He can start with adding light, setting the gun down so the view is unobstructed and the focus has a chance.
@@12345NoNamesLeft . I appreciate your point . I mentioned a lighter table covering not specifically white . A lighter room would certainly help , looks like they film it in a basement with one bare lightbukb hanging from the ceiling .
When you order a Thompson off of Alibaba.
No that would be the Volunteer Enterprises Commando Mk45. I'd know I owned one in the mid 1980's. Looked superficially like a Thompson but that's where it ended.
I saw one once again fairly recently in a shop and when I picked it up I saw how dinky it was in my hands anymore and remembered why I sold it off in the first place.
I was actually curious about this meme. I hated the sound of my milspec buffer spring scraping against the inside of the buffer tube, so when I ordered a replacement coated spring I got a copy of it from Aliexpress, and it was so much cheaper that I added a weighted buffer, ambi charging handle and a blatant ripoff of a magul non-wobbly stock, all for basically the same price as just a spring from CTD.
The end result of the cheapo chinese ripoff hardware actually ran really well and I put around 400 rounds through it that day at the range as I was sighting in the new red dot I got (not a cheapo copy with the laughable plastic lens, those are total garbage). I pulled the cheapo gear off before cleaning the rifle and putting it back in the safe, I wouldn't trust it not to break when I needed it... But in a pinch, just to play with? The Aliexpress gear was surprisingly solid. I'll keep it all around in case my legit Magpul furniture and upgraded spring and buffer gives me problems.
do you think you could zoom in the camera to include the edges of the table?
Light a couple more tea lights for the next video please..
Could nobody at the Royal Armouries find a shilling in their pocket to put in the electricity meter? A Black tablecloth, in a darkened room, with a very dark coloured exibit, doesn't actually allow us to see very much of what you are showing us, and spoils what would otherwise be a very interesting video. Ian over at Forgotten Weapons uses a much lighter background and much improved lighting so we can actually see what is being shown to us, please follow suit Jonathon
It doesn't help that the camera is on the other side of the room
The dark actually allows better contrast to see the markings on the firearm. Same reason Ian tends to use a black tablecloth when possible. If you give too much white in the background it blows out the subtle manufacturing marks. That all said, they could use some more light.
Have to agree.
The Thompson submachine gun has its bit of wackiness being based on the Blish Principle. The concept of the adhesion of dissimilar metals under pressure didn’t have a lot of evidence to support it.
4:14 My parents took me to a World War II airshow as a kid, and there was an exhibit on paratroopers and paratrooper weapons. First time I ever handled real guns in my life. I picked up an M1A1 Thompson [and I was already very skinny and short for my age] and it shocked me by how heavy it was. The presenters laughed and said “they carried real men’s guns back then”.
Ever since then, and learning that the Thompson weighs 10 pounds empty, I’ve been working out upper body strength to where carrying a 10 pound gun shouldn’t be an issue.
I’m now 21 and somewhat confident I could use a Thompson in battle.
The trigger group section of the receiver and the pistol grip are giving me hella Bergmann pistol vibes.
The reasoning behind the selector might be to make it easier to select semi auto without going into safe?
Btw the swedish BAR's did have a deten that had to be depressed to get from safe to fire. My personal theory is that this is because they were initially intended for cavalry and bike troops that carried them on the side of the horse/bike and you certainley don't want a gun going of safe on a horse in full gallop. A better soulution would probably have been to carry the guns without magazines but the pictures i have seen from the forties definitley show them with mags inserted on packhorces and bicykles (btw the cavalry was used as fast traveling infantry, usefull in a long country with lots of areas without good roads at the time.)
IIRC the early BARs had a similar selector that had to be very deliberately put on safe with an additional motion, because they were worried someone trying to blast Germans out of a trench might inadvertently flip it to safe and get killed when the gun wouldn't go boom-boom.
In the future, could you use a white tablecloth to make the exhibit easier to see?
I get the funny feeling it very likely was intended as a garden gun or gallery gun rather than a serious SMG.
I have an Ian Hogg book and I think I've seen this in there. The charging handle was a wooden ball, cut in half.
And the epitome of "bloke in shed" - the Owen Gun. Hopefully Johnathon will give us a close-up of one of those soon. 😀
Is there a law in Britain preventing you from showing closeups or using more than 2 cameras?
Whoever is creating the title cards for the image previews deserves a payrise.
This is a firearm that I never knew existed. I always love viewing a presentation about (to me) obscure firearms. However I do have a constructive criticism about this presentation. It is so dark that I could not see the action details of this firearm, that Johnathan is pointing out. I think this has happened because of a combination of three things. One there where no lights on. Two Johnathan is wearing a very dark suit. And three, this gun has a very nice dark blued finish. And so I felt a bit frustrated about this very low light obscured presentation.
A disturbing number of Britain's cutting edge technology during WW2 was made by men in sheds.
Not really
@@wallythewondercorncake8657 to be fair they weren't in sheds. they had been gathered together by the government and given funding and facilities.
the department of miscellaneous weapons development (a.k.a. the wheezers and dodgers) had many such men in it's ranks.
No most of it was done by BSA, in factories.
Would have been interesting to see what would have been developed if the British had been serious about a semi auto rifle and a sub machine gun!
For the cocking handle, think Mauser toggle bolt style but with the thick knurled disks made of hardwood with a centre hollow steel sleeve that the mounting bolt runs through, leaving a two finger grip with the blade of the bolt handle running in the middle.
And for the magazine, try a colt 1903 pocket hammerless .32 acp one. Just a thought, I can sort of remember another firearm that used that type of magazine .
Tarantino's remake - Chimney sweep: 'Well, hello there Mary Explodings, how's me cockerny accint?' - Mary: 'Oh, Brrrrt!' : )
When mum says “but we have Thompson at home”
I'm digging the revolver style pistol grip
That's been fascinating me too. The overall curvature looks more like a muzzle loading duelling pistol though, but I doubt if one was the inspiration. A more likely source might have been WW1 machine guns such as the French 1914 Hotchkiss or the German MG 08/15.
I wonder... the selector design being from the BAR and the caliber 32acp, I wonder if Dineley wanted to do a speculative design on the 32 acp "trench-broom" that Browning thought of during ww1, which didn't get the attention of the US army, being focused on what will become the Pedersen device.
“What happens when you order a Thompson from Wish” 💀
Great video chaps
That’s where you get a Chinese made Sten…
Two men in a shed.
The prequel to Two Men and a Truck.
I wonder if there are any surviving examples of the Biwarip and BSA-Kiraly submachine guns that were tested by the British military in 1938 and 1939?
Were there any specific reasons why the British military took submachine guns less seriously as a weapon type before the Second World War than the German military?
Wasn't it just seen as something rather unseemly? After all we referred to the Thompson as a "Gangster Gun". Plus with a professional standing army where rifle handling & marksmanship were key; think "Mad Minute" maybe the submachine gun just didn't fit into the doctrine of the time. Then we lost a lot of those trained troops; and their weapons at Dunkirk & had to rethink things somewhat.
A bit like our early views on submarines as being "small, scruffy and silly" or as Admiral Arthur Wilson stated that 'submariners are nothing more than tradesmen and submarines are underhand, unfair, and damned un-English.' & that captured personnel should be hanged as pirates.
I think a lot of it is related to lessons learnt about things like marksmanship and tactics during the Boer wars.
They are always preparing for the last war.
@Robert Stallard I am aware that MP40s are overrepresented in Hollywood WW2 movies but still the German military adopted submachine guns as standard weapons well before WW2 and the British military only in 1940 and started to use them more widely only after Dunkirk.
@@hendriktonisson2915 If you look at photographs in the excellent book "Mai 40" which documents on film the battle of France you will note almost a complete lack of MP40s in the hands of troops from the Heer. They were of extremely limited issue to the specialist storm troopers and paratroopers, there are very few documentary photos of MG34s in action either. The German infantry that marched and rode bikes or horses into France did so armed with WW1 vintage G98s, new K98s and MG08s on tripods. France was a limited testing ground for new doctrine that would follow later.
Turn the lights on, please
The 21st century US has what are referred to as recreational machine guns. Small caliber, pleasant to shoot, and with a cheap ammo cost relative to the regular guns. Relative being the key word when going through hundreds of rounds.
I wanted to see him fire it!
Anyone thinking a gun that works completely differently than how it was designed and built to work, is definitely a wacky weapon, and the Thompson is just that
That’s one anemic pistol grip
I always scratch my head at .32 acp submachineguns. I sort of get it with something as small as the Scorpion, but with a full sized subgun there's no reason not to go at least 9mm.
Very dark video today can hardly see you..hope it's not just me
RK Wilson mentions a submachinegun on page 302 of "Textbook of Automatic Pistols" which is almost certainly the Dineley in question. He mentions a U-shaped magazine, similar to one used in a machine-pistol developed by Societe Union of St Etienne, and an "unimaginably high" rate of fire. The only other thing I know about this is that it supposedly used a cut-down Ross rifle barrel and never went past the experimental stage. Cheers Jonathan!
You roll up to the Valentines Day Massacre with your Dineley and the homies won't stop laughing...
If the selector could go accidentally on Safe then it could also accidentally go OFF Safe.. not good either way.
4:15 "there are no child sized thompson guns" well there was that .22 cal submachinegun thingy Ian from Forgotten Weapons did, name escapes me right now, but....
The sad part isn’t so much the man putting a monogram on firearms he owns. It’s that his heirs cannot legally possess that firearm as an individual if it is still a activated firearm.
Hi, the long tradition of blokes in sheds is alive and well in Australia, of course. You may even have an example or two of such 9 mm machine guns in your inventory?
Wish you had turned the lights on. 🥺
Love your videos, and this one is no exception. But the lighting is _horrible._ I can't see most of what you're trying to show us.
Reminds me of the reduced scale weapons used in films to make the hero seem bigger ( allegedly john Wayne carried one in many a war film).
He was inspired with arms and legs
Really good stuff :)
could you do a video on the akmsu?
Think they could have sprung for an extra spotlight or? 😂 bit dark in that room
Maybe they just lock Johnathan down in the gun basement so he can make videos in huge blocks 😂
I gotta disagree with Jonathan here, the Thompson is a very wacky gun. I don't know of any other mass produced guns which used a locking mechanism that was based on a completely flawed hypothesis.
Thanks for the great video, but the camera is too far away.
Upvoted just for the thumbnail
Talking of blokes in sheds designing machine guns let's all remember the late, great Philip Luty. RIP.
Ths must be the ultimate sub machine gun, since it includes a threaded "pummel" with which to end thy foe rightly.
At least he didn't copy the Blish lock.
Bugsy Malone? Can it shoot cake and ice-cream?
Awesome! Where do I get one?
Perhaps Royal Armouries can lend you theirs :)
Are you sure that it's .32 ACP, and not the .30 caliber for the Pedersen device? Something that would use a 40 round stick magazine would make a lot more sense.
12:28 Was that an "End him rightly" joke?
If Elmer Fudd had a Thompson it would look like this
BAR had the same safety detente
Honestly, the Thompson is pretty wacky, "working" on the Blish Principle and all that
Blokes In Sheds outdid the entire RSAF Enfield