And the M3 continued use as the personal weapon of armored vehicle crewmen into the 1980s, right along with the M1911. The primary reasons for moving away from the .45ACP round were both bull-crap: NATO standardization with 9mm and women had trouble with the size of the 1911. Utter BS - 9mm ball ammo is worthless as a defensive round and the Beretta chosen to replace the 1911 was still a handful for the women who never should have been there to begin with.
Two uncles of mine conducted their business with the Thompson rather than the Garand even though they “should” have carried the latter (one did so during WWII, the other in Korea). They both specifically wanted nothing to do with two weapons: the M1 Carbine and the M3 Grease Gun.
In the mid 60’s my small 50 man USAF unit had 46 M1 carbines, 2 M1911’s, and 2 grease guns. Lyndon Johnson caused us to box all of them up and send them to the ARVN. No replacements thus we became an unarmed military unit.
Kinda reminds me of a TEC-9 pistol. Fun to shoot but crazy inaccurate anyways. More like spray & pray gun.
The M3 was the first weapon that I fired after joining the National Guard in 1955 and I managed to qualify “expert” on our first range training. You could improve accuracy by tapping the trigger to fire single rounds while moving through the close combat range with pop up targets.
The M3 was crude in a number of ways but at least build quality was reasonably consistent, unlike the British Sten submachine gun, which had build quality all over the place depending on the model.
Comparing same to same : How did it do as compared to the Thompson SMG (and with a standard shooters ability) as far as accuracy under the same situations it would be used ???
Is that what “The Mailman” used in Three Days of the Condor?
Free speech here too: Free 3D printable gun blueprints. Get yours now while you still can!
http://codeisfreespeech.com/