Posted on 08/01/2018 4:42:18 AM PDT by w1n1
The M3 "grease gun" was one of the simplest, ugliest, and cheapest personal weapons ever fielded by the U.S. military. But, as one U.S. Marine combat veteran recalled, what this crude submachine gun lacked in looks, it more than made up for that with brutal effectiveness.
THE GREASE GUN is a compact weapon with an overall length of 29.8 inches with the stock extended and 22.8 inches with the stock collapsed. The barrel is 8 inches long. The 8.15-pound empty weight of the gun is brought up to 10.25 pounds once a loaded magazine of 30 .45 ACP rounds is inserted.
The M3 is blowback operated and fires from an open bolt. An external cocking handle is used to retract the bolt. The weapon fires fully automatic only at a listed cyclic rate of 450 rounds per minute. The ejection port cover doubles as a safety by locking the bolt in place when closed. The 30-round box magazine is a double-column, singlefeed design based on the STEN.
Personal accounts from WWII indicate the weapon was initially greeted with skepticism by many troops who were used to the more refined Thompson and the finely made M-1 Garand. The tubular sheet-metal design led to the nicknames “grease gun” and “cake decorator,” after two common implements of the day.
The design was simplified even more with the M3A1 modification. The cocking handle, which had a tendency to break in use, was removed and instead a hole was drilled in the bolt. To load the gun the soldier simply inserted his finger in the hole and pulled the bolt back by hand. This model also included several other small improvements. Read the rest of the M3 Grease gun here.
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.
Hated it: heavy, slow rate of fire, limited range. Carried one for a short period because it looked cool but quickly reclaimed my M-14.
Same weight but far more effective and better reach.
One thing caught my eye:
To load the gun the soldier simply inserted his finger in the hole and pulled the bolt back by hand."
...and when the weapon is hot from firing several mags through it??? Does this part heat up?
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.
A former boss drove trucks in ‘nam. He carried a carbine and an M-3. The M-3 was more of a pray and spray deal.
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.
My cousin bought one of those silly things to mess around with. I remember shooting it at my grandparents’ farm one Christmas. I swear bullets left the barrel at about a 15 degree angle.
Cheap to produce, stamped metal, could churn them out by the thousands. Didn’t matter if they weren’t accurate, made for good suppression fire.
I bought it just as the Clinton gun ban was coming in effect so it was the AB TEK-9 (After Ban) model. After the 1st time on the range I utterly regretted buying it. It took me a while to get rid of it :-) as even a Taurus 9mm with extended mags was a better deal than it. It was a real bitch to cock & load.
Lol, now I understand why the guys at the gun range moved over into the next booth when they saw me with it!
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.
With the M-3A1 (hole in bolt replaced cocking lever) there is only momentary contact between the bolt face and the chamber as it cycles, so overheating of the bolt probably would not occur.
Old school Yo-Yo, just gotta think old school. ;)
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.
A curved barrel was available presumably to shoot while protected by a South Pacific coconut tree.
https://s14544.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/M3_sub-machine_gun_with_a_curved_barrel_for_shooting_around_corners_1953.jpg
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