Posted on 08/13/2025 11:33:28 AM PDT by whyilovetexas111
1200 includes foreign deliveries.
Really? You think both that officer’s sidearms are relevant and that the M1911 was superior? To what?
What do you think the Thompson was superior to? Do you have any idea what a Thompson weighs? Especially with a several magazines?
I suppose you could claim the M1 carbine was a personal defensive weapon, and no one else fielded one, so it was the best.
Joseph Stalin said “Quantity has its own quality.”
The M1911 was superior to the German Luger and Japanese Nambu pistol. As for relevancy, absolutely:
The M1911A1 was widely issued to a variety of military personnel, including officers, non-commissioned officers, machine gun teams, tank crews, pilots, paratroopers, and military police. It was also used by specialized units like the Rangers, Marine Raiders, and the OSS (Office of Strategic Services).
The M1911A1 was used in every theater of World War II, including the European, Pacific, North African, and China-Burma-India theaters. Like the World War I-spec 1911s, its stout design made it reliable in diverse and often harsh environments. The M1911A1 was effective in close-quarters battle, providing a reliable secondary weapon for soldiers whose primary weapons might malfunction or run out of ammunition. For officers and specialized units, the M1911A1 served as a reliable means of personal defense, especially in ambush situations or when operating behind enemy lines.
https://www.turnbullrestoration.com/model-of-1911-history-use-during-wwi-and-wwii/
“ So check me on this.
~1200 F-35’s of the different flavors in service.
Compared to
~200 J-20’s in service.
Perhaps in 5 years when those numbers might be different and so the discussion might also be different, but today the question is why was this article written when the entire conclusion or point does not apply?”
———————
Not to mention our F-22s and F-15s. Oh, and by the time 5 more years go by, F-47s should be coming off the assembly line, together with the missile-laden drones that they will control (up to 8 each). China won’t best us any time soon unless they catch us completely by surprise.
The German MP-40 (9mm)
Do you have any idea what a Thompson weighs? Especially with a several magazines?
Don't take my word for it. Many WW2 soldiers extolled the virtue of it.
"TIME magazine called the Thompson ‘the deadliest weapon, pound for pound, ever devised by man.’ In combat, I found this to be an understatement … . I can tell you from experience that three rounds from a Thompson lifts a large man about six inches off the ground and drops him two feet from where he was hit...
We found the MP40 to be a good gun and often used it against the Germans. The problem was one of our men hit with an MP40 went back to the aid station and rejoined the line in half an hour. [Once hit] with a Thompson, whether killed or not, [they] went nowhere. We felt, by experience, that a man with a 9 mm submachine gun was unarmed...
I would be remiss in not mentioning the respect the Thompson gained in France. France was the toughest, fiercest fighting of the war. Word spread quickly through the German ranks of ‘bastards in baggy pants’ and of our terrible Thompson gun. The Germans learned quickly that we had many of them and our use of them made the American gangster movies they had seen pale by comparison. The most chewed-up of Jerry’s wounded in field hospitals had been the lucky survivors of the American Thompson...
We found the Thompson particularly good at street fighting. A burst from General Thompson’s gun usually dismantled the doors in small European towns. The fight ended quickly.”
- Carl H. Cartledge, Jr., 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment 'The Airborne Thompson; The Real Death From Above”'
“I thought the basic argument was quantity over quality.”
I don’t know what you thought. I was just referring to your post about “cheap”.
The total is now targeted at 1800 in our inventory.
What does the article want to replace our current jets with to get to quantity?
“What does the article want to replace our current jets with to get to quantity?”
We already have quantity, and quality.
The author is just blowing smoke to get clicks.
I got the impression that he wanted cheaper planes to increase quantity, I was wondering what pilots think of these arguments.
Why don’t you post a tale about Marines carving up Japs with their trusty K Bars? The Thompson weighed more than some rifles, but fired a pistol cartridge. Slowly. It also cost like a rifle to produce it.
Was the Thompson cool? Absolutely. A pre-war Thompson is on my win-the-lottery list. But it was one of the worst military sub machine guns of WW2, by any criteria but cool.
Yet soldiers preferred it over the M3 Grease Gun and the M1 for close quarters fighting, especially urban warfare.
but fired a pistol cartridge.
Yes. It's a submachine gun, not a machine gun. The M3 also used the .45 ACP cartridge. The Germans used a 9mm pistol cartridge.
Slowly.
Wut???
They intentionally slowed it down and it was still faster than the M3 Grease Gun and the German MP 40
M1921 900 rpm
M1928 600-700 rpm
M1A1 700–800 rpm
M3 Grease Gun 450 rpm
MP 40 550 rpm
It also cost like a rifle to produce it.
Quality comes at a price. That was the point, no? That quality beat quantity. The M3 was cheaper but troops still preferred the Tommy Gun.
...it was one of the worst military sub machine guns of WW2
Now, that's just a baseless claim.
Those extra F-35s aren’t coming. The program will be cancelled sooner rather than later. The F-22 will be cancelled even sooner, it has already begun.
The Chinese haven’t even BEGUN to mass produce the J-20, and they will soon have hundreds of them. Once they scale up, they will reach American numbers in a decade.
And what’s more, U.S. forces can only deploy about half of their F22/F-35 forces to the Chinese theatre. The Chijese can deploy pretty much all they have.
Cost per unit and overall production numbers are perhaps the better measures of which sub machine gun was more meaningful during WWII. Thompsons cost much more to manufacture, took more time to make and weighed far more than almost any other sub gun used in WWII. The Russians produced more PPSh-41 than any other sub gun in production anywhere. It was cheap to make and boasted a phenomenal rate of fire that made it brutally effective in close quarters. Even the Germans used them extensively in the East. And then the Russians put the PPS-43 into production that was both lighter and cheaper even than the Sten. The Soviets armed entire units of storm troops with sub guns.
This wasn't about "meaningful", this was about quantity vs quality winning WW2, with one poster claiming the U.S. won WW2 based on quantity, likening WW2 strategy to the modern day scenario of the J-20 fighter from China (quantity) versus the F-35 (quality/capability).
Statements about the U.S. winning in WW2 due to quantity instead of quality have been repeated for decades as part of an agenda to downplay American innovation, especially from white American men such as Robert Browning, John Garand, Brig. Gen. John Thompson, etc., as well as overall capabilities of Americans, and the strength and flexibility of Capitalism, etc.
I countered with examples of quality, including the submachine gun. A Russian submachine gun is a separate point since we weren't fighting the Russians.
A German general in the early days of Barbarossa, when it looked like the Germans were cruising to Moscow, encountered a T-34 tank for the first time, and remarked that if the Russians could mass produce it, Germany would lose the war.
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