ABSTRACT
The genesis of the Thompson submachine gun can be traced to the Spanish-American war of 1898. Lieutenant-Colonel Marcellus Taileferro Thompson accompanied General Shafter's expeditionary force against Santiago de Cuba. In 1916 Thompson formed the Auto-Ordnance Corporation to exploit the potential of an automatic rifle. In any case, Thompson's efforts to develop an automatic rifle had to be postponed when the United States entered World War I. In March the first seven Thompson guns came off the Colt line in Connecticut. The blaze of publicity in the New York newspapers led directly to one of the strangest episodes of the entire affair, for British agents were not the only ones interested in Thompson's new gun. It took more than fifty years for the Thompson gun's arrival in Ireland to be a historical matter; and not until 1972 was the weapon in use, and then only in training sessions.
