Sub-machine gun is a hand-held, fully automatic weapon firing pistol ammunition and designed to be used for close-quarter action. Developed during WW I, it was a fully automatic refinement of the self-loading pistol fitted with a shoulder stock and a large capacity magazine. There are claims that the original sub-machine gun was designed by an Italian, B. A. Revelli, and manufactured by the Villar Perosa company as their Model 1915, but this twin-barrelled automatic weapon was really a light machine gun. The ancestor of all sub-machine guns was the German MaschinePistole 1918, or MP 18, developed by the inventor Schmeisser for Bergmann. It had a short, air-cooled barrel, a wooden stock, and a ‘snail-drum’ magazine containing 9 mm pistol ammunition. It was issued in limited numbers to assault troops in the closing months of WW I.
In the period 1919-28, the sub-machine gun was synonymous with the name Thompson, whose design, manufactured by the Auto-Ordnance Corporation in .45 inch calibre and fitted with drum magazines of 50- or 100-round capacity, was purchased worldwide by those interested in crime and its deterrence; the Thompson's only military use, and even there the term is debatable, was with the IRA. In the late 1920s Germany and the USSR were surreptitiously co-operating on weapons development, the former in order to evade the terms of the Versailles Treaty of 1919, the latter to take advantage of Germany's technological development. Sub-machine gun development was included and, by the late 1930s, both the German and Soviet armies were equipped with the results: the German MP 38 and the Soviet Degtyarev PPD. German use of the sub-machine gun was a major contributory factor to the effects of blitzkrieg and its army's successes in 1940-1. After 1940 the cheaper MP 40 replaced the MP 38.
The impact of the MP 38 and MP 40 caused Germany's enemy, Britain, to take two steps in remedying the situation: large quantities of the expensive Thompson were bought from the USA and development immediately began on a British sub-machine gun. The result of the latter step was the Sten, in every way different from the Thompson: it cost one-twentieth as much and was lighter, less complicated, and much more quickly and easily made. Although profoundly limited in many aspects, the Sten was widely used by Britain and its allies in WW II and for many years afterwards. Its American equivalent was the M-3, or ‘grease-gun’; cheaply made in .45 inch calibre, it could quickly be converted for the 9 mm ammunition widely available in the European theatre. In the USSR, the PPsh 41 and PPS 42/43 7.62 mm drum-magazined sub-machine guns equated to the Sten and M-3 as being cheap, mass-produced, and effective. In Australia, the Owen and Austen sub-machine guns represented an independent alternative, the latter weapon combining the best elements of the MP 40 and the Sten.
Effective though the cheap and mass-produced sub-machine gun was, it tended to be underpowered for long-distance use and its ammunition was heavy, limiting the quantities that the soldier could easily carry. German experimentation provided the answer in the form of the SturmGewehr 1944, SG 44, or assault rifle. This fired the smaller 7.92 mm shortened rifle cartridge, with higher velocity and lower mass than the 9 mm pistol. It was a powerful, long-range sub-machine gun capable of firing single shots or fully automatically and it was the ancestor of most modern assault rifles, notably the Avtomat Kalashnikova, AK-47, and its descendants.
Developments in sub-machine guns since 1945 have concentrated on bringing them closer to assault rifles and shrinking them in size. The advantages of the former have been in the standardization of ammunition, an important factor in military terms; those of the latter have greater appeal for the use of the sub-machine gun by paramilitary units, specialist military forces, and by criminals and terrorists. The distinction between the assault rifle and the sub-machine gun has become blurred by these developments and the sub-machine gun of the 1990s tends to be, like the Uzi or the Ingram, little more than a large pistol capable of fully automatic fire and fitted with a large capacity magazine.
Bibliography
- Blair, Claude (ed.), Pollard's History of Firearms (London, 1983).
- Cormack, Alexander J. R., Small Arms: A Concise History of their Development (Windsor, 1982).
- Hogg, Ian V., and Weeks, John, Military Small Arms of the 20th Century (London, 1985)
— Stephen Wood
