Gotta say, the visual framing of this video is really eye catching. I might be biased because I just think rolling shelves are super cool, but having Jonathan eighth between the two, and a long open area behind him, at rowing as it goes. Something about it is just really cool. Kudos to whomever framed the shot!
Also the sten could break down to slimmer package. In most roles where a silenced weapon were often used in, it often risked being dumped after a Partisan ambush in Europe.
As an FYI, there is an intergrelly surpressed M1/M1A1 Thompson Submachine Gun located in the West Point Museum Collection. Its suppressor starts much closer to the receiver and is a shorter overall package than the one presented here. They seem to routinely fire it, as it routinely pops-up in the Cadet's annual historic weapon shoot.
A great presentation thanks. One question I’ve asked myself is why the Brits went to all the effort to develop the De Lisle suppressed carbine (by fitting and suppressing a barrel off a Thompson sub machine gun to a .303 Lee Enfield rifle) when it would have been much more straight forward to simply suppress the Thompson. This might be more a question for a De Lisle video than this one, but any informed answers are welcome.
I have sound metered both a modern Sten MK2S as well as a partially modern M3 Grease Gun. The noise pitch of the 45 is considerably lower, which makes it sound quieter to the ear than the 9mm Sten. However the sound meter shows that the Sten is actually a full 10 dB quieter. While the 45 is inherently subsonic, the large bore and low pressure round make it extremely difficult to suppress. The smaller, but higher pressure, 9mm is way easier to suppress.
My neighbour was an engineer in ww2 at Brockhurst engineering in Chester England, he said we got the Thomson’s through the lend lease and the rifling was awful on the first batches he said we worked on them as well as engines for rolls Royce, an amazing life he had
Yeah, that looks way cooler than a suppressed Sten... Also I feel like you could argue the weight as a 'feature'. Of course Ive never fired a Sten (full auto or otherwise), but the Thompson looks like it would be much more ergonomic, and the weight might make it easier to control when throwing down bursts of fire?
Ugh, someone else who needs to repeat what we all heard said in the video. Oh, wait, you know, now that I think of it, I've never heard that before either. It's kind of amazing (and also utterly mundanely explicable) that the entire world just all came to the same incorrect assumption.
Sounds like a bit of mythbusting, similar to the myth that the wingspan of the RAF's 4-engined bombers was limited to 100ft due to the hangars doors (it wasn't).
@@aaronleverton4221aww we have an insecure man child that has to project his insecurities all over the internet because hes basement bound and socially crippled
Wasn't the sten open bolt? So wouldn't that make it like trying to suppress a colt peacemaker? And if the sten was suppressable why did they develop the welgun or the suppressed carbine?
-The Sten and Thompson are open bolt. -The bolt is closed (in battery) when the cartridge goes off. -The welrod is very small, and the delisle is quieter than a Sten.
I know as you can't get the suppressor off that it's hard to clean the bore of that Thompson. But looking at the fluff & detritus in there I couldn't help but hear Michael Caine as Harry Brown saying "You Failed to Maintain Your Weapon Son!" Very cool video, thanks for showing it to us.
Yes, sadly there's a lot of old corrosion from having been put away without stripping and cleaning the suppressor. The fluff I'm less sure about. Maybe someone tried to clean it.
@@jonathanferguson1211 Fluff gets everywhere! Could be interesting having a conservator on with you discussing what cleaning you do & preventative maintenance is considered safe & acceptable. You've touched on it in the past, but I'm sure there's some horror stories of what's been done in the past. Years back I rigged up a low wattage incandescent light bulb in my gun safe that stayed on all the time. Kept the interior warm & dry enough to help prevent any moisture that could remain hidden away on my work guns, even though they were cleaned daily. (Bad British weather)
I love how it's so clever and so janky at the same time. It's like a grunt was sent to gunsmithing school, locked in a closet, and told to suppress the Thompson.
Considering that a 9mm conversion kit was a standardized piece of gear for the Grease Gun, it seems like a fully suppressed M3 barrel replacement kit would be a no-brainer.
The end of the American wild west was around 1918. The same time the first working prototype (The Annihilator 1) was created. Coincidence? Probably, but it is interesting.
@Jonathan/@Royal Armouries. Would you ever consider doing a "Walking the Racks" series on the channel. Ian McCollum used to occasionally do it at some of the large auctions & it was great walking along, picking out interesting firearms for snippets of info, that could be expanded upon at a later date. I always salivate at the ones behind you in the vids, so an expanded tour would be excellent.
@@ExpatriotSilencers I can imagine that to be the case given the primitive baffling it uses, but given the subsonic cartridge and how the barrel was perforated like crazy to dampen blast, it can't have been a substantial difference between them.
@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine The M3 I tested has a ported barrel that is wrapped in aluminum screen. The difference is in the front, where the modern one has baffles rather than more screen. The screen only acts as a big heat sink, which is really inefficient because it depends on gas wandering away from the bore, which it doesn't do well due to the large bore and low pressure. 45 ACP is actually a total bastard to suppress.
I bet the boys woulda been happy with either when needing a supressed sub gun. Both are excellent examples of craftsmanship and engineering. Love the silenced Tommy tho! Excellent video gents
1" 1/2 diameter tube is the same size as steel plumbing waste pipe of the era. This may not be a coincidence as it lets you use off the shelf BSP bushes. I am completely stumped as to why they didnt ditch the hand guard and just lathe the barrel down and directly thread the supressor over it. You dont need a lot of barrel with .45 ACP ball to get minute of man accuracy out to 100. The DeLisle carbine showed this.
@@Cats-TM 4 & 5, yes. From memory though the suppressor on a TSMG in that game (5) was just an optional modification you could fit to anything, not based on this integrated design.
The 'question' was why the thomson lost out to the sten, is this serious? Cost difference of like 300/1, obviously 300 stens beats 1 thompson. Same for the mp40, imo...
“Hey guys, we’re going to add the Thompson to inventory for the Army. What designation shall we give it?” “Whatever will cause the least confusion, ideally.” “M1 it is, then.”
@@TheCatBilbo Americans : "Wait . . . I think I have seen that name used on Midsomer Mysteries, a motorway is like a small, badly designed highway, right, and always clogged with traffic jams ?."
When they switched to the new naming system the first of literally every kind of item they had was named the M1, first knife introduced under the new system? M1, first pistol? M1, first submachine gun? M1, first carbine? M1, first underpants? I have no idea about that one actually, but I'm assuming they were the M1 underpants. 😂 It's the most confusing naming scheme of any military on the planet tbh.
@@Ghelasin no, you just look in the file under GUN comma ARMY comma SPECIAL PURPOSE comma SUPPRESSED comma MACHINE comma PISTOL CALIBER comma .45 comma M1, it's perfectly simple.
Howdy from Kansas City. I just wanted to say thank you all for sharing your knowledge and joy with all of us. Anywho, take care, and I'm off to look after the horses. 🤠
The Thompson was way to heavy and expensive but I don't think commandos or special operations would have had much love for the sten and surprised they did not make a much better variant of it for such forces even if it was just a batch of cherry picked stens and sten mags that had been modified and not just the barrel and suppressor. They must have understood the value of .45acp suppressed as the .45 smile converted bolt action suppressed that took 1911 mags was probably the quietest weapon of the time. They must have hated the idea of issuing subsonic 9mm as ports by the chamber of the S sten to reduce the velocity of 9mm to subsonic must have worn out fast and hindered the suppressor while making it get hot fast but it makes logistics simple I just don't understand why on the sten they did not spend just a little extra to give it a folding stock that made confirtsbke contact with the cheek and sholder, some type of forgrip so no holding the magwell or shroud, semi decent sights as in just a simple 2 or 3 position for range and make it so the front or rear could be drifted (I wonder how many from the factory where zerod to a decent extent) as for the magazine it seeks some say they play nice with MP40 mags and some dont, but a double feed mag with appropriate boot modification would have made a world of difference in reliability. They could have used cheap materials like steel, bakelite, cheap wood, fabric and such. For a suppressed weapon the cracking of the action can be reduced by buffers that are cheap but you have to replace them, but with an open bolt maybe not a world of difference. I find it interesting that the US military went with a blowback sub gun Vs a roller dayed MP5 or tappet rotating bolt sig system. A sterling style mag with a fat reciver, telescoping bolt and closed bolt action (closed bolt actions would make the cost go up) it would have remained in use for a very long time.
Johnathan has an amazing t-shirt collection and I keep begging Gamespot to do an episode on them. Interesting to see Johnathan wearing one on his official job though, I thought he would be wearing something a little more formal.
I could see this being used by an OSS agent inserting behind enemy lines to help resistance fighters in various occupied countries during the height of the war.
When you break it down in terms of raw performance, this was an exorbitant expenditure on top of an already wildly expensive firearm. The extra cutaways of the handguard make this the most "tactical boomer" military firearm I've ever seen.
Gotta say, the visual framing of this video is really eye catching. I might be biased because I just think rolling shelves are super cool, but having Jonathan eighth between the two, and a long open area behind him, at rowing as it goes. Something about it is just really cool. Kudos to whomever framed the shot!
tommy gun is one of my favorite guns
This is the first time I’ve seen a Thomson suppressed looks very cool, but yeah a suppressed Thomson is very expensive compared to a suppressed Sten
Also the sten could break down to slimmer package. In most roles where a silenced weapon were often used in, it often risked being dumped after a Partisan ambush in Europe.
can i supress my mp40, i think i can but i'm not sure.
Considering it’s 45 and weighs a ton you’d probably have no recoil whatsoever
@@jonathanbohm6489my guy, it's a simple blowback gun. Where'd you think the weight comes from?
It is also very long compared to a suppressed Sten. Might as well suppress an M1 Carbine for those ergonomics.
As an FYI, there is an intergrelly surpressed M1/M1A1 Thompson Submachine Gun located in the West Point Museum Collection. Its suppressor starts much closer to the receiver and is a shorter overall package than the one presented here. They seem to routinely fire it, as it routinely pops-up in the Cadet's annual historic weapon shoot.
They could have bull pupped it as well, But then that magazine is the grip, like a pistol.
Very interesting, thanks.
is there a video review of this version of suppressed tommy?
The camera shot going down the rifling definitely got me humming the 007 theme song
👏😎👍 great video
A great presentation thanks. One question I’ve asked myself is why the Brits went to all the effort to develop the De Lisle suppressed carbine (by fitting and suppressing a barrel off a Thompson sub machine gun to a .303 Lee Enfield rifle) when it would have been much more straight forward to simply suppress the Thompson. This might be more a question for a De Lisle video than this one, but any informed answers are welcome.
I have sound metered both a modern Sten MK2S as well as a partially modern M3 Grease Gun. The noise pitch of the 45 is considerably lower, which makes it sound quieter to the ear than the 9mm Sten. However the sound meter shows that the Sten is actually a full 10 dB quieter.
While the 45 is inherently subsonic, the large bore and low pressure round make it extremely difficult to suppress. The smaller, but higher pressure, 9mm is way easier to suppress.
yes, please.
That view down the silencer and barrel was great. Well done!
Too soon after yesterday's colonoscopy!
@@leeburks4540 art imitating life…
@@leeburks4540 Sorry. Didn't mean to drudge up such bad memories.
Was expecting 007 at the end
I was waiting for the bond music to kick in and then the outro happened
That is one very cool firearm that I would never want to field in real life.
Johnathan is wrong. Words cannot fully express how badly I want a suppressed Tommy Gun.
Simple answer: It’s FUCKING HEAVY.
My neighbour was an engineer in ww2 at Brockhurst engineering in Chester England, he said we got the Thomson’s through the lend lease and the rifling was awful on the first batches he said we worked on them as well as engines for rolls Royce, an amazing life he had
Yeah, that looks way cooler than a suppressed Sten... Also I feel like you could argue the weight as a 'feature'. Of course Ive never fired a Sten (full auto or otherwise), but the Thompson looks like it would be much more ergonomic, and the weight might make it easier to control when throwing down bursts of fire?
Damm that's new
The S in Mk2S stood for "special" not "silenced"? What an intriguing tidbit, I'd never heard that.
Ugh, someone else who needs to repeat what we all heard said in the video. Oh, wait, you know, now that I think of it, I've never heard that before either. It's kind of amazing (and also utterly mundanely explicable) that the entire world just all came to the same incorrect assumption.
Sounds like a bit of mythbusting, similar to the myth that the wingspan of the RAF's 4-engined bombers was limited to 100ft due to the hangars doors (it wasn't).
@@aaronleverton4221 Who did this to you? What made you so angry?
@@Tonks143 Who failed to teach you reading comprehension?
@@aaronleverton4221aww we have an insecure man child that has to project his insecurities all over the internet because hes basement bound and socially crippled
If only Britain had something like the Royal Armouries for their naval warships.
Sledgehammer should have really consulted you guys for their wacky attachments ngl.
That suppressor is cool, but it also makes me appreciative of how far we've come in suppressor technology
Have you guys test fired this? (not sure if that's a thing you do, but that would make a fun video)
4:15 that one screw has an empty hole next to it. i can't tell if there is threaded in the hole but it's likely.
Pretty long with that can! Bull pup and integral suppression FTW!.
Wasn't the sten open bolt? So wouldn't that make it like trying to suppress a colt peacemaker? And if the sten was suppressable why did they develop the welgun or the suppressed carbine?
-The Sten and Thompson are open bolt.
-The bolt is closed (in battery) when the cartridge goes off.
-The welrod is very small, and the delisle is quieter than a Sten.
This is a question that is very easy to answer. It’s because the Tommy gun is as heavy as a 1950 Buick.
I know as you can't get the suppressor off that it's hard to clean the bore of that Thompson. But looking at the fluff & detritus in there I couldn't help but hear Michael Caine as Harry Brown saying "You Failed to Maintain Your Weapon Son!"
Very cool video, thanks for showing it to us.
Yes, sadly there's a lot of old corrosion from having been put away without stripping and cleaning the suppressor. The fluff I'm less sure about. Maybe someone tried to clean it.
@@jonathanferguson1211 Fluff gets everywhere! Could be interesting having a conservator on with you discussing what cleaning you do & preventative maintenance is considered safe & acceptable. You've touched on it in the past, but I'm sure there's some horror stories of what's been done in the past.
Years back I rigged up a low wattage incandescent light bulb in my gun safe that stayed on all the time. Kept the interior warm & dry enough to help prevent any moisture that could remain hidden away on my work guns, even though they were cleaned daily. (Bad British weather)
@@jonathanferguson1211ill clean it for free.. It would get a lot of lube
I'm here for Jonathan ❤️
I love how it's so clever and so janky at the same time. It's like a grunt was sent to gunsmithing school, locked in a closet, and told to suppress the Thompson.
Considering that a 9mm conversion kit was a standardized piece of gear for the Grease Gun, it seems like a fully suppressed M3 barrel replacement kit would be a no-brainer.
The very end made me LOL. Props to whoever made that!
I think I got a glimpse of that martini henry shirt. I want one! Where can I get one?
It was a C&R Arsenal kickstarter project. I’m not sure they’re still available though.
The end of the American wild west was around 1918. The same time the first working prototype (The Annihilator 1) was created.
Coincidence? Probably, but it is interesting.
@Jonathan/@Royal Armouries. Would you ever consider doing a "Walking the Racks" series on the channel. Ian McCollum used to occasionally do it at some of the large auctions & it was great walking along, picking out interesting firearms for snippets of info, that could be expanded upon at a later date. I always salivate at the ones behind you in the vids, so an expanded tour would be excellent.
That vid would be an 8 hour TH-cam extravaganza!!!!
That would be cool but I feel like poor Johnathan would need a holiday after that
I think the silenced grease gun in .45 was cool as hell, but seeing the silence sten in that new Guy Richie war movie looked very cool too.
Those worked, but you had to be very cautious with full auto fire because the wire mesh baffling overheated quite easily.
@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine An original M3 Grease Gun silencer would not have been all that quiet compared to the Sten.
@@ExpatriotSilencers I can imagine that to be the case given the primitive baffling it uses, but given the subsonic cartridge and how the barrel was perforated like crazy to dampen blast, it can't have been a substantial difference between them.
@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine The M3 I tested has a ported barrel that is wrapped in aluminum screen. The difference is in the front, where the modern one has baffles rather than more screen. The screen only acts as a big heat sink, which is really inefficient because it depends on gas wandering away from the bore, which it doesn't do well due to the large bore and low pressure. 45 ACP is actually a total bastard to suppress.
@@ExpatriotSilencers Oh, so the big roll of wire mesh does basically nothing as baffling? Even when clean?
Subbed.
That barrel cam was gorgeous, good choice on the lighting. Had to laugh at the final animation 😂 classic. Great job guys and thank you.
2:33 That wipe! I see what you did there...
Love the watch! Is it a calculator watch?
So cool to be handling one of only two known examples of a firearm. I am envious of what Jonathan has access to in those vaults!
But they aren't there to play with and they are very rarely ever, if at all, fired.
@@samuelgarrod8327 Reference pieces and a few special examples.
That would be heavy.
When I clicked on this video, I was not ready for a Thompson colonoscopy.
I hate it when people call them silencers. They suppress the sound, they dint silence them.
'I hate when people use the legal and patented name for something, I like to be needlessly pedantic instead!'
You, that's you.
2:31 wheres the tiny Bond??
Give Johnny ferg a raise that man knows how to get views
Without watching the video, I would say it's because the Thompson was soooooo heavy already.
Thanks for the vid! Love learning about a new gun I didn’t know existed!
I can see where this configuration would not be practical in the field, but oh boy, it does look very cool. Thank you for sharing.
Forces News is putting their watermark on your videos.
This is unfathomably dope
Hows the decibels compare to the De Lisle?
Now THIS is a good base for a Star Wars blaster!!
Something tells me that the fire rate is stupid fast.
What a gorgeous set of furniture
I saw a Thompson yesterday when I went to the museum, sadly I didn't see Jonathan.
I do like an interesting tube.
Ok if no one wants it I will take one for the team, can you sort the delivery fees ?
If bullets are hitting the gun then its safe to say the suppressor is kinda redundant.
That had to be like $400 back then
Tommy guns are heavy as heck and so is 45acp
I bet the boys woulda been happy with either when needing a supressed sub gun. Both are excellent examples of craftsmanship and engineering. Love the silenced Tommy tho! Excellent video gents
a journey through a thompson's bunghole
That outro was amazing 😂
You're on TikTok now? I'm sorry for your loss.
1" 1/2 diameter tube is the same size as steel plumbing waste pipe of the era. This may not be a coincidence as it lets you use off the shelf BSP bushes. I am completely stumped as to why they didnt ditch the hand guard and just lathe the barrel down and directly thread the supressor over it. You dont need a lot of barrel with .45 ACP ball to get minute of man accuracy out to 100. The DeLisle carbine showed this.
anything been done on that silent stetchkin with the captive piston in the cartridge?
A suppressed M1A1 has an audible range of 47 metres. At least according to Sniper Elite 5. 😁🤘
Why did it lose out? IDK, a 12 lb SMG that was already far too heavy made heavier and longer by adding a suppressor? What's not to (dis)like?
The Sten MK2S is pretty long but it is lightweight and svelte compared to the Thompson.
It's so... BEAUTIFUL!
First time I ever saw that suppressor on that Thompson was back when I played Sniper Elite 5
Fun fact, if you did not know it already: Jonathan Ferguson KoFaAatRAMitUKWHaCoToIWTH was an advisor for, I think, Sniper Elite 4.
@@Cats-TM 4 & 5, yes. From memory though the suppressor on a TSMG in that game (5) was just an optional modification you could fit to anything, not based on this integrated design.
Two orders of magnitude in the cost of the piece would tend to influence their adoption.
The 'question' was why the thomson lost out to the sten, is this serious? Cost difference of like 300/1, obviously 300 stens beats 1 thompson. Same for the mp40, imo...
Never thought I'd see a thompson get a colonoscopy
Interesting presentation of a very rare gun...and a nod to Othais and May with the Tshirt 😁
The Thompson was heavy and expensive hence why it was not widely adopted by the US military.
It would be cool to see some range footage with these
“Hey guys, we’re going to add the Thompson to inventory for the Army. What designation shall we give it?”
“Whatever will cause the least confusion, ideally.”
“M1 it is, then.”
I came here expecting a motorway, to boot!
@@TheCatBilbo Americans : "Wait . . . I think I have seen that name used on Midsomer Mysteries, a motorway is like a small, badly designed highway, right, and always clogged with traffic jams ?."
When they switched to the new naming system the first of literally every kind of item they had was named the M1, first knife introduced under the new system? M1, first pistol? M1, first submachine gun? M1, first carbine? M1, first underpants? I have no idea about that one actually, but I'm assuming they were the M1 underpants. 😂 It's the most confusing naming scheme of any military on the planet tbh.
@@Ghelasin no, you just look in the file under GUN comma ARMY comma SPECIAL PURPOSE comma SUPPRESSED comma MACHINE comma PISTOL CALIBER comma .45 comma M1, it's perfectly simple.
On this topic why was the Beretta pistol designated M4 and the SIG, adopted next designated M17?
That end animation with Jonathan Ferguson was fantastic! Wonder how many caught the Bond reference?
Thank you Royal Armouries !
like the Bond ref at the end
You learn something new every day.....
Very pretty
Ahhh finally a lighter background
I wonder if the balance is any better than original? The Thompson in surprisingly rear heavy
Mine is very front-heavy.
Howdy from Kansas City. I just wanted to say thank you all for sharing your knowledge and joy with all of us. Anywho, take care, and I'm off to look after the horses. 🤠
you not a Sackett are you?
@@dominic6634 I honestly don't know what that means.
I can relate to that suppressor, my mom calls me special as well.
At this day and age the tommy gun is just a cool gun to put in a case and look at now and then.They are inaccurate asf compared to what we have today.
As if the Thompson wasn't sexy enough as it was without the suppressor 😫😫
Have you guys looked into getting an industrial CT scanner?
16:15 ahhhh the good old days, when your gun laced up like a rugby ball
Is it threw that the sten was made in 9 mm because the most available supply was captured German ammunition?
9mm was widely available and popular.
Isnt what people mean by tommy gun
i suppose a car exhaust works in the same way?
Mostly. Developed by the same guy.
Thompson also lost to the Grease gun, cost, weight, fire rate
The Thompson was way to heavy and expensive but I don't think commandos or special operations would have had much love for the sten and surprised they did not make a much better variant of it for such forces even if it was just a batch of cherry picked stens and sten mags that had been modified and not just the barrel and suppressor.
They must have understood the value of .45acp suppressed as the .45 smile converted bolt action suppressed that took 1911 mags was probably the quietest weapon of the time.
They must have hated the idea of issuing subsonic 9mm as ports by the chamber of the S sten to reduce the velocity of 9mm to subsonic must have worn out fast and hindered the suppressor while making it get hot fast but it makes logistics simple
I just don't understand why on the sten they did not spend just a little extra to give it a folding stock that made confirtsbke contact with the cheek and sholder, some type of forgrip so no holding the magwell or shroud, semi decent sights as in just a simple 2 or 3 position for range and make it so the front or rear could be drifted (I wonder how many from the factory where zerod to a decent extent) as for the magazine it seeks some say they play nice with MP40 mags and some dont, but a double feed mag with appropriate boot modification would have made a world of difference in reliability.
They could have used cheap materials like steel, bakelite, cheap wood, fabric and such.
For a suppressed weapon the cracking of the action can be reduced by buffers that are cheap but you have to replace them, but with an open bolt maybe not a world of difference.
I find it interesting that the US military went with a blowback sub gun Vs a roller dayed MP5 or tappet rotating bolt sig system.
A sterling style mag with a fat reciver, telescoping bolt and closed bolt action (closed bolt actions would make the cost go up) it would have remained in use for a very long time.
When do you retire...and does being 'really enthusiastic' qualify me as your successor?
Before even watching the video, I can tell you it's because the Thompson was painfully expensive and both the Brits and Americans hated paying for it.
I'm sure it being nearly twice as heavy as a STEN didn't help matters.
At the last minute I saw the t-shirt: Martini Henry Singles Only. Bravo, Sir!
Johnathan has an amazing t-shirt collection and I keep begging Gamespot to do an episode on them. Interesting to see Johnathan wearing one on his official job though, I thought he would be wearing something a little more formal.
I could see this being used by an OSS agent inserting behind enemy lines to help resistance fighters in various occupied countries during the height of the war.
You thought it was heavy before?
The James Bond outro was a rather unexpected gift to those who stayed to the end.
When you break it down in terms of raw performance, this was an exorbitant expenditure on top of an already wildly expensive firearm. The extra cutaways of the handguard make this the most "tactical boomer" military firearm I've ever seen.