rjb1

Fine - no more babbling or pontificating. My apologies for doing that.

Static loading (constant force) is not equivalent to, nor is it calculated the same as fatigue loading (multiple force cycles), as in a spring. The loss of strength as a function of the number of cycles of loading is a well known phenomenon. As an example, for a particular steel, the strength at 100,000 cycles of loading is about 20% less than at 10,000 cycles. It doesn't "level out" (become constant) until ~2,000,000 cycles. The point at which the strength levels out is known as the "endurance limit". Can't compare apples and oranges...

With all due respect to Bob, and that is an awful lot of respect, TSMGGuy is right about this. There is no (known) property of materials under stress that would cause them to lose their "flex". There may well be a problem with some of the extractors in old parts sets, and Bob may have found it, but it's not due to their time duration in a stressed state. If there is such a time-dependent term in the stress-strain relations equations it needs to be discovered and documented and the text books re-written. (The only exceptions are creep over time at high temperatures and short-duration events such as shock or impact loading.) This isn't a matter of sarcasm or poking fun (at anyone). If there is a time-dependency, it isn't part of the body of current engineering knowledge. (At least none of my engineering colleagues are aware of it and I can't find it in any of the several engineering machine-design texts that I have consulted.) A Problem with extractors: Yes, certainly... The Cause due to "age": Much more uncertain... more information/experimentation needed... In my own case, I have been doing engineering-research for several decades for NASA, DARPA, H-P, and etc. In the course of that time, we have on more than one occasion came up with results that seemed to to violate the known laws of physics. On those occasions someone would usually say, "Well, we can either: a) go directly to Stockholm and pick up our Nobel Prize for discovering this exception to the known Laws of Physics or figure out what we did wrong." So far the answer has always been .

Old Colts in particular are well-documented as to serial numbers. If you know the serial number on any Colt model even back into the 1800's you can find out what year it was made. I tend to think that this one had its serial number removed so no one could document that it was made after Bonnie and Clyde were dead. If you think about it, if you were in the business of robbing and killing people, why would you care what the serial number was on your gun? If the cops find it on you, are they going to add something to the penalty your're facing because of having it - electrocution, hanging, or in the case of B&C, gunning you down?

That is Mark Bando's site, and he has written about half a dozen books on the 101st. All excellent, and you should get one of each if you can find them, if you like WWII/paratroopers/101st. (some are out of print) Speaking of paratroopers with 1928's, one picture in one of his books is of Sgt. Carwood Lipton (if you're a fan of "Band of Brothers" the name is familiar) with a 1928. Most of the WWII 101st guys do carry M1's but not all. (And just for variety there is at least one picture of a 101st guy at Normandy carrying a grease gun.)

Thanks for the info on WV State Police Thompsons. After reading an account of the Coal Mine vs. Union "wars" of the early '20's, I counted 44 Thompsons in Tracie Hill's (first) book bought by the WVSP, and those were just the ones accounted for there. It seemed like a remarkable amount of ordnance for such a small, poor State in those days. I wondered after the count if anyone knew what had happened to all those 1921's. ( I know an old-time coal mine owner in WV and he is VERY anti-union, even in his late 80's.)

Whether it is due to resemblance to German uniforms, and hence were dangerous in action or not, the pictures of my dad's division in training here in the US show many of the troops wearing the camo uniforms of the type shown in the picture. I have always assumed that the WWII (possible) urban legend was true, but who knows. At least some units did wear them here in the States.

What follows isn't a Thompson-buying story - it actually involves buying a greasegun, but it illustrates the point that luck, timing, location can work out well for a full-auto purchase. I had wanted a greasegun for some time (since my dad carried one in WWII) and had a friend who was a Class III dealer looking for one. He would occasionally find one someplace 1000 miles away (or further). I just couldn't see sending that kind of money so far away. After a long time had passed he called and said he had found one right here in my hometown. Further, the person who had it was a fairly high-ranking police officer with whom I had several common long-term friends. Clearly no trust or honesty issues involved. He helped get the CLEO signature and made the whole transfer go perfectly smoothly. It wasn't quite as near as walking distance but it was just a short drive. Perhaps those looking for just the right gun can use these cases as examples of how things can work out perfectly.

"Old soldiers never die, they just fade away." "Toy soldiers never die, mothers just throw them away."

Mattel had at least two types of Thompsons made in the fifties. Both were 1928 types (mostly). The most accurate-looking one had a crank on the side that would let you shoot caps very quickly. The caps loaded into the lower part of the twenty-round stick through a small door. That one I think was called the "Thunderburst", and my brother had one of those. It looked VERY much like a military-issue 1928A1. The one that had the retractable "bolt" and made a gun-noise from the drum was the "Thunderburp" (from "burp-gun".). That one was mostly 1928-looking, but did have the bolt handle on the side instead of the top They also made a grease-gun with the cap-firing mechanism of the Thunderburst Thompson. One probably-intentional bit of reality was that the cap-firing crank was at the proper location of the cocking handle of the real M3. My next door neighbor had one of those. In the pre-politically-correct days our neighborhood was the Arsenal of Democracy for toy guns. I have always felt that the fifties-era guns and toy soldiers were so accurate because the toy designers and toy makers were likely WWII veterans who knew exactly what those things were supposed to look like. I still have my favorite toy .45 auto from those days and I guarantee that it is so real looking that you could hold up any liquor store in town with that thing.

From a mechanical engineering professor's viewpoint (for whatever that's worth), I think you could stand in front of the motor oil shelves at Autozone, close your eyes, and pick any oil at random and it would work just fine in a Thompson. The pressures and clearances are so different (and so less stringent) in a Thompson compared to a modern engine that any oil that would work at all in an IC engine (i.e. any sold by a reputable company) would work just fine in a Thompson.

The reference to the "management of Auto-Ordnance" in the ad reminds me of some Thompson trivia that I have been trying to find a way to mention. The father of a friend of mine, who grew up in Connecticut, was the Business Manager for Auto-Ordnance Corp. during the war. I have tried and tried to think of questions to ask him about that, but since he was only about four years old when the war ended he just doesn't have much solid factual/technical information from those days. Some of the personal stuff might be worth mentioning, though. His dad worked directly with Russell McGuire, and I was told that McGuire could not or would not remember people's names, so one of my friend's father's duties was to stand near McGuire at social events to tell McGuire who he was about to meet. His father stayed on with McGuire after the war when he was trying to make radios and other consumer goods. One thing that we can be both envious and sad about was that he had original wartime Thompson posters from the Auto-Ordnance plant in his bedroom when he was an older kid. That sounded very interesting so I asked (eagerly) what happened to them. He said that his mother had cleaned up his room and thrown them away when he went off to college. (OH NO!) He also had one of the toy Thompsons that we discussed here some time ago. The one thing that did seem of interest and might be news, although very fragmentary, is that he remembers that when he was about 7-8 years old some FBI agents came to their house to discuss the whereabouts of some missing Thompsons. Unfortunately, he was told to leave the room while the adults were discussing serious matters, so he doesn't know what was said. I wish I had known him some years ago when his father was still around. I think he would have been a source of a lot of good information. How this came up in the first place was that I was recommending that he read "Public Enemies", which has a picture of Johnny Depp holding a Thompson. He looked at the cover, pointed at the Thompson, and said, "My father was Business Manager at Auto-Ordnance during the war." I have trying ever since to think of things to ask that he might know, or even infer, but the stuff mentioned above is about it. I did ask how his father came to have the job, and he said that his dad had graduated from U Conn with a degree in accounting in the latter part of the Depression, and after having several odd jobs, this opportunity knocked and he took it. He didn't have any particular interest in firearms, they were just a product and a paycheck to him.

Great picture. We all need to go back and watch "The Sand Pebbles" with Steve McQueen and his BAR.

I had the same problem with my WH, but not quite to the same extent. The GI full auto mags would fit and feed but you had to virtually slam them into place to get them to lock. On the plus side they did function OK once in. I finalyl "bit the bullet" (pun intended) and milled the mag well to proper dimensions and now things are fine.

I was driving through southern Illinois recently and saw the billboard telling about the 1920's Jail Museum. I got off the interstate and drove around trying to find it, but could not. If you are near there, how about a report about what it has on display, and if you know the people who run it tell them they need some signs telling people how to find it. (They would get more visitors that way.)