The "Grease gun" - a retrospective...

[Rock185]

Thanks for the article. Hadn't thought about those old guns in a while. I was a TC in the Central Highlands of RVN in '69. We always had two loaded M3A1s secured in clips welded to the inside of the turret of our M48A3 tank. We also carried our issue 1911A1s. Rightly or wrongly, we had more confidence in our issue pistols than in the SMGs should the need arise. I guess in our minds, the two SMGs were really Really last ditch weapons. Fortunately the situation did not arise. We did a lot of shooting, but mostly with 90MM, .50 and 7.62 coax.

 

[i1afli]

I don't know much about theses M3's so it was an interesting read.
Great article...thanks.

 

[da gimp]

3rd paragraph is overlong.. might find a place to break it up, would make it easier to read. hth.

 

[jtcarm]

Nice.

A terribly underrated gun, IMO. I think due to its lack of sex appeal.

 

[ACP230]

I wasn't in the military but have shot a few M3s.

One was suppressed and the noise of the bullets hitting steel
plate targets was louder than the gun firing.

The M3 is the most controllable subgun I've shot due to the slow
cyclic rate. Next would be the Madsen M50 in 9mm. It's rate of
fire is faster but the 9mm bullet is lighter so the controlability is still
good.

 

[DWalt]

And then there is the scene in "The Dirty Dozen" where Lee Marvin cuts the climbing rope with one. [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBp_heQBuoY[/ame]

 

[jimintheburg]

M-3

I never got to fire one but carried one while on guard duty. This was 1960 and I was stationed in Germany and assigned to a nike battery. The gun was assigned to a friend and everybody was borrowing it when they had to "pull" guard duty. It sure beat carrying the heavy garrand.

 

[cbore]

Great article. All the time and thought you put into it and some one is critical of a sentence or a paragraph break. Give me and you a break.

Thank you and more like this please

 

[jimmyj]

My first agency purchased M3s in 1963 for $29.00 each. Each weapon came new/un-used in a separate cardboard box covered in cosmolens (sic). Neat weapon but loading the 30 round magazines by hand was a chore.
I always thought that there had to be loaders for these weapons ??

 

[Ed Fowler]

I was training Sgt. rookies learned how to reload magazines while I demonstrated shooting the M3 and Thompson, that is the easy way to go!

 

[PALADIN85020]

Thanks to all who posted constructive comments for possible changes to the article. I have re-written the article and made minor changes for readability and clarity on some points. I appreciate you guys - it's always good for me to float a draft for comments.

Best to all,
John

 

[PALADIN85020]

Good article and well written as usual.

I have only owned one fully auto weapon.
A S&W model 76.

Perhaps a write up is in order since this is the S&W forum ??

A fun little gun that ate everything i fed it. Mostly bought cases
of the cheapest ball ammo i could find with real brass.
Fiocchi was used mostly IIRC.
The 76 also fired from an open bolt.
Also i believe the S&W 76 was actually carried by the Seals at one
point. Someone correct me if i'm wrong.

Chuck

I have fired a S&W 76 SMG. It belonged to a cousin of my wife's, who lived in Ohio. His property covered quite a few acres, and he had a "backyard" range. It was quite controllable.

The 76 was in fact pretty much a copy of the Carl Gustav Model 45, and it is that gun that you probably recall as being used by the SEALS in the Vietnam era.

I don't presently plan an article on it - but if anyone has one within 25 miles of Phoenix, I would like to arrange to photograph it. PM me?

John

 

[PALADIN85020]

My first agency purchased M3s in 1963 for $29.00 each. Each weapon came new/un-used in a separate cardboard box covered in cosmolens (sic). Neat weapon but loading the 30 round magazines by hand was a chore.
I always thought that there had to be loaders for these weapons ??

The M3A1 had a magazine loading assist as part of the wire stock.

The double-column single-feed mags are way harder to load than the double-column alternate-feed type as typified by Thompson mags.

I have owned a MAC-10 open-bolt semiauto; these guns and their full-auto cousins used M3 mags, slightly altered to be usable in them. I had a magazine loading device for them, and it sure made it easier than using my issue thumb.

Interesting progression of the double-column single-feed mag. The original trendsetter was the German MP 38, then the MP 40/42s used it also. The Sten mag was a copy of that design, the M3 mag was a copy of the Sten version, and the MAC 10 continued to use the M3 mag primarily because it was cheap and widely available. It would have made more sense to modify the MAC to use modified Thompson mags.

Note that the M3 mags invoke a "traffic jam" of two columns of cartridges coming together toward the single feed point, and then the friction at that feed point is much more than an alternate-feed design, which puts pressure on only one side.

John

 

[amazingflapjack]

s&w 76...

Good article and well written as usual.

I have only owned one fully auto weapon.
A S&W model 76.

Perhaps a write up is in order since this is the S&W forum ??

A fun little gun that ate everything i fed it. Mostly bought cases
of the cheapest ball ammo i could find with real brass.
Fiocchi was used mostly IIRC.
The 76 also fired from an open bolt.
Also i believe the S&W 76 was actually carried by the Seals at one
point. Someone correct me if i'm wrong.

Chuck

IIRC-this was the US version of the "Swedish K" or Carl Gustav. I had the loan of Swedish K for a while in 'Nam-and I saw individuals with grease guns, I think Rangers mostly-but never fired or carried one myself. John-you could add something about the use of the grease gun in SEA, as posted above, to complete its service record. JM2CW.

 

[Telecaster]

After the war, a curved barrel was developed for clearing tanks and transport vehicles from the inside and for shooting around corners.

I'd like to know more about this...

 

[PALADIN85020]

I'd like to know more about this...

The Germans experimented with curved barrels for their MP 38s and MP 40s, and also for the StG 44 assault rifle. Our Ordnance Corps developed a similar barrel for the M3/M3A1. The idea was to allow soldiers inside a vehicle such as a tank to poke the gun from a hatch or other opening and "sweep" the outside of the vehicle from enemy soldiers.

An alternate usage was to shoot around corners - this was an inexact science, although some efforts were made to craft a crude periscope-like optical sight for such use. These barrels wore out very quickly; the whole scheme was never a sterling idea.

John

 

[PALADIN85020]

IIRC-this was the US version of the "Swedish K" or Carl Gustav. I had the loan of Swedish K for a while in 'Nam-and I saw individuals with grease guns, I think Rangers mostly-but never fired or carried one myself. John-you could add something about the use of the grease gun in SEA, as posted above, to complete its service record. JM2CW.

Not much I can add. I have seen a few pictures of them in use during the Vietnam War. Conversely, I have seen numerous pictures of Thompsons (usually M1 or M1A1 versions) in use. One of the pictures was of my high school buddy, Army aviator Lt. Ed Cribb, posing on the tailgate of a truck in 'Nam in the early '60s with an M1A1 Thompson; his widow showed it to me. Perhaps others could relate more about the use of the grease guns there than I could.

John

 

[jeeps]

The arms embargo to the USA by the Swedish cut off the supply of the M45 Swedish K ,so SW made the M76 clone for the Navy op's. I have shot grease guns and they are very good Smg's. The M3 was a sturdy reliable and inside 75yards a sure killer!

 

[Long Barrel]

Had one myself...

...that I bought from an ARVN for $25.00 MPC. It was the complete set ; five mags, a chest carrier bag, flashhider, cleaning kit, all in good nick. Of course, I couldn't being it home.

Much later, my unit taught a USAR course in MOS 19E ( Abram's crewman) and found that it was still the authorized crew weapon.

 

[Texas Star]

Great article. All the time and thought you put into it and some one is critical of a sentence or a paragraph break. Give me and you a break.

Thank you and more like this please

He's submitting this for consideration by an editor. Professional writing is very demanding.

For over 30 years, I wrote professionally for gun and other magazines. I can tell you, editors who pay out cash for material are usually very demanding. Minor errors can easily result in a rejection or a story being sent back to the author for corrections...often with scathing editorial comments.

And writing a book is even more demanding. One has to remember everything in prior chapters, lest he write something that conflicts. Selling a novel is about as chancy as becoming a successful actor or singer.

If the text had been allowed to stand as was, sharp-eyed readers would have challenged the part about the Thompson being more common by the time of the Korean War.
And the other member's comment about a long paragraph would have been noted by an editor and either "fixed" or sent back for improvement.

Col. Chas. Askins told me that readers are far more likely to write to an editor if they see something to complain about than if they like a story. And if you read a book where the author thanks all the friends and secretaries who helped him to proofread it or made other suggestions, you'll have an idea of just how difficult professional writing is.

Spelling knives as "knifes" won't get you kicked off of a gun forum, Lord knows. But if an editor saw a prospective writer do that, he'd have the same reaction as you, when a cop, presumably had when you saw a felony in progress.

I was present when another writer misspelled "gauge" in an article for, The Dallas Morning news. He wrote "guage" instead of "gauge." The editor said some things that showed full contempt and rejected the article. I was then writing a gun column and other free-lance material for the outdoors page and other areas of the newspaper and I took that to heart. I didn't want to be the next poor soul who made an error like that.

John asked for help and he got it, for free. There was no intention to nit-pick or denigrate either him or his material.

BTW, "someone" is just one word.