by\u00a0William G. Menosky<\/p>\n
Tommy gun.\u00a0 The name evokes different memories or thoughts in a cross section of people both in the United States and internationally.\u00a0 Some may think of names that wrote the violent history of the twenties and thirties in this country: Capone, Floyd or Dillinger.\u00a0 Others may think of the Irish crowd with Michael Collins and their early struggle for independence, or the English \u201cTommies\u201d of the second World War, or even of Colonel Henry A. Mucci, Bridgeport war hero.\u00a0 Still others may think of Hollywood types like Cagney, Wayne, or more recently, Johnny Depp in the movie \u201cPublic Enemies.\u201d\u00a0 But whatever the first thought, the name carries instant recognition.\u00a0 The \u201cThompson Submachine Gun,\u201d \u201dthe Chicago Typewriter,\u201d \u201cthe Chopper,\u201d \u201cthe Tommy gun\u201d:<\/em> its story is long, infamous, heroic, and, surprisingly, it runs right through Bridgeport.With bankrolling supplied by New York financier Thomas Fortune Ryan, the Tommy gun was the creative idea of General John Taliaferro Thompson, West Point grad and small arms expert.\u00a0 In 1916, he started the Auto-Ordnance Corporation (AOC).\u00a0 World War I ended abruptly in 1918.\u00a0 Consequently, it was too late to actually get some prototype guns into battle for testing.\u00a0 As a result, the Thompson gun went through more refinement and, finally,15,000 guns were manufactured during 1921-22 at the prestigious Colt\u2019s Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company in Hartford, CT.<\/p>\n Over the next eighteen years the gun was sold, literally, in dribs and drabs to various police departments, sheriffs and small constabularies around the US, to the Post Office, the Navy, the Marines and to a few foreign countries.\u00a0 Everyone praised its performance at the many trials that it was put through but no one was buying in quantity.\u00a0 The War was over and purchasing budgets were low or non-existent.\u00a0 Who needed a machine gun anyway?\u00a0 The criminal element found uses for the gun but that story moves in a different direction.\u00a0 So, in any sort of business sense, the Thompson gun was a huge financial failure.<\/p>\n Until…1939.\u00a0 Enter J. Russell Maguire a Connecticut born industrialist and opportunist.\u00a0 The Auto-Ordnance Corporation was in deep debt to the heirs of Thomas F. Ryan and the Ryans wanted out.\u00a0 In July, a deal was finally struck giving Maguire controlling interest in AOC.\u00a0 Maguire believed that war was imminent in Europe and to say he was correct is a major understatement.\u00a0 Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939.\u00a0 On November 1, France ordered 3,000 guns.\u00a0 Maguire immediately contracted with the Savage Arms Corp. of Utica, NY to start producing guns.\u00a0 The incoming orders, slow at first, soon became massive.\u00a0 In August 1940, Maguire leased and then later purchased in April of 1941, the Raybestos-Manhattan brake-lining plant along Railroad Avenue and Cherry Street in Bridgeport, CT.<\/p>\n Why Bridgeport?\u00a0 It had a large skilled labor pool of machinists and toolmakers.\u00a0 It had material suppliers, rail transport, a deep water port and a supportive group of small machine shops.\u00a0 It was a perfect venue in which to succeed.\u00a0 By the end of 1941, there were orders for 319,000 guns.\u00a0 By 1944, between Savage Arms and AOC in Bridgeport a total of 1,750,000<\/em><\/strong> Thompson submachine guns were produced with Bridgeport accounting for 500,000<\/em><\/strong> of that total!\u00a0 The guns were sold or provided through the \u201cLend-Lease\u201d programs, to almost every Allied country.\u00a0 The AOC plant had over 2,500 hundred workers.<\/p>\n Almost 70 years have slipped by since AOC finished its work and left the city.\u00a0 No one recognizes its name or knows its history and contributions.\u00a0 Most of its buildings have been demolished.\u00a0 Today, let us clearly understand that the firearm produced by its proud workers in the hands of our bravest young men probably had something to do with the name, \u201cArsenal of Democracy,\u201d being ascribed to Bridgeport, CT.\u00a0 Finally, the half million Thompson guns manufactured on Railroad Avenue were, undeniably, a part of the heroism in the victory by American and Allied forces in both theaters of World War II.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by\u00a0William G. Menosky Tommy gun.\u00a0 The name evokes different memories or thoughts in a cross section of people both in the United States and internationally.\u00a0 Some may think of names that wrote the violent history of the twenties and thirties in this country: Capone, Floyd or Dillinger.\u00a0 Others may think of the Irish crowd with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bridgeport-at-war","category-industry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bportlibrary.org\/hc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}