Murdoc uncovered a story which mentions that the US Army still has the WWII era M3 “grease gun” submachine gun in service for select units such as vehicle crews, engineers and radio operators.
M3. Photo from Wikipedia.
Interesting if true.
There is a discussion about it here.
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The US military doesn’t throw anything away, well mostly. They keep them in storage until it is needed again or forced by congress to depose of it. Worn out none weapon equipments can be auction off, tho.
My old friend (Major in U.S. Army) was a Mechanized Infantry platoon leader (Bradleys) and Company Commander in the early 2000s. M4s were it back then, and a few M-16 Firing Port Weapons also. He kept a Firing Port Weapon near him in the turret for “close encounters” because it was compact and fired full-auto only. Never heard of grease guns at all, I’d bet this is old information. One problem is the supply of .45 caliber ammo to line units since regular Army uses the M9 in 9mm.
I carried one when I was stationed in Fulda, Germany in about 1981. I was a driver in a M-577 for regimental HQ 11 ACR. I was a 19 Delta.
a friend of mine was a tanker in the gulf war in 1991 and he was issued an m3 grease gun and a m1911, both in .45.
I was the unit armorer for B Company 8th Engineer Battalion stationed in Ft Hood Texas and back in 1990 we still had some M3s They were issued to the mechanics on the tank recovery vehicles and the CEVs if I remember correctly.
bolter,
the m-3 and m-3a1 were nicknamed “the grease gun” for their alleged resemblance to the garage mechanic’s tool. they came out in ww2 as a replacement for the m1928a1 and m-1 and m-1a1 thompson submachine guns and as the blog post notes, remained in service until just recently, and may still be held in some national guard arms rooms. i did see one m-3 model racked in an m113 apc on a visit to a vermont guard unit back some years ago when my daughter was a teen ager, i was amused thinking it was surely older than any of the troops in the unit.
“gunner”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3_submachine_gun
National Guard in SoCal has them in the motor pool.