The Thompson went to war a celebrity. Invented too late for the First World War, the "Tommy Gun" found fame instead in Prohibition-era America, spraying .45 slugs in the hands of gangsters and G-men until its very name meant trouble — the "Chicago typewriter." When the real war came, the Army embraced it: a compact, hard-hitting weapon made for the close, sudden fighting of towns, woods and trenches, where a rifle was too long and too slow. The original was a beautifully machined, expensive gun, so it was stripped down into the simplified M1 and M1A1 for mass production. Slung with sergeants, scouts and officers, the movie gangster's weapon became a GI's.

Caught mid-burst, the gunner fires his M1A1 Thompson from the shoulder in a snow-crusted overcoat, a Colt M1911A1 pistol on his hip — both chambered for the same fat .45 round, simple to supply and hard-hitting up close. The Thompson marked him as a man who led or scouted from the front, a sergeant or junior officer — the same weapon the NCO of the Four Man Patrol carries. Fall him in with the Standing Rifleman and the Grenadier to build a squad clearing a treeline or a shattered village, close-quarters work where the Tommy Gun came into its own. In a diorama he is the figure driving the assault.

Model: BBA099 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set