The Great Raid Thompson

[Stauble]

i recently saw the movie the great raid
for those of you who dont know this was a movie about how a group of army rangers and some filipino rebels rescued 500 american POWs from a jap camp in the philipines.
i thought it was a very good movie but i saw something that i thought was kinda wierd
one of the guys Thompson jammed on him twice!
i always thought of the Thompson as a solid rugged and reliable gun. is this true or did the thompson really jam alot.
other then the jammin thompson i thought it was a great inspiring movie

 

[Pilgrim]

Jammed? Or ran out of ammo at a very, very bad moment?

 

[eab]

Dude, all guns jam some times, even the (gasp) AK47 will jam if some thing is horribly wrong. I belive I remeber reading that the 50 round drum mags were prone to jaming.

The movie looks real good and hope to see it soon.

 

[Stauble]

pilgrim
the gun jammed. the first time he even says so. the 2nd time.... well ill let you see the movie

 

[jason10mm]

I wonder if the "Ghost Soldiers" book mentions that incident. The movie was fantastic BTW. Don't wait too long to see it, it is going to be out of theaters soon since it did poorly at the box office.

 

[Gunpacker]

I think that the problems you saw were likely induced by firing blanks for making movies. I have seen a LOT of combat footage, and seen zero jams. It did happen I am sure, but not very often. Oops. Forgot. I have seen a couple of times where guys had to fiddle with M16's, but even those are rare. I think that probably the jams mostly occurred in very prolonged firefights where guns just got incredibly dirty. Likely not a lot of photogs around in those cases.
Troops tend to keep their weapons and ammo clean and combat ready. They also would get rid of a rifle that malfunctioned, or have an armorer work it over. Lots of practice and training will expose a firearm problem quickly.

 

[BenW]

Don't wait too long to see it, it is going to be out of theaters soon since it did poorly at the box office.

Which is too bad. It was a great film. I hadn't even heard of it before a couple of weekends ago. A girlie asked me out to the movies, and she was afraid I wouldn't go if it was to a "chick flick" so she asked if I wanted to see this "war movie" that was playing. Turned out to be a great choice.

There is some great reel footage pre and post "movie", and the film is remarkably PC free in regards to portraying the enemy. I was doing some Internet searches on it afterwards, and apparently it was held back from release for a long time because the dreaded "they" were afraid the portrayal of brutality by the enemy would be offensive.

Anyway, if you miss it at the theatre, I highly recommend checking it out when it goes DVD.

 

[Bart Noir]

It is a truly great pro-American movie.

The audience cheered when a certain Japanese officer was killed. Some in the audience clapped at the end of the movie. It was well done, well acted, and true to history. And the choice of weapons and usage of same was handled just fine.

Bart Noir

 

[buzz_knox]

I think that the problems you saw were likely induced by firing blanks for making movies. I have seen a LOT of combat footage, and seen zero jams. It did happen I am sure, but not very often.

It happened during one of the first major firefights on Guadalcanal. A Marine sergeant had a very heavy single shot when his Thompson repeatedly jammed.

 

[DillHarris]

That was a great movie. I saw it on a sneak preview the weekend before it came out. Everybody should go see it. A movie like "The 40 Year Old Virgin" gets all kinds of people out to see it, and "The Great Raid" doesn't do as well. It sickenging enough to start the little voices in my head that say "Democracy is bad. Everyone's an idiot" Oh well, I digress.

They didn't talk about jamming Thompsons in the book "Ghost Soldiers" (even better than the movie by the way). They did say that everyone on the raid got to choose what they wanted to carry. I would have thought that that would have been assigned, but I guess not. The book said most guys carried Garands, but there was also Thompsons, and BARs. The Rangers hiked thirty miles in and 30 miles out of that raid, I wouldn't have been able to handle much more than a broomstick.

It was the same Thomspon that jammed both times in the movie, nothing unbelievabel about one problem gun no matter how good its reputation. Heck, even one or two (insert favorite firearm here) has a problem every once in a while.

 

[Monkeyleg]

My experience with a full-auto Thompson was that it was very finicky about magazines, and would often jam. Took a bit of filing to get them to work right.

 

[akodo]

ive seen this movie. Yes, those were actual jams called for in the script, not blanks jamming during filming.

The first one occured to establish a precident, the 2nd one happened at an inoppurtune moment to increase tension