In practice, the gun was anything but successful for American forces and not adopted for standardization going forward. The design was found to be no more easier to produce on a large scale than the Thompson for it still required much machining to bring it into existence. In-the-field, the weapon was noted for its propensity to collect dust, dirt, and the various other common battlefield debris - in turn requiring a rigid maintenance schedule to keep the weapon in working order. There also proved issues with the distinct magazine arrangement which had a tendency to warp over periods of extended use, jamming the weapon at the feed mechanism during the worst possible moments. As such, the M1 Thompson lived to see further days in American service and the M42 was passed along to specialist forces during the remainder of the war. Some 15,000 examples were ultimately manufactured by United Defense Supply Corporation from the period of 1942 to 1943.
The gun ended in the hands of resistance elements across China, Crete, Czechoslovakia, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the Philippines where it found use as a serviceable weapon under combat conditions. The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) - forerunner to the modern American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) - was also a high-level recipient of this weapon series and used to for its varied clandestine operations throughout the remainder of the war. Stocks remained in service even after the conflict for many foreign operators - and managed extended service lives into the Cold War years that followed.
Content ©MilitaryFactory.com; No Reproduction Permitted.