The celebrated adventure novelist, Jack London, supposedly once muttered: "If I was King, the worse punishment I could inflict on my enemies would be to banish them to the Solomons".
It is not really surprising therefore that the Reising sub-machine gun should have gained such a poor reputation, for clearly it had never been designed or tested in such dreadful and humid conditions as those encounted by the US Marine Paratroopers and Raiders on Guadacanal.
The Reising gun was designed and developed by noted gun inventor Eugene Reising. It was paterned in 1940 and manufactured by the old gun-making firm of Harrington and Richardson of Worcester, Massachusetts.
It was introduced into service at a time when supply of Thompsons could not keep up with demand, and the M3 'Grease Gun' had not yet been invented. As such it was a wartime expedient.
The Reising came in two models-The M50 with a wooden stock and Cutts compensator (invented by Robert M. Cutts Sr and his son Robert M. Cutts Jr) which reduced the upward muzzle climb from recoil. The other model was the M55 (Paratroopers version) with a folding metal-wire shoulder stock, a shortened barrel and no compensator.
Approximately 100, 000 Reising guns were manufactured between 1940 and 1942, with small numbers being supplied to both Great Britain and the Soviet Union. It was withdrawn from front line service in 1943 but continued to be used for Guard Duty at stations within the United States.
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