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Enter the M3 'Greasegun', designed by George Hyde. This gun is a marvel of economization.
The Thompson had its receiver body machined out of steel billets, which was a ludicrous expense for this kind of weapon. The body of the Greasegun was made by stamping out a left side half, and a right side half from a sheet of steel, along with just a few other things, the left and right halves are spotwelded together, and the rest is bolted and riveted on. The bolt is easily made on a lathe, and it rides on two guiderods with two recoil springs inside the receiver, the bolt and the barrel are then held in place with a large knurled nut which screws onto the receiver. The stock is thick gauge steel wire.
Everything about this gun is fast, cheap, and efficient. The dustcover is your safety, when closed, it either holds the bolt in the rear or forward position.
Initially it had a crank on the side of the receiver which you would pull back to cock the bolt with, but it turns out this was just bothersome and didn't always work like it should, so they figured "Fuck it!" and deleted that, instead just widening the ejection port and cutting a notch in the bolt, just grab that with your thumb and pull it back, it'll never get hot enough to burn and the gun gets even cheaper to make, as the M3A1. This also included sturdier sights and a tab on the stock which would assist in loading cartridges into magazines.
It's like they looked at the British Sten, thought "We like the idea of this a lot, but we also think we can do this a lot better and a lot more consistent." and they were right, whilst the Sten was no stranger fragile magazines causing problems, the Greasegun, which used a similar design, but just better built, had nearly no such problems. It's a cheap and crude looking gun, but very reliable, very dependable, and it could quickly be put out to arm everyone who needed a subgun. The slow rate of fire also made training recruits much faster
