As others have said, it can refer to a ‘team’ (as in a tank crew), or it can simply be another soldier (as in ‘crew served weapon’, generally meaning you have a gunner and a loader if we are talking a heavy machine gun team, or it could be the members of an artillery battery).
The militarized version of the Uzi had a bayonet lug and provision for mounting a bayonet. Did any version of the Thompson have a bayonet lug? I have never seen one.
The answer to this question will be key to further discussion.
I have no idea why they included that feature. Besides the fact that the IDF hates using bayonets, the idea of a bayonet on a submachine gun is patently absurd.
I don’t why, but the Uzi/bayonet exchange culminating in this comment cracked me up. Thanks for the laugh, Alessan.
Also, maybe he just switched his crew to the Tommy for the cool factor. Let’s face it, it would be WAY more bad-ass to blaze away with a Thompson (think Tom Hanks in the penultimate scene of Road To Perdition).
If 40 years of watching American film has taught me anything, it’s that style points count!
At some point in WWI, it was considered by the British that it was just as tacky to shoot an evacuating tank crew fleeing from a burning tank as it was to shoot a parachuting pilot.
Perhaps giving them sub machine guns changed that opinion.
Not that running out of ammo using an uzi is difficult to do, but I’d say if you do and you are relying on trying to use one with a bayonet attached, you are basically screwed. Personally, I’d try the ‘throw it and run like hell’ method before trying to stab someone with a big knife attached to something like that.
(And I think that you could attach a bayonet to a Thompson, at least I seem to recall seeing pictures of one so outfitted. It might be marginally more capable of stabbing someone with a bayonet attached, instead of ones self, but it still doesn’t seem like a viable alternative to me)
I presume that’s not standard IDF training. What was the context? Do Israelis have Uzis at home? Have they considered using HK SMGs or is that still beyond the pale?
My wife carried an Uzi for most of her military service. Once, on her way home on leave, some sleazeball started walking very, veeeeery close behind her (you’d think that your average sexual predator would be too smart to pick on a girl with a submachine gun, but there you go). She simply raised her arm, swung her weapon back, heard a crack, then a whimper, then a crumple, and kept on walking.
And no, no HKs. As I said, the only people who still actually use Uzis in combat these days are special ops, and they use the Mini-Uzi or Micro-Uzi, which are still considered better than their HK alternatives.