Born out of the necessity rapidly to put inexpensive submachine guns in the hands of American soldiers and Marines, it was so cheap it looked like a mechanic’s tool rather than the product of advanced American industrial know-how.

It was supposed to serve as a replacement to the iconic and expensive Thompson submachine gun, but developed a reputation of its own that kept it in the U.S. military inventory from World War II all the way through Desert Storm.

Nobody really loved the M-3 that G.I.s dubbed the “Grease Gun.” But nobody really hated, either.

“By the Korean War, the M-3 and M-3A1 were used in greater numbers than the Thompson,” said Alan Archambault, former supervisory curator for the U.S. Army Center of Military History and former director of the Fort Lewis Military Museum at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington.

“Although unattractive and cheaply made, it was a practical weapon,” said Archambault, an Army veteran who is also an artist and illustrator who specializes in military subjects.

“The weapon did have close-range stopping power,” he continued. “A visitor to the Fort Lewis Museum once told me the story of shooting a Chinese soldier at close range and knocking him out of his boots like in a cartoon or a Three Stooges movie.”

In the 21st century, we are used to weapons made of exotic materials and possessing high-technology features that maximize killing power—polymers and aerospace metals, lasers and optics.

But during World War II, there was an almost desperate urgency to manufacture vast quantities of weapons as quickly and cheaply as possible. The materials then looked like they were on sale at the corner hardware store.

The British did it by producing the Sten Gun, a 9-by-19-millimeter submachine gun composed of steel tubing and sheet metal and which bears a similarity to a piece of plumbing.

So did the Russians when they made the PPSh, a 7.62-by-25-millimeter submachine gun that unskilled laborers produced in auto shops.