Sten vs MP40
Vložit
- čas přidán 27. 07. 2022
- This is a table-top review and comparison of two of the most recognizable SMGs of WWII: the Sten and the MP40. We will start by laying out the historical foundation of the two and then move through a point-by-point comparison. Which one would you have carried in WWII?
Photo Sources:
Wikipedia
German War Machines
Britanica
USHMM
wikimedia
guns fandom
MarksmanTV is a registered trademark owned by Marksman Shooting Sports, LLC. It offers its content to its viewers free of charge. Content shared on this channel is distributed strictly for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. MarksmanTV encourages its viewers to follow all state and Federal laws. Nothing MarksmanTV publishes should be considered as legal advice. - Sport
The German version of the STEN was the MP3008 and the magwell was in the vertical position. It used the MP40 magizine.
The original concept of the MP38/MP40 was to arm the squad leader with a higher rate of fire weapon to support the MG 34/42. The 98K armed rifleman and the sole MP38/40 were there to do that and provide the attacking formation. The battle unit concept early in the war centered around the LMG.
Sten for the win!
(MP40 for resale/investment value)
Another piece that would be interesting to match up would be the American M3 "Grease Gun." I am a big fn of German arms, and the MP40 is a beautiful piece of equipment. Having said that, I agree with the assessment of the advantages offered by the Sten.
The Sten will be forever known as the gun that jammed during the Renard Heydrik assassin !
Sorry to add a second comment...Allegedly, according to 3 of my uncles who served in WWII, the term "Schmeisser" was due to magazines being stamped thusly on guns that had been captured. It appears that Hugo Schmeisser wanted credit for his contribution of the magazine design...likely a royalty on them as well.
The Sten might be *easier* than the MP40 for maintenance, but the MP40 is still *easy* to disassemble and maintain. It is also much more accurate and comfortable to shoot, so I always find it weird when people say they prefer the Sten.
Thank you! At last someone with some common sense. The sten was made to be quick, easy, and cheap to produce. It wasn't made to be a good gun. It couldn't be with the main focus of its design brief. Tbh it's a miracle it was as functional as it was considering the speed of its RnD.
Both have same rate of fire at 550rpm. Between the two I would go with the Sten for the same reasons you gave. The Israeli Army or IDF manufactured and used the Sten extensively before they developed the Uzi SMG.
MP-40 for me. At least till the Sterling comes.
Wow …thanks for this great comparison.. I hope this format becomes a regular feature Excellent Stuff …!!!
Great review Chris always wondered about the Stein lot of info thanks for all you do
Threaded muzzle for a blank firing adaptor for training.
Once heard a strange story about the threads on the mp 40. Supposedly they had a grenade launcher kit consisting of a little cup discharger with rifling about 26mm diameter inside like a flare gun they would fire a blank with a small mostly bakelite grenade. You see the grenades occasionally they're a pointy usually brown bakelite cylinder with precut rifling and pointed nose but The launcher cups ard incredibly rare nowadays
Very cool review, thanks
Thanks Chris, not everyday to get to see these type of firearms.
Great job and thank you for the history.
The cheapest Sten Guns were produced in Northern Ireland for 12 shillings and six pence at the time $3 and 6 cents. Also a toy designer and manufacturer one the Lines Brothers helped to simplify the design before it went into manufacture.
Excellent video,as a side note in addition to the Lend-Lease arms that the US provided us with after Dunkirk the American public also made a contribution by donating their own private firearms resulting in the appearance of Winchester,Marlin and Savage rifles and an assortment of pistols and revolvers that were issued to the Local Defence Volunteers aka the 'Home Guard'.
I can only imagine that finding the correct ammunition for such a variety of calibres must have been a logistical nightmare.
My grandad loved his mp38/40.
Chris that is a lesson in machine gun 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻☮️ love it 😍
Personally I'm fond of the aesthetics of the sten but both are awesome.
Excellent video, thanks. I've spoken to three people who had used the STEN in actual combat. 1st person: It was adequate - barely, but you could soon get something better. 2nd person: It was treacherous - it would go off at the wrong time - even if just left propped up against a wall. 3rd person: it wasn't as good as the American or German guns, but, oh yes, it WAS an effective weapon [said with a murderous glint in his eyes].
You made that up though.
@@snowflakemelter1172nah sounds about right. Sten was fucking shit SMG. BUT it did the job it needed to do with an insanely short RnD turn around, as well as speed and ease of production. That was the focus of the sten. Not to be a good gun, to be a quick, cheap and easy gun to make... because of this, it was NOT a good gun. It was good enough... just lol.
@@snowflakemelter1172you mean you think he didn't just run into 3 people who fought with the sten in battle 😂
@@andymaciver1760 when people make up these stories they all read the same , post war myths they read online woven into a fake story to pretend it has authenticity.
I love the old stuff and when you compare its just good shit
Ok thanks let me know
I’ll take the Sten mostly because I own one. Great smooth shooting SMG.
personally, I would rather have been issued the Gewehr 43 or the Sturmgewehr or the Garand M1 or the FG42, but if forced, it would be MP40, more reliable. Can I choose the M3 grease gun?
Man, I love this channel! You can say it like it is, Hitler let the entire British army escape...
I have had the privilege of fireing both of them in my life and i must say i enjoyed it alot, the only down side was it took longer to load the magazine's then it did to empty them!
Did you go rent them, or did you know someone?
I been thinking about going to a rental place to shoot some of these historic guns.
@@deejayimm i knew a guy, i also knew another guy that had a tec9 and a uzi i got to play with that was fun as well but even back when ammo was cheep it got expensive rill fast
Errors in the design history:
1) The Lanchester was design started in 1940 (not pre-war) and is in fact a reverse-engineered MP28, which was a improvement of the original MP18.
2) The Sten was designed as a way of simplifying the Lanchester and making it cheaper to produce.
3) The British stopped buying Thompson SMGs mainly due to the cost - they needed their money to buy things before Lend-Lease was passed and expensive SMGs were not on the list.
4) The side feeding magazine started with the MP18 using the only available magazine, rather than design one from scratch, which was the snail magazine that fitted a Luger. It was NOT so you could lie down easier!
5) Yes the double stack single feed magazine was a problem that was solved then the British adopted the Stirling SMG as that had a double stack double feed magazine with rollers. It was probably the best magazine ever designed & the Stirling was designed as an improvement on the Sten.
I want something that goes off when I want it to go off, and doesn't go off when I don't. I love the Sten though, and it could be as reliable as the MP40.
Having tried both, the MP40 is MUCH nicer to shoot...
The bolt slams forward after the last round on both weapons. The Thompson M1A1 bolt looks back after the last round is fired.
Took CZcams 5 days to notify me of this video.
Ps. Mp40 in my opinion rules
It looks cool but you know that baka lite was irreplaceable In action
I prefer the look of the MP4. However, I agree that the Sten is superior as the weapon I would have wanted in the trenches and on the battle field.
Are you high. The sten is probably one of the worst SMG ever made. It was cheap, easy and quick to manufacture and was just good enough to be a functional SMG. As that's what this British need at the time. We did not have the time, money, or resources to make a good SMG after Dunkirk, we just needs a gun ASAP. The sten is what they came up with. It basically did the job, but not much else.
Going prone at the ranges a sten gun is effectively, is almost completely pointless. It had about a 50 m effective range due to how inaccurate it was. Bad sights, heavy bolt, open fire bolt, dismal ergonomics meaning it was hard to aim and control. At the ranges this gun was effective going prone would be a last ditch move. You'd be looking for hard cover, moving quickly from building to building it's a CQB weapon not a battlefield weapon.
MP 40 had the same issues but was easier to control and fire with vastly superior ergonomics, much better sights, and better balance due to the magazine feed from the bottom. The sten design almost exaggerated all the issues of an open bolt SMG, whereas the MP 40 seemed to try and mitigate them.
I am currently building a vertical STEN and wish to know what color is the STEN in the picture . .....$100,000 worth of arms on one table !
Gotta love the Germans.
Even when they are building a "cheap" mass-producible gun, it's still over-complicated.
I wonder what it's like to live in a world that cares that much about quality....
I grew up in the US, all our shit comes from China.
They build quality firearms 👍
The Sten safety sucks according to Canadian soldiers who used them. When slinging the gun over your shoulder the safety would release and that was not good for the soldier.
I have heard the magazine between the MP40 and the STEN are interchangeable. True or False?
false.
There are some videos on youtube demonstarting it. The sten mag is much too wide for the mp40, but the mp40 mags might fit certain sten guns, I think.
I have the CO2 version of the MP40, maybe they would want to re-do ‘A Christmas Story’ whereby punky boi could shoot his eye out on full auto and smoke all of the striped bad guys in a traumatic, well thought out manner.....just sayin’....
I understand that the Sten gun was used with the resistance troops.
As an "ex" army armourer, I was told years ago... early 1950's that the Sten Gun was originally manufactured to supply the resiistance troops in Europe, cheap to make supplied to the resistance by air drop, and also could use the German P38 and P40 magazines which were available from captured German weapons... Cdn army armourer
The rule
The Australian Owen gun trumps both of them. Ask anyone who has used all three.
Great video - but please brush-up on the meaning of 'Great Britain'.
The British nicknamed the Sten the stench gun. The Sten was purely a cheap desperation weapon. Their Enfield rifles and .303 cartridges here hopelessly obsolete. The Bren machine gun was pretty good though.
How was the .303 Enfield obsolete during ww2. When, like the British, most of the German army used bolt action rifles. The K98. Your talking nonsense.
.303 is 7.69mm with a bigger cartridge than 7.62 NATO - That round hit fucking hard. Performance is almost identical to 30-06 Springfield and only slightly less powerful than the modern 7.62 NATO dispute the NATO round being smaller... Advancement of technology n all.
Sure the 8mm Mauser was a more modern cartridge that things like later 7.62 NATO round utilize, but performance wise in a bolt action rifle .303 performance was on par with it. .303 was rimmed so bad for automatic weapons but in a bolt action rimmed or rimless made very little difference and bolt action rifles made up the vast bulk of guns used by both the British and German forces.
@@MrBeardedgelfling The 303 Enfield was obsolete even before WW1. the British knew this and intended to replace it, but moved to slow and were interrupted by the start of WW1. same thing happened before WW2. The US army at least replaced its bolt action rifle with a semi auto. The initial design intended to use a 7mm cartridge, but Douglas McArthur intervened and insisted we keep the 30.06 that was way too powerful for a semi automatic rifle. Both the US and Great Britain were stuck with military leaders who were pretty ignorant of small arms. The Germans were stuck with Hitler, which was why their infantry continued to use bolt action rifles.
The Enfield rifles obsolete, no way. The rate of fire incredible. 1000 yards target fantastic. At army Base. Sterling not sten, clear a room in seconds.Practice other bases
@@johnturner8383 Don't be a dick you wouldn't clear a room with a AWM it's also a bolt action rifle and went into service in 1996. The right tool for the right job.
Would be like me saying pistols are obsolete because they can't hit and kill a target out to 1000m like the AWM or Lee Enfield can.
Obsolete literally means out of production, no longer used. In the case of the SMLE this is wrong on both counts. The gun is still made and still used. Sure it is out dated, but it still works like any other bolt action rifle and performance is more than adequate to easily kill someone at 1000m with good optics and a trained shooter.
The sten is a pipe
P.S. If bake-lite is so durable, and awesome, why change to polymer? Cost? I mean, why are we not still using it?
Try firing a mp40 in the prone position.😢
didn't see anything ref in the field
The mp40 is much better. Better ergonomics, much better sights, more accurete.
The sten is uncomfortable to shoot and the mp40 is pleasant to shoot.
Good information but with soldiers you want the one that doesn’t seem like it’ll blow up on you. Opinion not facts
The STEN was so good they the Germans copied it.
Your totally confused & didn’t hear the history facts the MP-18 was the first Submachine Gun built & used in combat
Also the German Gun & Rifle designs were so good that many guns even today took design ideas from German Rifle designs into building other weapons say like the flap on M-16’s that came from the Stg-44 and anyone who tries to not admit that many weapons today got some inspiration from the designs of the German WW2 weapons is misled simply
I believe the En in sten was England not Enfield
No, definitely Enfield.
Just a black screen.
The Sten ??????? I knew someone who had one what a P.O.S. !!!!!!!! spring breaks fit and finish sucked etc etc. etc. think of a Brit cars electrical system only worse.. Really Wow. Over the Mp 40 ?? are you for real ???
Imagine a 1000 rnds with broken baka lite...hands be all to h*ll.
I never had any problem with the electrics on Brit cars, or with the Sten.
The STEN was designed to be mass produced In a hurry in order to win a war, " fit and finish" was never even considered, they worked and thats what mattered.
Yank cars are a joke. Their motorcycles are no better. Harleys are loud, underpowered crude things that go round corners like container ships and take a week to stop. Better off forgetting the brakes and just put your feet down. Classic US - BS, image and appearance over function.😂