Sten MkI & MkI*: The Original Plumber's Nightmare
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- čas přidán 21. 05. 2024
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The Sten gun was designed by RSAF Senior Draftsman (sorry, Draughtsman) Harold Turpin in December, 1940. He sketched out a simple trigger mechanism on December 2, showed it to Major Reginald Shepherd the next day, and then finished out the rest of the submachine gun design that week. The first prototype gun was completed on January 8, 1941 and it was tested by the Small Arms School that same month. The design was approved for production (alongside the Lanchester) March 7th, 1941 and the first of 300,000 Sten MkI guns was delivered to the British military on October 21, 1941. The MkI and MkI* Stens were all manufactured by the Singer sewing machine company in Glasgow, with three contracts for 100,000 guns each issued in 1941.
The Sten was the British response to a dire need for a large number of cheap infantry weapons, and it served that purpose well. The MkI was quickly followed by a somewhat simplified MkI*, which discarded the unnecessary flash cone and the wooden front grip. An even simpler MkII optimized for mass production followed, along with a MkIII. As the end of the war approached the MkV was introduced which had much improved handling, and it would remain in service until the 1950s, when it was finally supplanted by the Sterling.
Many thanks to the Royal Armouries for allowing me to film and disassemble these rare submachine guns! The NFC collection there - perhaps the best military small arms collection in Western Europe - is available by appointment to researchers:
royalarmouries.org/research/n...
You can browse the various Armouries collections online here:
royalarmouries.org/collection/
utreon.com/c/forgottenweapons/
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www.floatplane.com/channel/For...
Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! shop.forgottenweapons.com
"I've had an amazing idea at the pub, now I'm going back to my shed to cobble together a prototype." - Every British inventor.
usually after a "one more for the road please"
«Everything good that came out of Britain, came out of a shed»
James May
I'm sure many British stories start with:
"So I was at the pub..."
@@DustyGamma The good ones at least. sm
Damn, maybe British people need to go back to spending more time in their sheds. Who knows what might happen!
imagine being promised an ''improved Lanchester'' only to get a partially skeletonized toob
I could argue that in a combat submachine gun anything more than the bare minimum required is just more to go wrong, so in that sense it _is_ improved. 😊
@@Kevin-mx1vi and no need to spend time polishing the brass bits.
@@Kevin-mx1vi Which is why the MP5, which is a rather complex sub machine gun is so beloved?
Peacetime smgs are a different proposition to wartime OH GOD WE LEFT ALL OUR GUNS IN FRANCE!!! submachine guns.
Haha tööb
War time small arms procurement officer, "Still too bloody complicated, simplify it! "
"Well sir, how about we just make some metal sticks and have the troops throw them?"
"Yes! do that! 1 000 000 please!"
My parents were young adults during the war, the Nazis had stormed through the Netherlands, Belgium and France very quickly and were now just across the water. Everyone thought it would be about two to four weeks before they crossed and invaded, so everything was done in a hurry!
how about a barrel and a ball-peen hammer
Cost 2£ 6s in 1941, about $9-10 American! 45 cal was made also, serious collectors item, in good shape! 3.4 to 4.6 million manufacturered worldwide!
Wanting 100,000 guns after the first prototype had just fired 100 rounds speaks to severe desperation
You know if Dunkirk didn't happen British expeditionary force would face same fate like their wwi counterpart.
pS, they literally forced to dumped army worth of equipment, including their small arms like Thompson.
Bought Thompsons after Dunkrik
@@tomhenry897 I though they have it since early days of invasion of France, and at least 10000 in British Army since 1939.
I remember Ian's video on the Bren Mk1 pointed out that the BEF lost about two-thirds of them at Dunkirk - they must have been in desperate need of anything that could spit bullets, even if it was just 9mm.
@@tomhenry897Just because they bought them doesnt mean anything they still needed guns asap and a few pieces of pipe seemed to work well enough and they could cobble them together quickly
I met Turpin several times in the 1960-1970's he was a member of the Chingford and District model engineering club, he made model live steam locomotives in his home workshop, in Enfield.
Well... that certainly tracks.
🤯
Good Cop: Hey would you like a friendly arms contract?
Singer: Um not really?
Bad cop: Too bad!
Ensign Singer, make it sew!
@@MonkeyJedi99 Dad Jokes _IN SPAAACE!_
That muzzle device doubles as a shovel. You can even step on the mag well for extra leverage .
Looks like a particularly evil bayonet to me.
A last resort stabbing device is way more likely than a soldier using it to dig.
@@DB-yj3qcI'm actually surprised more muzzle devices aren't more stabby. Maybe not full on spear point but just some good sharp prongs or whatever.
In Vietnam in 1969, I had a Singer 1911A1. If I had known about the rarity of these weapons back then, I would have swiped it from the Army. It ran beautifully, even though it had a weaker recoil spring.
I used a Thompson as a 'truck' gun. It was missing the shoulder stock, but it was a joy to shoot.
I was the unit armorer for an Air Cav troop. Got to examine many strange weapons captured from the Viet Cong, who used whatever they could find ammo for. Interesting times in another world...
What kind of strange Vietcong weapons did you see?
@@no1DdC An MP38 and an MP40 - the MP40 was in very good condition. 1903 Springfield, and an Enfield [ don't know what model ], a French MAT-49 in pretty sad shape. Got to shoot the MP40 after scrounging some 9mm ammo, and it was a lot of fun. French MAS 49 - sort of like an M14. Some others which I forget.
@@perihelion7798 Very interesting. I suspect the German guns ended up in Vietnam as assistance from the Eastern Bloc - they not only provided their own weapons in ridiculous quantities, but also captured guns from WW2, of which they had an overabundance of. That's why a pristine cache of STG-44 rifles was found in Syria a few years ago, for example.
@@no1DdC The VC used a motley selection of arms, like most rebel and insurgency groups. By 1975 they were armed mostly with AK 47s and the SKS.
Singer executives in the US: we'd rather not get involved in your nastiness. Britain: do you think we give a fuck what you want?
Singer (well, Singer UK) would have been bought out not 'seized'. Money wasn't a particular problem for the British Government at this stage. Singer would have been well compensated.
Yeah, more Britain: fair enough lads, here's some money for all those machines and tools, now bugger off home, there's a good chap.
They're British, not South African
Singer UK: “Our parent company in the Colonies has their hands tied by the government refusing to get involved, and will not authorise us to produce arms. What can we do to get around this?”
Britain: “No problem, we shall just buy you out and give you a nice fat contract to make buckets of guns.”
Singer UK: “Ah, most satisfactory.”
@@alastairbarkley6572 The War Powers Act 1939 gave the Government the right to seize just about anything in furtherance of war aims.
I very much doubt they bothered with compensation.
They will just have given it back when they were finished with it after the war.
A manual explains that the single shot function was to reduce ammunition use when used to suppress enemy fire (ie rather than when a specific target was aimed at) but also to hide the presence of automatic fire capacity which would be called upon when the enemy leaves cover to advance whereupon the carbine is used in automatic fire. B*ggered if I can find the reference to the manual which I read but this was dated 1944.
Also came in handy with the silenced versions.
Training films have the same thing
Makes sense. Deceiving the enemy on how strong your position is is well established tactics.
@@hanelyp1ungentlemanly!
It's great to see you're in the Royal Armouries Museum in the UK which houses thousands of iconic weapons throughout history!
Why?
@@nospoon4799 because it's where Jonathon Ferguson, Keeper of Firearms and Artillery for the Royal Armouries Museum in the UK, which houses thousands of iconic weapons throughout history, works.
You probably need to check out his videos for the Gamespot channel to get the reference.
@@nospoon4799 because they enjoy the content of...
Jonathan Ferguson, Keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armouries museum in the UK.
Always pisses me off that they don't say Leeds. I suspect that's why Charlie Stross had it be destroyed by an invasion of elves.
One of the best collections in the world but ironically almost every thing in it Is a long prison sentence for the British people to own
I sew for a living and i listen to your videos while i am working because i love hearing about the history of different firearms and ive always thought the same people who make sewing machines must be the same people that make machine guns. Both have a ton of moving parts that move lighting fast and consistently work together.
It's fascinating, isn't it? Same with Typewriters. People know Remington. But Remington Rand got in the mix to produce some firearms as well.
I've sometimes heard people describe a good machine gun as running like a sewing machine.
Well Singer made 1911s that were considered so well made that the company contract was ended for them to make aircraft part. This was after making maybe as many as 500 1911s.
Singer also made 1911 pistols in WWII, some of them are worth more than $500,000 USD today.
It’s 8am, there is no better time to learn about guns. Thanks forgotten weapons
Singer:"Are the guns at least good?" British:"I mean, they work."
IIRC, we Aussies were paying $320US or so per Thompson kit in 1940. That's about *$7000* today!
I think the cost of the Thompson alone is why it got replaced by the M3 Grease Gun late in the war.
In 2006 the British taxpayer finished off paying back the wartime loans to the US.
@@walsingham-xxiii I wonder when the Germans will be done paying back the Allies LOL
@@walsingham-xxiii ...and I didn't get any of it. 😮💨
@@walsingham-xxiii I wonder when zelenski and Israel will repay us? NB they won't
I’ve always loved the Sten gun.
TOOB
Same...My favorite as well...
Too bad their users hated it. Unreliable, unwieldy. Easy to jam the magazine because there's no secure grip
The only good thing about it was that it's dirt cheap and made in the millions
@@Jreb1865 whenever I stalk a cat down the hallway after exiting the bathroom, I’m holding an imaginary air Sten.
@@gae_wead_dad_6914the grass is always greener on the other side. In the end the Germans used captured ones and also made their own copy so it can't be that bad. It was also used postwar.
If the Thompson is the Chicago typewriter, then the STEN is the British sewing machine
😂
We should be able to get STEN's on the NHS. It would make me feel better anyway.
No officer this isn't an unregistered submachine gun in my car , this is my emotional support sten gun
@@oli1764 You get it!!!
My dad fired a Sten in WWII, he said it was a great way to fill a room with lead.
The flash hider is a nice device to collect rainwater in your barrel
Free barrel cooling. 😆
Got to make tea somehow
Yes, a funnel for pouring water into your tea cup no doubt!
Looks like a bayonet to me😂
@@bulbden8337 anything can be a bayonet if you jab hard enough
British Army: we desperately need guns! Gerry is coming for us!
Turpin: P I P E
t00b
nobody care about those poor smucks that were carrying around a two-legged vickers after the third leg was sacrified to the cause.
This might be the most beautifully simplistic weapon that I've ever seen
My old house was on the Royal Small Arms factory at Enfield. There is a small museum on site with original Sten and Bren machineguns, and Lee-Enfield rifles, and most of the streets are named after people who worked as designers etc at RSA.
Love the fact that a toy manufacturer, Line Brothers, took bare-bones design and made it even simpler, quicker, and cheaper to mass produce.
at the time toys were made of metal parts including metal stampings. if you can mass produce a child's scooter or even a spinning top then you're good for arms manufacturing.
@@gleggett3817 And metal stampings on this scale were not really a thing in traditional weapons manufacture, so arguably the toy company was better set up for this modern kind of arms manufacturing than most arms manufacturers were.
At the outbreak of W.W.II, thanks to their die-cast & clockwork toy trains, Meccano Ltd were one of the few factories in England that could produce complete bomb fuses.
Being a toy collector with a keen interest in history, I find these sort of connections fascinating.
A few years ago I visited Berliner Unterwelten with some friends. They have a collection of rusted Soviet and German weapons from the battle for. Among that rusted collection was a sten. Unlikely a German copy, the mag was horizontal.
What’s that doing there? We asked ourselves. Lend-lease? The Soviets had an abundance of PPSH. Some ‘research’ ie Google later and it appears it was probably captured and issued some hapless young boy or old man. The Germans liked and used captured Stens.
Roll on a few years and we’re shooting WWII era at a very nice range in Krakow. I chose a PPsH in my ‘bundle’ along other allied (mainly British) and German firearms. “Why choose that?” Asked my patriotically Polish instructor. “It’s iconic,” I said. “It’s a piece of sh!t!” He said. “Well you don’t have a Sten” I said. “Fair enough.” I got my best group of the session with the PPsH. I’m not a natural.
I did shoot a Sterling as an Air Cadet, but a Sten is still on the bucket list.
Same trip we were in Warsaw in the Polish Army Museum and Warsaw Uprising museum. Both worth a visit. They have a collection of Stens and workshop Polish copies and other home made SMGs.
Interesting. D'you think that Sten was part of a drop of weapons to a resistance group? AFAIK, a very small amount of military aid was dropped at the time of the Warsaw uprising (IIRC, parts of Poland were within range of the Shorts Stirling heavy bomber). Actually, the dropping and the bombing were symbolic, rather than any use to the Poles and probably only to satisfy Stalin that the Western Allies were doing SOMETHING rather than just not opening that second front. Of course, the Germans were very efficient at organising the collection and recycling of enemy weapons of all types - particularly towards the end of the war. A ton of Sten guns were dropped on Western Europe during the whole war. Many would have fallen directly into German hands.
@@alastairbarkley6572 the one in Berlin could have come from anywhere, I suppose. Regarding drops during the uprising specifically, I think the Home Army had been squirrelling for a long time. From memory, some of the workshop Stens were near identical to the British made ones. I suppose a real expert might know the difference.
Definitely both museums are worth a visit. I too enjoyed shooting some interesting guns in Poland. At an indoor (unfortunately) range in Warsaw..I booked the "WW2" package. Various pistols...the Instructor was a bit surprised when he handed me the 1911 and said "You will like this 45", and I said "Yes, I have one at home..." ( I shoot pistols competitively!) The SMG's were a Ppsh-41, PPS-43 and an MP-34 (that I very much wanted to STEAL! lol) Various Bolt Actions... and then a ZB-26.(Which was interesting having shot a BREN in Australia) .. a DP-27 (best fun of the 3) and an MG-42. (MUCH heavier than they look) The young instructor was at first surprised I think to have someone there totally familiar with guns... but he soon relaxed and started to have some fun too. The MG's were all (obviously) old and well used... and kept having stoppages... but he really wanted me to get a good long burst from each, so he kept working on them, and loading far more ammo than my package had included... It was a fun session.
The germans did in fact make absolute copies of the sten, complete with horizontal mag well. No one knows exactly why however. After that we have the last ditch SMG manufacture with vertical mag, to match MP40 style.
6:20 to 6: 40, learning about a 84 year old sub machine gun , thanks Ian. You are appreciated.
This is one of the most essentially classic FW episode in ages. Thank you, Ian. I really appreciate this historical lesson.
Some years ago I was doing some work at Hillside railways workshop in Dunedin New, Zealand. They had found some bodies of Sten guns, no bolts, just the body and stock. Someone did some research and found in the records they were made there in 1943-45. They even found original invoices showing they were costed at 1s 6d each, about 15 cents in today's money!
That's not 15 cents in today's money - that's just a different way of counting the value of the currency back then. It's actually $7 (NZD) in today's money with inflation - or $4.25 (USD). Keep in mind that purchasing power inflation isn't all that applicable to military contracts.
@@no1DdC I put 15c to let people who have no idea what 1s 6d means what the cost was in the 1940s, not what the inflation adjusted price would be today.
You could have just said 1 shilling 6 pence. The British and parts of its former colonial empire have the most convoluted system of coinage and currency that I've ever seen. At least somebody had common sense to finally decide on decimalization. And one last thing, I'll say that the system of measurements the metric system makes much more sense.
Do you know Kevin James?😝
If there was ever a firearm that epitomized “function before form” the STENs were it.
At this rate there would be nothing left for Jonathan Ferguson The Keeper of Firearms and Artillery at the Royal Armories Museum in the UK, home to thousands of iconic weapons throughout history to review.
Not with their inventory
He’s got an entire warehouse of unopened draws to go at 😂
@@tomwinterfishing9065 God, I hope so 😳🥵🤤
I love how everyone comes down hard on the sten, but over the next twenty years half of the world’s submachine guns were basically just a variation of the sten. The greasegun, m76 etc were all basically just a tube, bolt, barrel and magazine.
There were other smg that used a tube receiver before the Sten. And a lot of them did it better before and after the war. I've shot a Mk II in full auto and at 35 yards I hit a gallon milk jug with 4 rounds total. And it only ran if the ammo was lubed. Might have been just that gun but doubt it from the stories out there from WWII users
And then, there's the Kel-Tec Sub2000...I think of those classic tube guns every time I handle mine.
@@kirkstinson7316 very true! I’ve also watched cops on the range that couldn’t hit a milk jug with one shot out of 18 with their pistol at 35 yards. I have seen online guys do well enough at 50 yds, but they probably are aware of their Stens individual idiosyncrasies to make up for the piss poor sights and mag feed issues. For clearing rooms and close quarter street fighting the Sten did not bad for $8
@@waynemanning3262 Yup. Being able to hit a man sized target at 300 yards isn't bad. But in some very common battle situations, close quarters or against a massed formation, being able to spray bullets in the general direction is useful.
@@kirkstinson7316, i have a slew of Sten Guns, mostly MK-II. each one has it's own unique personality. That said, none of mine require any special care to fire reliability or accurately. In fact, i typically feed it the ammo i find dropped on the ground after an event. I just put it all in an ammo can for next time and load the mags with what a handful at a time.
Good Job Ian! I had the pleasure of firing a Sten Gun (MK5) in 1982 while stationed with Her Majesty's Forces! I loved the opportunity! The Gun was not a disappointment!
My understanding was, the semi-auto feature and calling it a 'carbine' was that in use it was to be fired mosty in semi-auto, to save ammuniton if nothing else. And it was to be able to fire fully auto as the situation required. The same for the later Sterling.
Right
Look at British training films
The SMGs were to be used on semi automatic to save ammunition
Don’t know how it was really used
@@tomhenry897 One has to assume that the term "hit probability on a moving target" wasn't something discussed back then and that even with SMGs, the British were still training marksmanship, which is silly.
@@no1DdC The idea was that an unaimed shot was a wasted shot because most of the time the shooter was probably closing his eyes to do it. By forcing single shots and marksmanship standard it meant more shots were lethal shots, even with fewer rounds fired and slower overall rates of fire (And less suppression). There also the idea of suppression fire as indirect fire magnets, better to shoot once from a concealed position and kill, than to sit and suppress and wait for counter fire from the rest of the enemy formation because your accuracy was bad.
Singer: We don't want to get involved!
UK: Yoink!
36 Days, it would've been quicker but you know tea breaks ☕🇬🇧
There are anecdotal tales of the Germans wondering why the Brits suddenly ceased fighting during a battle... Tea took priority... apparently!
@@skyd8726 our tanks were fitted with kettles, can't save civilisation without a brew on hand.
Many thanks.
Looking forward to the next installments.
Thank you for your work.
The Sten gun has got to be one of the most iconic submachine guns of the Second World War, a gun often associated with British commandos, resistance fighters and partisans. Despite its flaws it became iconic especially for being the 2nd most produced smg of WW2 only behind the PPSH-41 and for its compact design. Thank you Ian for telling us such an incredible history of a famous firearm.
From 1942 commandoes were issued with the Thompson
I silver-brazed a hunk of steel to my upper receivers and dovetailed in a rear sight, so I could have drift-adjustments for windage. I just used a v notch rear sight, because it's fast and easy to understand. With the silencer mounted, I could keep 6-7 rd bursts on a mans torso at 25m. Not bad. Cyclic rate was 600 rpm. I never got to test them without the can's being mounted, but you could write your initials in a wall with just one arm, at 20 ft. Buttstock tucked between your ribs and upper arm 3" chunk of Uzi barrel kept normal 9mm ball ammo subsonic I testfired them down into a hunk of log, out in an old barn, a neighbor's house just 25m away, in Southern California. . So, yes, they were pretty damned quiet. 1985, Wilmington, CA.
The Australian plumbing (The Owen SMG) was by contrast a makeshift masterpiece.
Thank you Ian. Looking forward to the test of the series.
The Sten magazine fitting into the Bren Ammo Pouch makes a lot of sense: for its time the '38 Pattern was a modern intigrated load-carrying system carefully designed to complement the modern Battledress, which was basically streamlined for maximum efficency.
But they actually had to extend the pouches to fit Sten gun magazine pouches, which can be seen with Mk III pouch
while you were there, did you see Jonathon ferguson, keeper of firearms and artillery at the Royal Armouries Museum in the UK, which houses a collection of thousands of iconic weapons from throughout history?
Yes: czcams.com/video/ZmO-NDLEC5A/video.html
Last time I was this early, His Magesty's armed services could give me a proper Tommy Gun
It was his Majesty!
so now he's a mage?
Screw the Thompson.. I would gladly take a Grease Gun over this.
Love the wood on the Sten Mk1! It gives it a nice look to the iconic tube gun that I love!
An excellent history of the STEN, thank you!
Im not a gun person, but from a military history perspective, these are great videos....thanks...
Great start to what I'm sure will be a fantastic series which I am looking forward to watching. Thanks.
I loved this and look forward to the next installment. I really enjoyed eating my lunch to this. The most interesting part was the development history and the breakdown of the name. My grandad was HMAF REME rank of Craftsman from 1953-56 occupational forces Germany and he carried a STEN in his recovery vehicle.
Thanks for bringing that to us very informative
I love when Ian does development series. So cool to see how a weapon changed over time
Thanks Ian long overdue
I always liked these guns every since I saw 8n movie 'the longest day ,the 6th of June! So much that I built one from pieces and a receiver machined out of a piece of 4130 tube! Mine was a sten 2!
Thank you Ian!
I really enjoyed the Thompson series, so I know that this is going to be great! Thanks Ian!
I bought an MKII kit a few years ago when you could still get them without mortgaging your house and fashioned a receiver/barrel out of wooden dowels, looked cool on the wall. I have a spare receiver/barrel fashioned in the same way just in case I run into another kit.
I am always amazed how the curators don't sling you out the door when you start taking apart their historically important submachine guns. As ever , totally enjoyable. Good job.
They HAVE to take them apart themselves for maintenance, man. Further, these are firearms, not delicate flowers. They are devices of hardened steel that are (usually) designed to survive the most extreme conditions and still hold together.
1) Everyone is always temped to hold the STEN by the magazine, but that is totally wrong as it puts pressure on the mag which distorts it, leading to feed problems. That's probanbly the reason for the forward grip. Later marks are supposedly to have the barrel sleeve cradled in the non-trigger hand.
2) Once read a story about a troop who broke his STEN's stock while dropping into the prone position in the manner approved for rifles, with first the knees and then the weapon's butt hitting the ground. He was terrified, damaging the King's Property was a serious offense - he might be facing a court martial. So , with some trepidation he turned the weapon in to the armorer. That worthy took it, glanced at the break and threw the parts into a crate with the remark, "That makes a dozen this week" and issued him a new gun.
I love the workshop quality of these old guns, and seeing welds that you know was done by a real human being.
It's criminal they haven't made a 'quirky underdog' style film about the development of the STEN. I can just imagine the trailer...
*Montage of bookish young man at a university library in a shirt and tanktop adjusting his glasses as he goes over dozens of engineering books*
'to beat the nazis we have to think... differently. Efficiently. Cheaply'
*Inspiring music plays as sweaty workmen weld together pipes*
'Damn you Shepherd, and damn your guns!'
'My darling, I'll come back to you and the kids after the war... I promise'
---
'And here it is sir... we call it The Sten'
*music stops. General's monocle pops out*
'My dear boy, surely you can't expect to send our soldiers into battle with... that?'
*fast cut to dozens of nazis getting mown down*
Churchill (Gary Oldman) *nodding sagely* 'You know, this might just be crazy enough to work!'
Great video mate.
I just love how great a simple STEN still works today as an awesome assault small mg, I shot over 1,000 rounds through Hoan alley runs, and I cannot complain on the gun, it just worked all the way through!
Great content, as ever.
I’m going to look at a weapons collection on a military base next week where they’ll hopefully have a full set of Stens.
I’ll now have a better idea of what I’ll be looking at; so thanks for the lesson. Every day’s a school day!
I was at the Armouries on Sunday! I love it there 😍 it’s like my Jerusalem. My partner: not so much 😂. Bless her she dealt with me autistically spouting facts and dates at her for a couple of hours before she got “information overload” and went to the cafe to doom scroll for a couple of hours while I walked around barely stopping myself from thinking out loud. You don’t look normal when you’re just saying stuff about guns to yourself.
“Behold! The Sten mk1.”
“I don’t know, seems kinda complicated. Any way we can simplify it?”
Really looking forward to the rest of this series. I know very little about the evolution of the sten
That was so very interesting. Thank you!🤟
Had a chance to fire a Sten last week, in fact. (Full auto and semi.) Wonderful little gun. Easy to control and no recoil. Wish I could own one...
Amazing how the pressures and needs of the war makes development go very quickly.
This is awesome!
I know you've done some videos on the sterling, but I'd love to see a deep dive into their mk differences as well!
All of its beauty is in its simplicity.
Thanks for the video. I would often see the STEN in use in imported British TV shows & Movies. (Some episodes of vintage Dr. Who for example)
36 days from back of envelope to working prototype!
I believe he used the napkin that came with the fish and chips
Thank you for your use of the term CV.
Some of the best ideas just come to you when you have a drink in your hand and nothing in your head.
& then into a shed in your back garden..😂
During training of new recruits the semi-auto feature is a must.
So cool!
Always nice to see Stens. Although I thought that you had alreydone a series on the Sten gun.
Thought so, too.
Kind of hard to think of the ubiquitous sten as a "forgotten" weapon, in comparison to, say, the Mondragon
The Mk1 * trigger mechanism cover which looks like a deep drawn pressing is, in fact, stamped, folded and welded. It's not at all obvious until you study one because the gas welding is so neat on most of them. So often the STEN is described as being made of scrap metal but it is a very clever design made from virgin stock material and not random bits of salvaged bike frame and recycled gas pipe. Workmanship is first rate where it needs to be and not where it doesn't.
Very Interesting Ian , Thank you for Sharing 💥💥💥💥💥💥💥
Hi Ian, thank you very much for this video! It's great that you are covering this interesting weapon.
The Sten MP was also the inspiration for the well-known German offshoots (Neumünster and Potsdam) at the end of the Second World War. A little known weapon is the so-called Spz-l by the Austrian designer Heinrich von Wimmersperg, who was commissioned by the Wehrmacht to combine the Sten Gun and the MP44 in his weapon design in order to obtain an inexpensive and easy-to-produce assault rifle. This topic is described in great detail in the book "Die Waffen von Heinrich von Wimmersperg" with all the design drawings... Very worth reading and an exciting addition for anyone interested in weapon developments based on the Sten Gun.
I loved the series on the Lee-Enfield, so this is welcome as well!
Fricking early gang checking in
Yo! Reporting for duty, sir!
Reporting sir!
Thanks for video and history.
I can't but have a sweet spot for this gun. In our darkest hour. Needs must. And an answer was found.
The pouch size was the reason for the reduction of the Improved Lanchester plus commonality with German magazines. Lanchesters were used by the Royal Navy who had their own webbing pouch supply line for 50 round magazines but the army needed to stick to their own Bren magazine pouches as the standard.
Even the later L2A3 remained at 32 rounds for the same reason as the later webbing pattern was to take the L4 30 round magazines so was of similar deep mess.
One of many hangovers in the history like the single stack being due to the thickness of the P08 Luger grip causing similar thickness in the Luger snail magazine which was then used as the Bergman MP18 magazine which became a stick magazine in the MP28 which was brought back from Ethiopia and was the progenitor of the Lanchester.
it all comes full circle!
like the luger drum mag, a circle!
Ian eluded that part, but does that Bergman heritage implies that Sten and MP38/MP40 are interchangeable?
If I remember correctly. The Sterling magazine held 34 rounds. For the L2A3. Minor point I know. Double stack with roller magazine followers. These magazines probably cost the same as a WW2 Sten!
@@Col_Mustard other than the magazines, no.
@@johnfisk811 I somehow managed to forgot the most important word (i.e. magazine) in my sentence.
Thanks for the answer!
When Sten "replacement parts sets" were brought into the US, I know of several people who assembled working firearms in their garages using electric hand drills, rotary tools files and oxy-acetylene. That is how simple a fire arm it is.
Great video.
Thank you I am quite a fan. You pick guns that are cool to learn about. Because of you I told a bud of mine the gun he had was not German but in the end finish it was a mosen nagant that the Russians lost or sold as surplus the trigger was sweet they had it fixed . You know TomCat
I was just looking up about the sten gun a few days ago and was hoping if Ian had any old videos about the whole topic.
Gun Jesus is real.
Ian is not kidding about the magazine. Also, tension on the selector.
I was lucky enough to get to fire a Sten one time. Very controllable in full auto.
Once again, it takes time & experience to make something simpler
If there was ever a gun that embodied the word 'necessity', I think it'd have to be the Sten. Ridiculously crude, ugly, janky, and perhaps even vaguely embarrassing, and yet it was precisely what we needed the moment we needed it, and because of that, it could be argued that it was perfect.
Introduced the idea that guns do not have to be pretty or high quality (though thats nice), just need to work.
Good enough in the moment is better than perfect long after its needed after all.
@@ogilkes1 Actually, no. This was not the first gun that was made almost purely for volume of production.
I don't know about ugly. I've seen far uglier firearms.
Right on time for the upload to enjoy breakfast with
Amazing presentation Ian - as ever - do you know all this or memorise it before hand?! You rattle through it faultlessly. I always love to see your new subject vids.
Not proofed? Wow, they really did not want any bottle-necks in production. Great video Ian, very interesting, thank you
Unreal wild as. Ripper video. Love ya work lad.😂
Thanks
Sometimes, simplicity is delicious!
Ah, the dear old, much maligned yet utterly iconic Sten. A gun so bad it was absolutely instrumental in ridding the world of one of the greatest evils civilisation has ever faced.
Yes, lets not forget just how ubiquitous the Sten gun was. Assuming that British Empire/Crown forces in Belize, British Honduras and the Caribbean (West Indies) received Sten guns then that's service in ALL the continents of the world except Antarctica during the war. It was more than just a Home Guard weapon.
Well said sir!
The Sten was designed at a time when the invasion of Britain by the Germans could happen any day, there was a huge pressure to replace equipment left at Dunkirk as quickly as possible. The fact that it got from a sketch on a beer-mat to a working prototype so quickly was, and still is, a amazing achievement.
Remember what we're fighting for lads, so the government can import millions of fifth columnists.
At least we're not speaking German...
@@howardmaryon It was essentially a last ditch weapon. They were legitimately afraid of sharing the fate of so many other European nations that had fallen to the Nazis in record time. Luckily for them, they had a great big moat, a massive navy and very incompetent German leadership on their side.