Too Late and Not Much Better: the Austen Mk II SMG
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- čas přidán 11. 09. 2019
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The story of the Austen submachine gun did not end when the Mk I guns were pulled from combat service in 1944. The manufacturer continued to work on an improved version, which would be ready in 1946, after the end of World War Two. Only 200 were made total, and they were both adopted and declared obsolete in August of 1946.
The changes made to the MkII Austen mostly involved increasing the use of die cast components, which fit the manufacturer's tooling and experience. The front grip and magazine well casting was enlarged, and the whole rear assembly was made into a second cast part integrating the rear sight, stock mounting and latch, and fire control group. The one significant internal change was to remove the firing pin from the telescoping recoil spring assembly and make it an integral feature of the bolt face.
Many thanks to the Royal Armouries for allowing me to film this very rare artifact! 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/
Contact:
Forgotten Weapons
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“It’s depressed right now and it will stay that way”
Me too, Austen. Me too
I feel like these would've ended up as a popular prop gun in a lot of 60s-70s Sci-fi films if Hollywood had ever caught wind of it, that design looks bonkers.
Available now with real flashing lights and sounds! Look for it at all major toy stores this Christmas!
@Smartassdroid But no Austens
Actually, most where pre or post war guns, like the Lewis(WW1), the c96(pre-ww1), and the Sterling (post-ww2).
@@korbetthein3072 Yeah the only WW2 weapons in star wars were STG44s and MG34s
While the examples I gave may have seen limited service, they were not common, and as you stated the Sterling was tested during WW2. Honestly, I don't know how stating facts makes one a buzzkill.
“It’s depressed right now, but will stay that way until we open the stock up.”
Same tbh
Was gonna make that joke but saw you beat me to it. Damn
In Ian’s defence if you ever handle one it will make sense. There is no spring tension on that button at all until the stock is open, it just floats free, if it’s depressed with the stock retracted it’s under no tension, when you deploy the stock it pops out and is then active.
Chicken or vegetable?
@@dod957 I think you missed the joke.
That's got Mad Max written all over it.
And in that world, it would be considered somewhat upscale.
SING BROTHER HECKLER, SING BROTHER KOCH!
Yes i know this isn't an HK but i just wanted to refrence fury road.
Cundalini wants his hand back.
Or Mars Attacks, not quite sure.
In two iterations they managed to completely and entirely undermine the purpose of the STEN as a cheap and rapidly produced submachine gun. That takes some effort...
The ethos of that took England a while to achieve. This is an era of craftmanship. To have tradesmen designers go from crafetd quality to mass produced nasty took a while to achieve. Then there is the Colonial aspest, the Poms attitude that Australians cant achieve anything.
In that environment, with vast alloy, copper steel reserves and production...of course there will be things like..oh we made it better for you..and probably with a view...you can also buy them off us perhaps...
It's really funny how that works, everyone knows the STEN is shit. Anyone could make improvements to it but that's not what it was made for
It’s like the MP40 and Sten Gun had a baby that was born and raised in Australia
A very unloved baby too...
With some raider influences...
Raised by dingos.
LOL yea exactly.
The baby was fostered by Corgi Models.
It looks like two Buck Roger pistols glued together
Not surprising that they went with casting the whole gun, the Australians were fairly innovative with their casting technology for the time (out of necessity since that's all they really had I think). They were the first to build a tank (the Sentinel) with a one-piece cast hull while everyone else was either rivetting or welding together slabs of rolled steel or bolting together multiple-piece cast hulls. If you look at a Sentinal it's just like five or six big cast pieces.
Ahh, the good ol' Boob Tank :D
Yup, we didn't have the population to support giant drop forges or huge steel mills for making armour plate.
Side story: there were two major axe manufacturers around in the WWII-post War era in Australia. One of Hytest (formally Plumb Australia, not to be confused with R. Fayette Plumb, an American company who exported axes to Australia...) and Keesteel made by Keech Castings. Hytest made axes the traditional, forged way.
Keesteel was cast. And everyone was amazed at that, because traditional wisdom said you could not has an axe or hammer and have it be as durable as forged one. Yet the mad bastards did it, and they were neck-and-neck for the axe market in Australia in the post-war years. It got to the point where Hytest was advertising themselves as "HYTEST FORGED TOOLS" to capitalise on the traditionalists.
Hytest is no more, alas - swallowed up by Trojan, then Cyclone tools, then Ames - but Keech Castings is still around, making wear points and plates for mining equipment and farm gear, and they've moved onto 3D printing.
And, because it's their heritage, they still cast the odd batch of axes.
Looks like they tried to combine a Sten and Storm Trooper pistol.... but missed.
I’ll see myself out...
😂
@@pacman10182 "pistol"
@@conanholmes8620 its not really that funny
@@Potato79207 remind me next time to ask you if i can lough wen i see something funny weather its ment to be funny or not
Hahahaha no one can see my red face. Did the same thing.
Off we go then.
*Wake up in Australia*
Oh cool, the Austen Mk1.
*About to go to bed in Australia*
Oh cool, the Austen Mk2!
Just Making my Coffee. Pennsylvania..... I Want to Visit Australia One day Hopefully. Peace m8
Why he is bashing it without any explanation is sad.
@@DBCisco I think he covered that to some extent in his Austen mk1 video, but a recap would be nice.
@@billbolton He didn't address 'why' it was 'junk' in that video either. Other than his lack of knowledge about die-casting. I worked at an iron foundry that made die-cast parts using 1914 methods. They made the housings for Mack truck differentials until recently. People shouldn't bash things they know nothing about.
@@DBCisco well apparently Australia thought it was pretty junk as well considering the Owen was produced in much higher numbers and continued to be in service after WW2, unlike these.
This is just an Austen Mk1 leveled up to rank 5 with the predator camo
I hate the predator camo.
Looks like that gun was designed to be used by troops in short shorts, the Rhodesians would be jealous of that camo abomination
Shit, I'm jealous of the thing, and one got access to much better guns, though just barely. Thank you, EU! /s
It does look like a baby sh×#, burped and threw up on it. Absolutely perfect for the short short fighters in rhodesia.
That camo works better in the jungle than you may expect.
that camo scheme was well researched in New Guinea and was used on all Aussie SMG's. Owens were used as scout weapons and extra camo was welcomed when your're at the head of a patrol.
Aussie diggers were wearing short shorts and painting guns with baby poop 30 years before the Rhodesians even thought of it.
...and gives you a comic book laser pistol. Lol
This thing looks like it came from the wasteland, so ya it's an Australian gun.
*n
Raven OOF.
And it's also got a shitty paint job slapped all over it
all these cheapo emergency submachineguns from WW2, and Bethesda gave us....a 2x4 with a mag, a barrel and a trigger stuck into it sort of where they're supposed to go.
Fixed the spelling mistake
This gun is perfectly in style with AC-1 Sentinel tank... considering it it might've been issued inside one - I find this both remarkable and hilarious!
>2 Australian guns in the same day
OH WHAT A DAY!
WHAT A LOVELY DAY!
Man, your time mustn't be human
@@lepidus2918 It's because of the International Date Line.*
* (it isn't really)
Die-cast because it was what Aussie engineers excelled at the time I suppose. We should remember that because of restrictions of materials and skilled individuals in wartime conditions meant that the Aussies had to go with what they knew they could deliver. Many young men who would have trained as engineers were away fighting. Australia had a smaller population than all the other combatants but punched well above its weight.
The aussies loved casting. They cast an entire tank hull iirc.
That is why the STEN was made in the first place. Improving it to make it worse was not very bright. Also the Sentinal took so long in development it missed www2 entirely and is the only tank with a phallus, how very Australian.
Diecasting the furniture of the gun when it derives from a stamped metal version is just insane.
It may be mediocre as an smg, but I absolutely love that weird ray-gun like design aesthetic and grimy paintjob.
Weird. With the rounde part, front cooling fin and some other features it almost look like a 50s 60s "space gun". Could have been a base for a prop for a starwars clone movie.
Austen mkII: kinda defeating the purpose of the sten boogaloo
I don't know enough about die casting to say which one was more expensive to manufacture, but the Mk II looks way over engineered. Even so the Mk II butstock was probably cheaper to make compared to the one on the Mk I. The bolt and recoil spring was also simpler and cheaper, so some parts were actually simplified. But that die casting...
With the Mk I they tried to make a "good" SMG out of the Sten, and failed miserably. With the Mk II they tried it again, and face planted in the worst way. If they had just stuck the Sten bolt and springs in the Mk I, and simplified the stock they would have had a SMG that was decent, and certainly more ergonomic than the original sten, and not that much more expensive to manufacture.
Or they could have just scrapped it and put all the resources into the Owen.
@@blahorgaslisk7763 You might be shocked to find out that the Australian requirements for an SMG were very different to the UK due to very different operating conditions.
Sten failed in military testing due to the spring setup hence the shrouded spring. Also the folding stock was a requirement from the military as well. To top it off they had to die cast as they didn't have the tooling and expertise available to do sheet metal so it was die cast or nothing. They even had to die cast their tanks.
The thing with die casting is once you make the dies and have them working a simple design is no cheaper than an fancy one so it is better you have to engineer in all the features you want for the production when making the dies before production can start. All the expensive work is front loaded in the process.
@@SurmaSampo Nothing shocking about difference in requirements, but I find it interesting that the spring was a source of failure. Ordinarily an open design where any dirt or sand can easily escape is quite reliable
A folding stock isn't that over the top, but the design of the one on the Mk I was more complicated than it had to be. The Sten wasn't a precision weapon so putting an overengineered stock on it doesn't make sense. A side folder would have been simpler but a bit more bulky. But I think a telescoping wire stock would have been the simplest and cheapest. It wouldn't have been as stable but still "good enough" to match the rest of the Sten concept.
With what you said about die casting the folder on the Mk II makes more sense, but it was still over engineered.
It seems most of the design changes came from a whish to make the Sten into something it never was designed to be, a good SMG. It was designed to be a working SMG that could be thrown together as cheaply as possible. Trying to make it a good SMG was like polishing a turd. At best you get a shiny turd....
@@blahorgaslisk7763 Problem is that mud (not dirt and sand) like in the jungles and rain forests where the SMG was most likely to see use contains a lot of fibrous matter like sticks and leaves that get trapped in the spring. Australia isn't able to create a massive standing army so the cheap and plentiful concept of the Sten doesn't help when you need reliable and accurate.
@@SurmaSampo Good points. Still feels like they put a lot of effort into this and never got anywhere near what they were aiming for.
Yes, we only had three smg's in Australia at the start of WWII.
These die-cast pieces of junk were better than nothing.
klavdy klavdyness Which would have been the case if it wasn’t for the fact the Owen gun exists.
And the Owen gun is a far, far, far better weapon than any of those SMGs.
Imagine getting the Sten and somehow making it worse.
Or Australia could just have made the STEN as intended instead of tinkering. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Or outback.
@@Simon_Nonymous Except the manufacturer couldn't get the tooling required to make the Sten - so the larger parts like the bolt were single diecast parts.
@@classifiedad1,
Yes, the Owen gun was a far better design
However, at the start of WWII, there was a grand total of three SMGs available in Aus.
A Thompson, a mp 38, and another old clunker.
Not three models available, but three in total.
Three weapons to help with studying the design
.
Not gunna lie I love the weird spacey 50s shape. Strange allure to it too when it's covered in decaying green and yellow paint
If these things went into actual production and were made in serious numbers, they would have almost certainly turned up in the hands of the Rebel Alliance in the Star Wars films.
With all the mentions of die casting, now I'd like to see a video about die casting -vs- stamped -vs- milled: History and the relative pros and cons and utility and economics of each in firearms manufacturing...
You can tell that this wasnt designed by the guys that had to carry it.. That thing looks so heavy
4 kg empty, and a Sten is 3.2 kg. Thompson is 4.5 kg empty.
@@2157AF those numbers made my shoulder ache already
@@2157AF I was wondering if Iain would tell us the weight... thank you for the data
I've carried a Sten all day as a re-enactor and I can tell you they're about as awkward a gun as you can imagine, I can bet money that the Austen would be 100% worse.
@@jimmyrustler8983 At least Austen is designed to be carried by a human...
It's like no one told the Aussies that it was supposed to be a simple and cheap gun.
Its because they shortened all the words they speak so it was lost in translation
@@MatchBookNotes I think they might have lost some of the technical data package and rather face the embarrassment of asking for a replacement, they just made up their own parts to fit.
@@Kawawaymog What technical data package? This was developed from hearsay.
It's what happens when you let your design team have lunch beers.
Trouble is, some cheap and simple guns didn't last in jungle warfare! Standard sten mk II's had spring rusting problems as well as nowhere for the forward hand to control it that didn't get hot!
You see people holding them by the magazine which is incorrect and caused magazine problems.
Excellent coverage as always.
Cool video.
Love seeing these obscure but interesting armaments.
Thanks Ian.💪👍
I knew it was Australian because of the mandatory spray paint. lol
Well that's some awesome Buck Rogers styling right there! Aesthetically its very interesting. The Royal Armories is indeed an amazing place to visit.
When in doubt, camouflage
It makes it prettier
Gamer; yea the paint job makes it shoot better
Standard on Australian smg's and some rifles used in jungle warfare in South East Asia, was even done in the Vietnam war with some units. Even with austeyr rifles used in Ghan.
G'day Ian- any chance of a video on the SMG that replaced the Owen - the F1 SMG - they were still in service up until the early 90's when I enlisted.
Love to see a video of you shooting these, and your assessment
I really appreciate the comparison of the two firing pin groups. I am sure it added work to filming but it comes across great on video!
Thank you , Ian .
The manufacturer "DC" is in Melbourne, Collingwood and stands for "Die Casters"
The other AUSTEN manufacturer was "Car Michaels" from Sydney
that button aint the only thing that's depressed right now
I understand that it's not a great gun but that marred finish is awesome. Beautiful.
Ian, you're definitely an awesome history teacher somewhere in some parallel universe. Your attention to details, the historical significance of those details, and especially your attention to, and memory for, what some uninterested and uninteresting people might consider "minutia", makes all the difference in videos like these. These videos definitely fall as much under the category of history as they fall under the category of "gun stuff." I think a lot of viewers would agree with me that if someone else did these videos they just wouldn't be the same thing. Awesome work, man.
"It's normally not that stiff. It's just the condition of this particular one"
Given the state of die casting technology pre-war I can only imagine one of these things crumbling in a soldier’s hands.
I worked in an iron foundry that used the same technology since 1914. Mack truck differential housings were made there until recently. I guess Mack trucks are garbage, eh ?
Those Mack parts were probably made of bronze or cast iron cast using traditional sand casting techniques which are thousands of years old. Ian mentioned die casting businesses which made me think of injection molding processes usually used with zamac alloys. Those were...imperfect prior to the 1950s.
Sturm Ruger's guns used large die-cast parts in the 1950's (as with the hand drill they started with).
The paint job is reminiscent of what you'd find on a Rhodesian FAL.
AWESOME! Thank you.
I found this gun in a book years ago and now i finally find it... Thanks!
All this die casting makes me think of the toys I grew up with.
This looks really cool, retro futuristic
The story of this firearm is particularly comedic. Thanks for the hilarious history lesson on the "AUSTEN".
Ian, if you ever get the chance to come across to Australia, you need to check out the Lithgow Small Arms Factory. You can do a self guided tour of the workshops and some of the factory where they made a variety of arms. We knocked together versions of the L1A1 (licensed FAL) and F88 Austeyrs (Yes we love just shoving AU infront of things, quite vivid imaginations) just to name a few.They also have an incredible collection of small arms you could spend a day gawking at, I think you would be quite impressed with it!
Yet again the Aussies are proving they can beat us (the English) at something we thought we invented. Cricket? Yup, usually. Rugby? More often than I'd like. Buggering about "improvinng" a bare bones, functional design to the point where it's worse than the original? Then further improving upon the improvements? Nailed it! :D
Improving the 10 shilling Woolworths gun for jungle use? At least we tried to modify it to work in the area of operations. All the UK has to do is look at the horrible EM2 it developed! LoL
Sad but true. But the Sten was troublesome in the jungles (they worked out the bugs for Europe to make it an acceptable weapon). We tried, we just missed...
How desperate would you have to be to try and spear someone with an SMG lol
It's part of our doctrine, when in hand-to-hand the short weapon with a stabby bit is every bit as lethal as the bloke with just a stabby bit--and you can get closer and under the bloke with the rifle and attached stabby bit. So to answer your question, as desperate as any digger in a situation where you here the call to fix bayonets.
@@TheMrRoc Yea but also its just stupid isnt it?
Yknow for all the issues it has i do really love the look of the thing, looks very atompunk and i think the die casting really helps to enhance that aesthetic
I saw that exact paint job in a school WW2 Pacific war book, pictures of Aus stens. I knew exactly what this was as soon as I saw the picture!
So what you're saying is, it's Austensibly a bad gun.
I'll ask here for suggestions to suitably "punnish" the above miscreant...
At least the Aussies Owened up to their initial mistake.
GROOOOOAAAAAANNNN!!!!!
That disassembly method is pretty nifty, I must say.
Ian @ Forgottenweapons.com The "Austen" SMG, as you point out, is nowhere near the SMG that the "Owen" was. Did they even try to save it when was made obsolete in 1946. I was just doing some research on the "Owen SMG" and found a film of Australian Army Jungle Warfare Training made in the late '50s to early '60s, based on the fact that the soldiers are using L1A1s, but some soldiers are indeed carrying Owen SMGs. (It even shows how they were supposed to fire the weapon; by aiming the same way one would when using 30° to 45° offset buis on an AR15) The Owen SMG had quite a long service life compared to its "ne'er do well" younger brother. Thank you for the video and your always excellent research!
"Its normally not that stiff, it's the condition of this particular one" I've used that excuse a few times...
That is one FUGLY gun! Thanks for reviewing this, I love it!
This must be the most "Mad Max"-looking gun in existence.
Nice camo.
I've seen a MK I with this camoflage in the dutch national militairy museum
This looks like a star wars blaster...it's beautiful!
Holy crap it's a tippmann 98. Die cast, open bolt operation, and a similarly arranged trigger group.
I was at the Royal armouries a few months ago and I did keep a look out for gun Jesus.
Find any .32 French long for him?
Really nice stylish design actually
I literally just watched the austen mkl video and you upload a video about the mkll
Really cool gun.
Sickening design.
As a comic book ray gun the Austen MK II is pretty cool.
I love that they painted the _inside_ of the side plate.
While the Austen wasn't that great the Australians made for it one of the best tools for loading Sten magazines.
Then, there's the "Kokoda" , another Oz experimental design: guns.fandom.com/wiki/Kokoda_submachine_gun
The Mk 2 Owen and a couple of other attempts at making a more compact SMG
Eventually they came up with the F1. This was a bit of a hybrid but it usefully adopted the excellent Patchett / Sterling" magazine (top-mounted, of course): armourersbench.com/2018/01/27/f1-submachine-gun/
It looks like it's a mix of the STEN and the MP-40. MP-40 backside, STEN front side with a foregrip.
This gun looks like it's straight out of Star Wars. I instantly fall in love with it.
My Father in Law used one during his service in war
This lools like something out of fallout lol
kinda made me think of old world blues.
Hello Mister Gun Jesus Sir, I remember you wearing in-ear electronic hearing protection some time ago, could you please tell me what model that was and how you like them? Cheers
I love these star war guns. Make more pls.
This thing looks like a blaster.
You are the Doug DeMuro of firearms. I do love the reviews on the more recently manufactured firearms. Keep up the good work 👌
Big grin on the 'comic book ray gun' :) Thanks folks!
The STEN has an interesting family tree. The various iterations of STEN British service (MK1 thru 8 IIRC) AUSTEN MK I & II, M3 & M3A1 Grease, Gun and copies made in Germany, Argentina, France, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Israel and probably others.
In fact I think I recall the STEN being a inspiration for a firearm produced in South Africa.
5:06 it does look like something Buck Rogers would use
Looks very sleek and futuristic, like a 1950s SciFi raygun! Love to see it in silver.
Oooh, that would be cool! A chrome austen would be very blinging. I'd imagine Austin powers would use it
Damn this thing looks cool af! Also the paint job reminds me of the Rhodesian baby poop camo
Fun fact, pulling off the front end of the MKII and making pew, pew noises with your laser gun, was more effective than using the sub machine gun.
DC stands for Die Casters who were in Richmond Melbourne (building is still there). The other manufacturer was W.T. Carmichael of Sydney. Production of the MK 1 was split equally between the two.
The point of the Austen has been lost on many people. It wasn’t made to be cheap...IIRC it was even more expensive than the Owen. The point was to be faster to produce due to the die casting processes (a fail) and to put into weapons production the only two manufacturers in the country that had die casting expertise and equipment and who at the time were making less important items for the war effort.
Why do I feel that MkII spent some time in Rhodesia (that paint scheme)? 😉😉😉
Baby poop green also a regular for the Owen smg , its quite simple camo, just blue and yellow mash up .
The tropical camo makes sense if you think about the flora of where Aussies would be fighting Japanese forces. Northern QLD is very lush for example.
Tbh, I don't reckon you'd find any left in Australia either
Lithgow gun Museum
That is seriously reminding me of spearguns made in the 1950's and 1960's.
In spite of it not being a success, I like some of the ideas on this SMG. Kind of forward thinking for the time.
If you told me this Mark II was actually a Mark I that Hollywood had turned into a Star Wars gun,
I’d have believed you.
"Comic book laser pistol.". Spot on
I want that front die-cast assembly. Even a replica just to turn it into a toy laser pistol.
It's like they were so busy making it look like a laser pistol from Mars that they forgot to improve the gun.
6:22 The Austen Clan ain't nuttin to fuck wit
Looks like the MP40 and the Sten had a baby.
You could come to Oz I am sure there would plenty of us here to welcome you
How is the book coming along? I haven’t seen or heard of any updates. Anxiously awaiting its arrival.
OMG! The gun was declared obsolete in a month after being declared AND one of them survived to be showed to us! That's incredible!