The Sten Gun

Who wants to reconstruct a Sten from these Ebay auction parts?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/WW2-British-Sten-sling-dated-1943/350911642130?rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222002%26algo%3DSIC.FIT%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D18217%26meid%3D2448838914588714303%26pid%3D100005%26prg%3D8342%26rk%3D4%26rkt%3D4%26sd%3D271308130460%26

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/WW2-BRITISH-ARMY-STEN-SMG-MAGAZINE-LOADING-TOOL/231082903779?rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222002%26algo%3DSIC.FIT%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D18217%26meid%3D2448822703774223077%26pid%3D100005%26prg%3D8342%26rk%3D4%26rkt%3D4%26sd%3D271308130460%26

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/WW2-BRITISH-ARMY-BRASS-STEN-SMG-CLEANING-ROD/231082902878?_trksid=p2047675.m1850&_trkparms=aid%3D222002%26algo%3DSIC.FIT%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D11%26meid%3D2449138083320752572%26pid%3D100011%26prg%3D1005%26rk%3D3%26rkt%3D5%26sd%3D271308130460%26

Hurry not long left to go!

 

I could just imagine you as a bootlegger with a Thompson.

Cheers

Geoff

 

Ron would have done it in style Geoff!

 

I wonder how much of the folklore of the Sten is purely down to perception. It does feel like it was made by the lowest bidder and this clearly did not escape the attention of those using it.

Interestingly, an RAMC report on 'Accidental discharge' in March 1945 puts the incidents caused by the Sten down as at roughly 20% of British Small arms. Statistically, that makes the Sten, in this instance at least, less dangerous than one of the other types i.e. Lee-Enfield, Pistol, Bren etc...

 

How true, especially when the Sten's compared to the MP38 or Thompson. The MP38 shared many of the Sten's faults, it was dangerous when dropped or if the fingers slipped from the cocking handle before it had engaged the sear, and it shared the silly single position feed magazine but style counts for a lot. I wouldn't be surprised if the Bundesarchiv contains many reports expressing dissatisfaction with the MP38.
When we recieved small numbers of the M16 back in the 60's it definitely had the wow! factor but this didn't last long.

 

Just been looking in the 65th Medium Regiment RA's war diary for June 1944 and what do I find:

Looks like their only casualty for that particular fortnight.

 

An interesting trend on this thread.

Those that actually used them during the war almost universally regarded them as a piece of shit.

Those defending the weapon, with no WW2 service, seem to be dismissive of those opinions and offer technical arguments as to why the Sten must at least be an adequate SMG.

My conversations with infantry vets have been consistent with the opinions expressed here. An unreliable and ineffective gun is the overwhelming concensus. I would have to throw my vote to those who actually used it. These same men revered their Brens and Enfields so with their survival dependent on a functioning firearm, I'll go along with the assumption that they were smart enough to make their own valid assessments. These same guys, while acknowledging the flaws, had praise for the usefulness of the Piat under certain circumstances. Staying alive I suspect is a prime motivator to being very pragmatic in evaluating weapons. If I were a vet I'd be insulted by armchair experts, after the fact and with no direct experience, telling me I was misguided in my view of the Sten.

 

I have spoken with a number of veterans who have defended the gun and blame a lot of the incidents on poor drill and weapons handling.

There is also a lot of crap spoken about the Sten which cannot be true. For example, the age-old 'if you drop it it will fire off a whole magazine' thing.

A well maintained Sten gun will not do this as it has a trigger sear which will catch the bolt on it's rearward movement. In this case, it CAN only fire one round. Incidentally, the same is true of the so-called 'superior' MP40 - another veteran from 15th Scottish Division I have spoken to has backed this up. If it does, then the gun should:

A. Never have passed quality control (but probably some did) and
B. have been noted by the soldier as an issue and passed back to the armourer for repairs.

The latter, if not done, is poor drill again.

ETA: the above is a collection of views from a number of Veterans. A number of others are disparaging of the Sten. It goes to show, that not all the nay-sayers are correct but that the gun does have issues. Nobody is disputing that, however, the facts don't always back up what everyone says about it. Armchair or not, there is something about 'perception' in there.

And I'm not insulting anyone Tim. Just giving balance by what other veterans have said about it.

 

Incidentally, an awful lot of this has also come from Peter Laidler. Whilst not a WW2 Veteran, the man has probably run more rounds through a Sten Gun than anyone. He himself has been told by others that if he isn't a WW2 Veteran, who used the Sten, his view isn't worth anything either.

ETA: From Mr Laidler (taken from a conversation but you get the jist):

Might I make a suggestion chaps............ For those who regularly encounter these buffoons (and sorry to say it, but the re-enactors seem to be the worst offenders.....) who STILL try to pass on this sheer bull manure about the Sten gun, then please feel free to copy the few pages from the Sten Gun book by that what's 'is name bloke. Just pages 303 to 310 should suffice.

As for falling apart, my son who was a little shortarsed skinny 9 year old at the time fired many thousands of rounds through a Mk2 Sten for a high speed video shoot (that we slowed down for students) and we're still using it today! We also spent an afternoon testing and broke about 13 Stens/butts, trying to get them to fire a round after being dropped from greater and greater heights with the cocking handle in the safety slot or in the forward SAFE (pushed through) position. We broke many but couldn't fire ONE.

Some clown even told me (a former paratrooper too.....) that the inertia of the static line snapping would cock and fire the gun that was tucked into the upright risers of the harness, just as you rolled backwards slightly to catch your breath.................. Have you ever heard such pure horse manure?

Ask the man who told you about the gun being used as a 'grenade/scattergun' to phone me up and I'll give him a 4th year physics lesson as he must have been asleep in his class the first time around

 

This issue could be put to rest with a simple experiment. As there appear to be quite a number of Stens, even early ones, still around, I would suggest that someone construct an open topped armoured box, about 1.5m x 1.5m x 1.5m, and then drop a fully-loaded Sten into it anywhere up to 1000 times, with at least one independent witness present. The experiment could be filmed on a cheap videocam and then the highlights posted on Youtube.

The more Stens that could be utilised in the experiment the better.

It might become a viral craze like "tombstoning" - "Stenning" perhaps.

 

Rows over SMGs also seem to ignore the fact that... soldiers like to moan.

I know accounts of the HG at RSAF Enfield having issues with their early Stens, mostly due to poor/overconfident weapons handling. Furthermore across 53 Div in Normandy...

Around 6-10 men are killed or seriously wounded by their own weapons which is clearly documented.
Stens make up 75% of this. Usually due to poor weapon handling or throwing weapons into vehicles, with No4s as the other culprit. Now logically not all cases would be documented so clearly, indeed the figure should be higher. However in 18,000 men... 6-10 cases leap to mind for around a 50 day period. Thats pretty negligible, Army tests also found Stens far more efficient in the hands of most soldiers than No4s, which is rather telling - offering them a good chance to nail an enemy at 300 yards.

Thus the whole armchair general thing... looking at evidence, reading accounts, personally the Sten has got a bad rep partially from its own flaws, partially due to poor handling. I'd argue its more of the latter.

Much like the PIAT where a certain account by a veteran described others struggling to handle it competently and thus hated it, he worked it out and found it a doddle to use. To a greater or lesser extent both are marmite weapons, but to say "If I were a vet I'd be insulted by armchair experts, after the fact and with no direct experience, telling me I was misguided in my view of the Sten" is somewhat over the top. His experience would be on the particular weapon he was issued, not a an opinion from a Battalion, Brigade, Division, Corps, or Army level's worth of accounts.

 

I wonder how much small arms training a gunner received in those days. I recall an infantry vet telling me that he had precious little actual practise with live ammo before going ashore on Sword (armed with a No4 that couldn't be properly zero'd due to a shortage of foresight blades, how British army is that?).

While being casevaced from the Middle East back in the 60's (motor accident) our flight made a stopover in Malta where we were joined by two para's from Aden. Both had almost identical gunshot wounds to the big muscle behind the thigh of the left leg caused, they claimed, by "malfunctioning" crappy Sterling SMG's. In fact both had been travelling in Land Rovers with a Sterling in their laps with the weapon cocked, safety off and finger on the trigger, vehicle encounters a bump or pothole and, well you know the rest. So, nothing to do with the quality of the Sterling and everything to do with poor weapon handling. There's no such thing as an accidental discharge, only negligent ones.

I must confess to my own guilt in this respect, having fired off a blank in this manner shortly after joining my regiment. My platoon sergeant ensured that I never did it again.

 

Does not add much to the discussion for/against but this was in today's Daily Mail:

 

This is interesting:

http://youtu.be/GNxRQckTAjU

 

The standing orders for Artillery of 1 BR Corps in Normandy included orders for Sten guns not to be loaded unless in forward areas or in contact with the enemy.

Regardless of the reality the reputation of the Sten for unreliability and a weak safety mechanism was not a fiction

 

Agreed.As I have never had the first hand experience of carrying one into combat I lean towards believing the experiences of those who did.

 

A couple of veteran accounts on the sten gun.
1) Wife's 2nd cousin was a scout platoon lieutenant with the Perth Regiment and saw action in Italy and NW Europe. He thought the sten gun to be a liability and much preferred the Thompson SMG.
2) While buying a poppy and discussing the Korean War with a veteran from the Royal Canadian Regiment, the vet discussed how they would augment the spring action to make sure the weapon fired at the correct time. Apparently, one of the ww2 veterans could doctor the weapon to increase the reliability.

I will side with Tim. The sten gun was a piece of shit.

 

I've fired a couple of dozen Stens of all marks, and don't recall even having a stoppage. I've seen a particular pair - a MkII and a MkIIs - go through several thousand rounds without incident. They are decent functional weapons with a surprising level of accuracy - short barrels are the only slight deficiency when compared to something like an L2A3.



When you examine a Sten, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the design, quality, mechanical functioning or usability. There is no evidence of any particular design flaw. In the context of historical firearms development, the design and production engineering is extremely impressive.



I think the derogatory Sten stories are mostly soldier mythology, based on a few real incidents arising out of the hazards of issuing an SMG in large numbers to poorly trained conscript soldiers. Undoubtedly the vast majority of real incidents are all to do with bad weapon handling drills, as are nearly all incidents with pistols and other firearms.

I think a large factor that modern commentators also fail to take into account is the context in which the weapon was first issued: at that time soldiers regarded a weapon as something made out of machined steel and wood (eg even including SMGs such as the Lanchester and Thompson), and an all-metal weapon made out of pressings and stampings would have seemed very alien and unnatural. Soldiers in particular have a well-known tendency to gripe about anything new and unfamiliar. Now fast forward to the current era: a modern soldier would pick up a Sten and find it very familiar, albeit a bit heavy and old-fashioned. Thats because modern soldiers are entirely familiar with metal and plastic weapons. Probably today's soldiers will start a similar gripe if and when they are issued 3D-printed weapons that fire plastic/caseless ammo!

So, if we were to have a poll on this thread, I'd be giving the Sten a positive vote and calling rowlocks on most of the "stories"!

 

I fully agree with you. The context of the times when the Sten was created is rarely acknowledged.

As someone who once had an ND (my only one ever) with an L2A3 that was entirely my own fault I can understand the tendency for the workman to blame his tools!

Regards
TonyE

 

Came across an article this evening regarding the Sten, I did not realise that it used 9mm ammo, and its magazine was originally a German design. I read that using 9mm ammo was very helpful to the maquis, and that the germans actually used its design to their own ends - seems it cannot have been that bad after all.

In January 1941 the design department of the Royal Small Arms factory at Enfield, Middlesex, produced the prototype of what was to become the best-known SMG of World War II. The Sten took its name came from the initials of designers, Major R Vernon Shepherd and Harold Turpin (S and T), and Enfield (EN) where it was built. The Sten introduced an entirely new concept into the manufacture of SMGs as previously all such guns had been manufactured using traditional gunsmithing methods (often with the body and trigger housing being machined from the solid); an expensive and time-consuming operation. The Sten, however, would utilise cheap steel pressings, low grade metal, and had no fancy refinements at all. The finish was rough, with no wood being used in the stock or hand-grips and all other components kept to the basic minimum. Even so the first model, the Mark 1, was still considered to be far too complicated and was quickly replaced by the Mark 11, the production of which would ultimately result in over two million guns being produced by the ending of hostilities in 1945.

The Sten Mark II was possibly the most versatile of the several Sten models. The simple blow back bolt was not only simple but was a highly effective system for automatic fire. The Gun itself had a singular tube skeleton butt, a removable barrel and fixed sights. In addition, when mass-produced, the cost worked out at a very inexpensive £2.50 per gun. It would be employed in every theatre of war and was particularly favoured by the French Resistance Fighters because it could be easily dismantled and hidden away in a shopping basket or small suitcase. Another useful advantage for the Resistance movements was that the Sten had been designed to fire standard German 9mm ammunition, thus allowing captured enemy rounds to be employed without problem.

The main flaw of the Sten lay in its magazine. For some reason, co-designer Harold Turpin simply copied the magazine of the German MP40 without alteration, and had adapted it for the Sten. Unfortunately, by this, the lips of the magazine became critical to the feed of the ammunition. The slightest damage was often enough to cause a stoppage, a curse that often beset the Sten when the weapon was fired on automatic. Nevertheless the Sten was a most reliable weapon when kept in good condition and could generally be relied upon to fire with very few such stoppages.

The Germans too were greatly impressed by the simplicity of the Sten, paying it the supreme compliment of copying the design and producing several hundred thousand of their own for use by their Volksturm (German Home Guard) to be used for guerilla operations against the conquering Russians. The Sten would remain in British Army service until the mid 1950s when it was finally superseded by the Sterling SMG.