STEN: How Bad Was the Cheapest Gun of WW2?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ก.ย. 2024
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As promised today I'm covering the technology of the STEN gun, its pros and cons, evaluating accuracy, and covering a bit of history not only of the gun in general, but of the two specimens I had to work on.
A special thanks goes to Michelangelo Neri Orliani for helping in the making of this project
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It's been 5 days where's the video
Bro you forgot something. How can you test an old made gun in 2020? Of course it got rusty and the materials got old. I don't think a brand new one would have all of these disadvantages, sure it will have many disadvantages but not similar to the one you are testing.
its probibley not smart to hold a sten mk2 by the mag
This is the most clever tie-in of the channel theme to the sponsor (WoW) that I've ever seen. Good work!
i'm assuming the maximum effective range is
oh about 50m
Our first lesson with the STEN was memorable. Our Sgt said, "select auto, toss it into a room you wish to clear and slam the door. Grenades are safer."
Epic comment with epic advice is epic.
😂
And that is how the Nightingale was created.
Lol
@@philosophicaltool5469 were you a DI in a past life? Humor like that deep up in the Corps, er, um u got crayons?
I really appreciated "as comfortable as riding a bike without a seat"!!! This is a very clear description of the STEN, its design, and its function. Thanks.
I feel the same way about my KSG, holding your hand that close to the muzzle and getting kicked like a mule.
You know the worth, you have for the bosses, when they send you to war with such an inferior weapon.
😂
That's because it's using the tube stock if you use the wire stock it's much better
@@karlstuck6772 Dunno what you're talking about. England had little money and an over-loaded industrial complex. The Sten put weapons into the field rapidly and in great numbers... and it killed Nazis... lots of Nazis. In a WORLD WAR you do the best you can with what you've got.
I imagine that if you were being shot by a Sten, even at 50m, the inaccuracy of the shots would not be your first thought
Only a tiny proportion of bullets from any weapon hit the target. Mainly they slowed advances, made soldiers duck & pause, etc. Part of a larger strategy.
@@nevillewran4083 so it was "good enough" for war but not as a consumer product.
@@julianshepherd2038 Lots of things had to be good enough in war. If you griped, you were hit with the "can do" reply.
Saw the Small Arms Museum in Lithgow, Australia last week. Best I've visited.
Shame we don't live in the 30s, when you could walk into a general store and buy a Thompson, fully automatic.
@@nevillewran4083 if you had the dough. Thompson’ s were about 2 grand when they came out, I think that’s about 40k in today’s money
@@StoutProper That price sounds about right. Not cheap.
A fave movie scene is from "The Highwaymen", where Gault (Woody Harrelson) walks into a country gun store and loads his car with about a quarter of its total stock, including a couple of Thompson's. So if a Thompson was $2 thou then, I guess about $10-20 thou worth of guns & ammo. Then tells the owner to put it all on the government's tab.
1:00 actually the British were buying a ton of Thompson guns in the early war period, the problem is that they were horrifically expensive and they were buying them with gold and silver reserves that were needed for more important war projects (building factories, ships, airfields ect)
Quite so... the urgent need for weapons to replace those lost in the Battle of France plus to allow expansion of the armed forces to face German invasion meant that the STEN was very good value for money when it was created.
Yeah, the British were initially meant to use the Lanchester As their SMG, but the army decided that they didn’t need to produce any because they assumed the Thompson would be enough to equip their entire army ( P.S , this would be the most expensive logistical mistake the British army would make in the entire war)
All three assertions are quite wrong...
@@Simon_Nonymous expand
@@Simon_Nonymous “ all three assertions are wrong “ - proceeds to not explain why any of them wrong
The Sten played a huge part in helping to win the war, very cheap and easy to manufacture in massive numbers. It re-armed the Brittish after Dunkirk and also armed resistance forces across Europe. It was never meant to be the finest weapon, but had a very important part to play.
you didn't win the war, soviets did.
@@PredatorPeyami no the US, UK and the Soviet Union were allied.
@@PredatorPeyami The Soviets did not bomb Japan to win the Pacific, the USA did. The Soviets did not land in Normandy to break Germany on the Western front the USA, British, and Canadians did.
The Soviets were important, but would have been annihilated if Hitler did not have his eyes West
@@PredatorPeyami And where exactly would the Soviets had been without the 17.5 million tons of supplies sent by the other Allies through Lend-Lease?
@@PredatorPeyami My favorite quote to sum up world war 2 is "WW2 was won with Soviet blood, British intelligence and US steel.".
When I was about nine, my dad drove a lorry for a local scrap metal company, who shipped in a load of World War Two scrap and brought home a disabled sten gun. We painted a piece of wood black for a magazine and my brother and I ran around with it, how we were never stopped by the police I’ve no idea. One thing for certain, we were well respected by our “colleagues”.
Simple times...
how old are you jack?
or more importantly, what year was this?
@@NiSiochainGanSaoirse I was around 10 at the time, I’m 75 now. That would have been around 1957
Damn. If only! I remember running around with bb guns shooting the shit out of each other with my brother and my friends crying about it, doing it again anywyas cuz we're dumb.
@@jackthebassman1OH-what a simpler time.
We trained on the STEN and the proper way to hold it was magazine on the forearm, hand palm down on the barrel guard, fire from the hip. It was meant for the resistance thus the 9mm caliber. Accuracy was never a consideration, and never single shot. Basically you sprayed the area or room for maximum effect. At the time, a factory just west of Toronto, Ontario, Canada manufactured them for $2.36 CDN. It was never intended to be sophisticated or pretty, and if it didn't jam, it was effective.
I entirely agree with you. I used the Sten Mark 4 in the '50s and was trained to spray in bursts of 4. I never used the sights.
Yes it was very very cheap, therefore effective. We made them in Australia. But greatly improved the AUSTEN. Crossed wires, the attitude was if we show the poms we made it better they will be happy lol. Instead of realising it was meant to be nasty and cheap lol. We also made an Owen gun. Same principle except mag on top and improved action to stop jamming with mud dirt etc. Great gun. But same same jump out of the back of a truck brrrrt empty mag. Dunno if Canada had them we had a F1, used L1A1 Lower. Looked cool but if wont penetrate a wet well blanket at 40m lol
@@ozdavemcgee2079 Was the Owen gun used in 'nam by the Ossies would be interested to know ?
@@GG-qo4qo it was , but mainly by radio operators.
I own one of those two dollar Long Branch STENs. Have shot it on occasion, but only as a novelty and in appreciation of its precious history. My Dad carried one in WWll. CDN 2nd Anti Tank Regiment. RIP, Dad.
My cousin has a farm in the Dordognes, FR. He has never found a sten gun but he frequently gets "treasure hunters" knocking on his door asking about Sten guns as, it seems, during WW2, this area was a favourite spot for the allies to drop materiel for the resistance.
My father fought in Sicily, Italy, and Holland. He had been issued a Thompson SMG like the rest of the 8th Army. Some of the American paratroopers of the 82nd had been issued the new M3 " grease gun ". They preferred the Thompson so a lot of Canadians traded their worn-out 8th Army recycled Thompsons for the paratrooper's brand new M3's. When they were moved to Holland, they were rearmed with STEN's
The soldiers in Burma didn’t like the Thompson because it had too many corners and protuberances that rubbed the flesh and in the jungle heat and humidity, caused sores. They all wanted the Owen.
"How bad was the Sten?"
Answer: Pretty darn good actually. Especially for something that was designed to be churned out in their thousands every month. It was no worse than any other tube gun of the period and arguably more suited to its purpose than some. Being inexpensive to produce does not make it unreliable to use. If anything, the engineering work on the Sten is nothing short of phenomenal. That the British managed to create an effective and reliable design with minimal tooling using established pre-war civil industry is truly remarkable. Just like the M4 and T34 tanks were built on existing production lines often using commercially available components, the Sten gun represents the best use of Britain's cottage workshop industry expanded to a national scale. It was the right gun at the right time. And it did its job admirably.
Also worth noting is that the quality of the Sten improved as the war went on. Better stocks were introduced, machining improved and the main springs lasted longer.
Not putting in any way to hold the gun and not setting the sights properly from factory and having no way to adjust them to hit the point of aim barely reduce the cost but defeat the point of even having a gun. It's just an utter failure on part of it's designers and government officials who tested it. Imagine making a hammer with no handle (let's imagine user can't make it on his own) and calling it pretty darn good and effective just because it's marginally cheaper.
@@peterthepeter7523 1) Hold by magazine well. 2) "Sights" on a close-quarter weapon that is not a rifle? 3) Lots of dead Germans shake their heads
The 41-43 T-34 Tanks was made for "Wave Attacks" that you put more tanks than the enemy had and do a massive attack, this T-34 Tanks was really bad in Quality and big part was destroyed, in 43-44 the T-34 was upgrated to the T-34-85 with more quality and used specialy to Destroy enemy tanks so they're better
Read somewhere that Stens produced in Canada were more reliable.
@@Russão000 The design philosophy behind the T-34 was that it is inappropriate wasting time, effort and material constructing a component that will last six months when the tank will be out of action in only five. Moreover, at the time the T-34 first entered service, Germany possessed little effective way to beat it. Hence the _emergency_ development of the 88mm AA gun into an anti-tank weapon. Like the Sten, it was the right weapon at the right time. Of _course_ it soon became outclassed as Russia's enemy geared up specifically to combat that tank.
Don't confuse what I'm saying with thinking that I am not acknowledging the flaws in these weapons, but they were well designed for the _purpose_ they were required to fulfill. If something meets the presented criteria, it is a good design. The FG-42 was a complex and temperamental weapon but it was well designed considering the purpose(s) it had to fill.
I used to have a Sterling SMG as my personal weapon so I’m reasonably au fait with how it and the Sten behaved. First, neither the Thompson or the Sten were considered an alternative to the 303. The Sten was developed as a cheap, mass-producible, close-in weapon. It’s basically an automatic pistol with a longer barrel. Think of it that way and it makes more sense and going for single aimed shots at 50 metres was definitely not its intended use. House clearance at 5 to 10 metres was more it’s forte. Remember it only used a pistol round! The torque reaction on full automatic took some getting used to and the potential for stoppages and unintended discharge was as bad as you say. By the way, my memory may be faulty but the return spring on your weapon (originally manufactured by a bed spring company) looks like it’s allowing the moving parts to go a long way back. A stronger spring might improve things🙂
They showed the design to a Triang, a company who made toysin peacetime. They asked why it was so complicated. The ministry had already simplified it (or so they thought).
@@himoffthequakeroatbox4320 Triang - beloved of all post WW2 boys as a maker of electric model trainsets. I had a Triang variable voltage PSU/transformer with overload cut out - 1950s era - as part of my trains. It did sterling service in my home electronics workshop for more than 50 years!
I've also used the Sterling. FAR more accurate than the Sten, as it was a more finely crafted weapon. Consider it an upgraded Sten.
Bonkers mate. Makes you think though, even today the SA80 isn't what they call a reliable bull pup and it asks the question "Why does the British government not want to spend money on decent reliable weapons for the troops? " Fair do's ww2 was a different time and a foot soldiers weapon wasn't usually a sten.
Two rounds from a dropped UNCOCKED Sterling hit a soldier's neck. The Malaysian army dumped it after countless accidents.
My dad dumped the sten gun he was issued as a sergeant in the Royal Army Service Corps, and picked up a captured German MP40 which he carried through Holland til the end of the war.
So your dads about 100 years old now right? How old are you?
@@ssherrierable never said he was alive. dog brain.
@@ssherrierable he is passed now, I am 63.
@@blackittysamuraimy grandfather had an MP44. But they issued it to him. ; )
Moonman, did he get the Iron Cross?
What soldiers really liked about the sten gone was the fact that you could fire it from a really low position and thus not give yourself away as easily fired in 3 round Bursts it was effective if cleaned regularly. I love the fact that these were found in a cellar and just cleaned up
Their low-cyclic rate made them easy to shoot & not wasteful of ammo.
I was trained on the Sterling SMG. If you had to aim, the target was too far away. At 15 meters you could get a 6in group but on full auto from the hip the group was the size of a man's torso.
6 inch group at that range is terrible even for a submachine gun
Hip fire was a nightmare! I remember experts advise me to press the weapon with my elbow and hip in counteracting directions to make it stable,, plus, the sling adjusted
@@wyattnyfeler7270 That's the max u can achieve with the SMC
Our Sargent said he was shot in the back of his neck with the sterling smg showed us the scars, it was useless, you couldn’t kill a fkn cow at 10 yards
@@wyattnyfeler7270 Agree. Coffee mugs are the standard on that range
“You wicked piece of vicious tin!
Call you a gun? Don’t make me grin.
You’re just a bloated piece of pipe.
You couldn’t hit a hunk of tripe.
But when you’re with me in the night,
I’ll tell you, pal, you’re just alright!”
A friend of mine used a Sten gun as his personal weapon from D+6 right through to the end of the war. His job was driving a Bren gun carrier, pulling a trailer carrying shells to the front areas for the Royal artillery. He was also a armourer. He told me that the Sten saved his life on numerous occasions. It was his favourite weapon. Sadly he’s no longer with us, but I remember fondly listening to his stories of the war..
This never happened.
@@snowflakemelter1172 People did actually take part in WW2. My father did. L/Bdr 13th Royal Horse Artillery. He never mentioned the sten but did the .303 rifle. But his regiment obviously used heavier weapons. I am 74 , he was 31 when called up. WW2 was not long ago you know., people have memories, accurate ones.
Please tell us all these stories.
@@snowflakemelter1172 it were only 15 years ago, i used to frequent a pub, where 2 airmen who flew hurricanes in the battle of britain, drank at the time..
@@snowflakemelter1172 you never left your mother's basement. Come back when you achieved something in life.
The Sten like the Sterling had a purpose. It’s worked for its intended purpose. It’s blow back design of course caused in accurate single shots. But this use was rare. This smg like the Sterling was intended to be small, light, easy to clean, would fire when filled with mud, water, etc which are important points. It was taken on recce patrols where soldiers were trying not to be seen. If they were seen, the Sten was great for spraying many rounds to get away. There are other important points but I don’t want to write a book.
MGs typical fire in bursts of 3 to 5 rounds.
It was a piece of shit. End of discussion.
@@martamatavka OK
@@martamatavka 🤣
@@doogleticker5183 Belt feds and assault rifles absolutely. Gen 2 subguns had a different use. The point was to be a cheap bullet hose that you used to fill the air with lead at relatively close range.24moa single shot accuracy is acceptable when your engagement distance is 25yds (6in spread) and you're probably ripping off at least half a mag. Also these were frequently used by resistance forces. They can always use shitty guns in ambushes to steal better weapons from the enemy.
Thank you for the video. I've seen lots of photos of STEN guns over the years but never seen one stripped down before and had their mechanism explained.
In the 60s I worked with German man who had been captured in North African, put in a pow camp in the UK and liked it so much he stayed on after the war ended. He told me a lot of stories about his wartime experiences but the best one was that because all of the German armaments were made to such tight tolerances they would jam as soon as any sand got in them. At every opportunity they would throw these away and use anything they captured from the Allies, including STENs, because the sand had no effect on them. I found this quite amusing, and it shows that high quality machined parts are not always the best.
I often fired one of these guns when in territorial army. They were light, easy to reload, surprisingly accurate over short range and not at all uncomfortable to fire. A very successful gun, and a popular gun with British soldiers.
2 meter I believe?
so popular, they threw it in the gutter the first time it came in.
So successful that it jammed the exact second it had to kill Reinhard...
@@panzerivausfg4062 that was because the dude put veggies for his pet rabbit in the same bag with the disassembled sten, probably the one case where it wasnt the guns fault
@@thepolishdinosaur9015 Still, the STEN was not a good gun.
It was of course the easy, cheap option for Britain during the war but it didn't prove itself.
The original comment claims "it was popular amongst the British soldiers"
Yeah, about that, it wasn't at all, they hated it, and they threw it away most of the times for Lee Enfields
Imagine an SMG being so bad that the soldier replace it with a bolt action rifle...
Look for chisel marks on the barrels (near the muzzle). When assembling, these should be pointing upwards. That was the british way of ensuring that the barrel is somewhat alligned and may help with accuracy.
I was trained on the STEN successor, the Stirling. One of the things not mentioned here is how it uses Advanced Primer Ignition. Illustrated here at the 6:17 mark. (Best seen at 0.25X speed.) The cartridge is ignited before it is fully pushed into the chamber by the bolt. The generated gas not only has to push the bullet out of the barrel, it needs to stop the forward momentum of the bolt completely before it can push the bolt backwards. This means that the bolt and recoil spring can be much lighter than if it was using straight blowback.
My uncle had one that he sold before the 1968 FEderal fairearms act. I remember watching it fired smooth as silk. My Uncle a gun smith had cleanup all the internal parts so the Sten gun worked flawlessly
What about the magazine?
Damn what a shame he sold it. There was a true amnesty period and had he kept it and registered it, it would be fully transferable and worth a lot of money nowadays.
With all due respect, function over form = Sten.
For what it cost, for how quickly they could be mass produced, I think the Sten was an absolute marvel.
Like the T34 tank
unless your life depends on it... it was rubbish up against German sub-machine guns, and retarded compared to American and Russian SMGs. Some marvel!
The Italians had a wide range of barely functional SMGs , the first one used to kill Mussolini jammed after some Italian cuss words another one worked just fine
My uncle who fought in Burma would beg to differ.Said it was the worst gun ever made.
@@oceanhome2023 The Italian forces had some of the best and worst SMG/MG designs simultaneously.
We fired these along with SMLE Mk4s and Bren guns when I was a cadet in the 1970s. Pretty reliable and easy to use although the instructors always made the STENS safe after any firing in case we dropped them and discharged a round.
Really good video. My uncle ( armourer British army ww2 ) said the sten was partly invented because the British captured literally millions of rounds of 9mm from the Italians in North Africa in 1940 and put that together with a mass produced gun as a doomsday weapon in case the Germans invaded. Literally if one German soldier was killed for every sten it would be a win . Desperate days
That's a point particularly worth making on this video. Italy "gifted" the ammo it was designed to fire, which made it even more suitable for dropping to the resistance as the Germans were able to donate even more.
Correct at the commencement of hostilities there was no strategy to field a sub machine for British soldiers. However as the war progressed and the nature of engagement became obviously different to that envisaged, an SMG became a topic. at about the same time some 10 million 9mm rounds were captured in north africa from an italian logistics depot. the rest is history.
This seems a little improbable to me. I'm Italian and I happen to know a little about our weapons in WW2. Italians at the time had just one rare and very coveted 9mm weapon in line in the Africa colonies, the MAB 38 submachine gun, which was destined to the Colonial Police, because the 9mm caliber was deemed not usable in infantry fights (silly, I know, that's why we lost - morons in command). All the colonial police ordered only 2000 MAB 38 from Beretta, so it wasn't so common. In the Army, Navy and Air Force, 9mm use was confined to elite units. Italian service pistols were in 9mm short and 7,65mm (Beretta 34 and 35 guns), so incompatible with 9mm rounds.
Another thing is that the italian round, being used only in submachine guns, was loaded really hot and had higher chamber pressure than the usual 9mm round issued for the other countries (m1938 9mm round). BTW, the MAB38, in his version MAB38A, is a serious contestant for the title of best SMG of the WWII.
@@vgnlda yeah, I have my doubts to that too. You don't put a gun into mass production to be used in home defence and with plans to retake France, because of captured ammo in North Africa.
It was German ww1 luger ammo, they had about four million rounds of it if memory serves.
I really enjoy the gun restoration videos. They're awesome.
My grandfather was in the resistance and had a sten as well. After the war he hid the weapon inside of a wall and forgot about it. One day he and my grandma were going to church and my (about 8-10 y.o) father and my uncle stayed at home. When my grandpa came back he found the boys playing with the sten outside. They had no idea wat they were playing with lol
Damn, in just 2 generations the kids didn't even recognize a gun when they saw one.
Brings a tear to my eye
@@Nerobyrne it IS a shit gun, after all
I fired my friend's STEN on full automatic. He told me not to grip the magazine, like they do in the movies, and to grip the forepiece. The gun was in excellent condition and had Long Branch stamped on the receiver which refers to the Long Branch Factory where it was produced during WWII.
Is it as comfortable as a bike without a seat ?
Canadian Stens and mags had a much better reputation!
My mother worked at the Long Branch factory during the war. she worked on the draw bench putting the rifling in Bren barrels.
@@alanmacification Yours mother repaired and made sten maschine guns?
funny enough the holding magazine was the reason why it failed to fire in assasination of Reinhard Heydrich
It is funny how TH-cam "gun experts" keep trying to apply peace-time-modern standards to WWII material, disregarding context and circunstances.
The Sten was a gun designed to win a war not an exhibition contest. It was simple, cheap and fast to manufacture, easy to maintain and quite reliable. That is a winner for me.
Even the US army got fed up with the overexpensive and overcomplicated Thompson and adopted the simpler and cheaper M3 Grease gun.
Yeah, fine sentiment, that....but IT AIN'T A GLOCK!
@hognoxious considering both the sten and grease gun were used into the Korean war says it all. Both guns worked and did the job in trained hands, If not the commonwealth and US army would have dropped them like hot potatoes before the Korean war started.
The Stench gun (what some squaddies called it) was everything you said except it was NOT reliable. It was known for stoppages at the worst possible time, that were only aggravated by dirt and the heat of operation. The magazine was single stack, which caused excessive friction (every sub-gun you see today uses double stack design for that reason, they are far more reliable!). And a squaddie armed with a Sten, that got involved in any fire-fight that lasted longer than a minute was in big trouble. Being it was all metal, you got maybe one full magazine to fire through a Sten then it's going to be literally too hot to hold (the MP38/40 and the MP44 had the same problem).
They covered the historical context.
th-cam.com/video/tPGjuiZTuKA/w-d-xo.html
Very much doubt Italy realized they were fighting on the wrong side in WWII, but rather they got their ass kicked and their big brother, Germany, was certainly going to loose the war. I'd be willing to venture if Italy had success in Africa, were able to defeat Greece and Germany were winning the war Italy would not have switched sides.
A successful campaign in North Africa was almost impracticable... We always forgot that the top brass in the Italian army (specially the Italian royal Navy) were willing informants for the English intelligence Service...
The highest ranks were 90 percent free masons (the Italian king included) and not favorable for Germans.
Mussolini's son in law (Galeazzo Ciano) was really well introduced to London's high society and as soon he could (in 1943) he forced Mussolini to resign. The last was arrested but the Germans paratroopers and lt. Skorzeny helped him to evade from the mountain's prison on the gran Sasso... The rest of the story is well know... Galeazzo was killed by order of Hitler itself..
Rommel was well aware of it...
@@francocorrezzola4993 Actually the top Italian Generals and Admirals were almost to a man criminally incompetent, most being political appointees. There were a few exceptions but most of them died early in the war. The impracticality of the war in North Africa however was not down to the things you mentioned but the cruel realities of Logistics and Economy. Italy had neither the logistics to sustain the effort, nor did it have the Industrial capacity to adequately equip their military with good quality modern weapons that were a match for those used by their opponents, and this is bearing in mind the somewhat iffy tank designs the British fielded early war! While Italy did design some good tanks and aircraft during the war they simply could not build them in the quantities they required.
Rommel himself noted that the Italian soldier if given adequate equipment was as good as any German soldier, but their officers were almost all terrible.
@@francocorrezzola4993 that is an excuse for incompetence, Rommel himself said the Italian leadership were incompetent, but the troops showed a strong fighting spirit.
Malta fighter ace George Beurling said the Italian fighter pilots stuck around to fight while the Germans exited much sooner.
if you learn to spell lose correctly, I might one day take you seriously
The scouts( specifically raised to fight in high altitude) of Indian army still use Sten due to its ruggedness and durability. In the western borders especially in swamp areas Sten is still in service.
Says a lot about how bad the indian army is
These have been replaced completely.
Sir, stens are no longer used by the forces. Some select units use the sterling 9 mm auto carbine. Perhaps you got confused between the two.
@@kaliyuga1476 sir what is your nationality,if I may ask?
Sir, I am an Indian.
Nice to see you got them both back to firing condition. Very well done considering their age, and the condition you started with.
Thanks for sharing this video.
That gun seems like something I would design #barelyworks
don't be so harsh on yourself🤣
I'd like to see you 3d-print one in 22lr
@@phileas007 good way to get canceled on twitter. It would be dope tho
@@phileas007 its been done in minituare in Taiwan preproduction proof of concept 25 or 32 maybe? Forgotton weapons.
Forget 22. How about 12gauge lol
Simplicity,that works takes ingenuity!!!! So,no,You could definitely not have designed that gun!!!!
We confiscated many guns while in Baghdad. The one that always stuck with me was a Sten we picked during a traffic control point. We were pretty amazed because no one in the platoon had seen one in person. So we created a mock gun range and took turns firing it.
It’s a horrible weapon, but I rather have a Sten than nothing.
Are you sure it wasn't a Sterling? I've seen lots about those turning up in Iraq.
@@mikeycraig8970 100% certain.
I like the mix of history and technical because usually the history helps you understand the technical decisions. This was a good video.
It wasn't meant to be accurate. It was a close-quarter weapon as submachine guns were meant to be. If you want accuracy use a rifle.
yup, short range little lawnmower.
And yet the most successful SMG is considered by many to be the MP5, precisely because of its smooth delayed action and accurate closed bolt firing.
Something not meant to be accurate benefits greatly from being accurate anyway. Cheap tube SMGs have been outclassed while the MP5 still lives on even in the age of short barreled rifles.
@@ChucksSEADnDEAD an expensive smg released 25 years later was better? well i never.
@@alexrobertson1472 Thanks for misrepresenting what I said. My point isn't that the MP5 is better, my point is that when better SMGs became possible thanks to technology, almost everyone ditched the tube SMGs.
So the claim that SMGs are meant to be garbage is obviously wrong. They were just a product of their time. When something better came along, suddenly dozens of countries wanted to adopt this quality product. And even when HK themselves tried to make a cheaper replacement, the UMP, it wasn't as successful as the MP5 and many countries ordered new batches of MP5s to replace the old stocks rather than newer designs.
I love how people on the internet always manage to make up a new argument nobody was trying to make and then argue against it and do a victory dance. Thanks bud, but that's not where the conversation was going.
@@ChucksSEADnDEAD Not sure I follow here. " My point isn't that the MP5 is better," "And yet the most successful SMG is considered by many to be the MP5". What am I missing? Not being snarky, genuinely puzzled.
My Dad was with the Canadian Army in Italy, but he was a Tanker - but he did use the Sten. He told me that the accuracy was about the same as a 3-year old with a slingshot - and the best way to hit a target was to hold the trigger and wave it in the general direction of what you want to hit. NO accuracy at all! But it could clear a room in a few seconds! The Canadians Famously used them for "Mouseholing" - room to room and house to house clearing in urban areas - especially in Ortona in Italy.
Tell your dad that he really ought to have learned to shoot his weapon. Because his story is BS.
@@thefreedomguyuk Stuff it yourself - I've heard the same thing from MULTIPLE WW2 Vets, and found basically the same thing when I fired the Stirling - they are NOT made for accuracy. BTW - My Dad had a MUCH more accurate weapon that wasn't his sidearm - the gun of a Sherman tank.
@@normmcrae1140 If YOU had the same problem with the Sterling,it's clearly a genetic disorder within your family!
@@normmcrae1140 When I was 17 I was a reservist with the 7th Toronto Artillery. I remember we spent an afternoon at the range at Borden and we got to use a Sten. The paper target was 15 feet away. I think a few of us hit it. We were all pretty young but then again, your dad and his colleagues would have been young as well. The gun was fabulous for what it was designed to do and the conditions under which it was designed.
You can see a lot of interesting similarities and differences between the Sten and the Sterling SMG that replaced it (and I carried when I served as an artillery command post technician in the Canadian Forces in the 80s).
L,oved the Sterling. Never got a chance to try a Sten what with them having been out of service for many years.
That's why a dropped UNCOCKED Sterling fired two rounds into man's neck. The Malaysian army dumped it.
Oh wow the MALAYSIAN army. Did they also drop donkeys and moved on to cars? Did the drop smoke signals and moved on to telephones?
Similar mechanisms indeed.
@@Rudeljaeger
Go back to IRC chatrooms and chat Pokemon with kindergarten kids.
Dude, you're aware that most Sten guns have a tiny little dimple or mark on the barrel to help you align it with the sights on the receiver and barrel nut, right? They were all sighted in and marked accordingly at the factory so that the barrel can be twisted to the correct alignment with the sights and produce a somewhat consistent zero for the iron sights, Bloke On The Range goes into great detail about this and demonstrates the procedure on his video about the Sten, go check it out!
9x19mm STEN Mk.2 machine carbine / SMG at a rather optimistic 100m
th-cam.com/video/yJ4bsZgLO9s/w-d-xo.html
.
My grandfather was an Albanian partisan in the Second World War, he had a Sten, he said that the weapon often jammed, the weapon had poor performance, in a battle with the Germans the Sten weapon jammed so many times that my grandfather got nervous and threw it away. and picked up an italian moschetto 91 rifle
My grandfather was a Royal Marine commando in WW2. He was issued a Sten gun, they trained with the .45 Thompson SMG, was promised Thompson's but got shafted with the Sten gun. The disappointment was huge, he described it as " Bit's of tubes with an old bloody bed spring in it" Not surprisingly he got a captured German MP40 and used that throughout the war.
“Shafted with the sten gun” 🤣
Except you made that up.
The Brits were sensible to want “gangster guns” and the US before the Pearl Harbor attack was a willing seller. The real problem was the Thompson Submachine Gun was insanely expensive, costing about $10,000 in today’s money. You had to be a gangster to afford one. The Sten was garbage by comparison but could be made at a fraction of the price. Even the US adjusted Thompson Gun manufacturing to make it cheaper then went to the Sten analog Grease Gun as soon as it could.
I'd much rather a sten to a Thompson, soley for the weight, I can carry more 9mm than 45, the sten is also 3lbs lighter itself
They didn't want Thompsons at first because they were ganster guns until Germany laid the smg smack down in 1940
The Stens after the first ones which had to be rushed were most certainly not garbage by comparison to the Thompson which also had it's own problems sometimes and genuinely cost the price of a house , each .
or get the drop on a gangster who could afford one 🙂
@@billynomates920 id love to see that 1st what weapon would attack a mobster who has a full auto smg with 1st and the best part is when his friends find you later trust me and they will pay for that info to find you after all id love to be at that show
With open sights you get a clearer sight picture if you keep both eyes open when aiming, as this helps the pupil to constrict and give a better depth of focus. It also means you get a fighting chance of spotting anyone approaching you. Screwing your eyes up isn't as much of a problem with telescopic sights, but it's still a good idea to try and maintain as much awareness of your environment as possible.
I got the opportunity to fire a sten in the 1970's. It felt like I was holding a metal tube with a 2 pound ball bearing bouncing around inside it. Impossible to aim, and probably pretty useless unless you have 3 or 4 mates with you doing the same thing at the same time!
Thousands of dead Germans would tend to disagree!🤔
The iron sights for the Sten in particular is notoriously terrible, I can understand this man closing one eye- a lot of focus is required to see through and center it.
typical English garbage... did the British make anything in WW2 that wasn't garbage.. of course united states supplied them with everything... including men to die for a war they started
When newer, properly maintained & with a trained user, the Sten was an excellent 'stop-gap' weapon. Later versions were better still. Many Allied troops & Resistance fighters valued it highly.
Many engagements are at shorter range against a fleeting target, so rounds at target area are important: you just don't get the opportunity to carefully aim that often. Even misses have a suppressing effect & enough rounds might result in a hit.
Because they had very few alternatives
@hognoxious - your comment deserves a thumbs up for humour.
@hognoxious not sure many call it brilliant...just not calling it crap or a bad gun. It was designed for mass war time production when material and trained labour were in short supply, and it was designed to be easily made and maintained and used in less then ideal wartime conditions.
I have fired the Sten and found it surprisingly easy to handle and shoot well.
Yeah but when you shoot it full auto and compare it to almost every single other smg ever made it really shows how bad it is
My only gripe with the Sten is how the magazine is sideways.
For the Germans, they were experimenting with ways to make magazines more reliable, and eventually concluded that the benefits were too minuscule compared to the ergonomic issues.
For the British, they just copied the Germans without thinking about why certain choices were made, much like most of British firearms development and why they don't do it anymore.
My Grandfather used a Sten gun throughout his WWII service. He liked it he said it was a basic killing machine that kept him alive.
Is the correct answer :)
I wouldn't choose it, but if I had nothing else I'd sure use it.
its a situation/tactical firearm that can clear a large room in a hurry.
@@modelnutty6503 and I would add that right after clearing the room I would have most likely ditched this POS and especially so if one of the dead enemies would have been armed with an MP-40!Dang, even some failed stuff like German G-41(both versions) would have been preferred by me personally! Honestly I am looking at this Sten gun and it literally looks nowhere near how the factory built state issued firearms are supposed to look like!I can actually remember a bunch of craft produced and/or even improvised firearms that were made by just a single guy in his garage that are better quality and involved much more steps to make than the Stan!I myself successfully made two guns as of now and both are comparing to Sten gun about the same way as half a million dollar hand-fitted Maybach or Rolls Royce would have compared to an old Soviet Niva or something like the cheapest Kia! And this is to the point where I am wondering if there were many instances of these cringe worthy welds on one just failing after a few magazines and the gun just disintegrating in this way right in the middle of the battle?That thing would have concerned crap out of me even on the range or in the woods during peace time let alone trusting my life on this cheap POS in a battle!
@@johnsheppard1476 it was a desperate weapon for a desperate time. But it did serve us well.
Cool,simply and effective gun,what more you need.
I remember training with the M3 45cal ACP Machine gun in the US Army, we had as Tank crewmen. Simple engineering, simple operation, very practical! It was called "Grease-Gun", probably because our tool to grease our Tanks had that similar shape, and metal construction? I served eight years MOS's 11e, 19e, 11b during the so-called cold War days. Normally only 1911 45ACP Pistol re-familiarity training once every year was arranged at Battalion levels. Training on Greese Guns, LAW'S, and Hand Grenades were up to the training Budget. In my service days I was assigned to five different unit groups. And out of those 5, only two of those units had more concerns for the units readiness using these type of weapons, other than practice with the 1911 45acp, and annual tank main vehicle weaponry. I imagine back in WW2 it was OJT, you think! Spray & Pray is not practical with machine Guns! Inexperienced gunners WASTE alot of Cartridges without hitting enough numbers of their intended targets to JUSTIFY using it, unless their targets are within close range. There is a TACTICAL purpose for Suppressive Fire, like a special group trying to DD out of the hot zone. But, unless you are trained up fully on automatic weaponry, when a individual is put in the pucker-factor situation... well,
Panicked stricken individuals, will go ape on the trigger!
Thanks for sharing your story!😉
The barrels when not always hardened, they where often issued a with cheaper easier to make " soft " barrels designed to last only 1 magazine. Get the serial, number of this one and check its history.
Your last statement is exactly why the m16a2 went to semi and burst unlike the m16a1 being full auto and semi: GIs with little training would extinguish their entire ammo reserve in a few minutes when firing haphazardly in full auto into the vietnamese jungle with their m16a1s
@@Gameprojordan FYI that was the M16A3 and it was a short lived experiment because mainly A) Weirdly enough the 3 round burst sear had a 'memory' of sorts. Meaning each round stacked and if you let off the trigger before the full burst fired an unexpected number of rounds would fire on the next burst. Theres a deeper explanation of the mechanics but thats basically what happened. Its not good feeling like youre not in control of your firearm. And B) it was simply a poor subpar replacement to actually properly training soldiers in the use of full auto to begin with.
@@sergeantbigmac nah dude the m16a3 was a full auto variant of the a2 that was used in small numbers for a short time by the navy (notably the Seabee and SEALs units). They wanted to upgrade their m16a1s to m16a2s to make use of the improved 5.56 ammunition that was released alongside the improved A2, but also wanted to keep the full auto firing mode of the A1 for the ability to pump rounds down range as fast as possible at enemy boats and such out in the waters, so they modified the a2 to have full auto instead of burst, which became the a3. It was never really an official replacement to the a2, moreso a sub variant of it only issued in small numbers to specific units within the navy branch. The m16a4 officially replaced the m16a2 in the mid 1990s as the standard issue rifle and kept the burst fire. Only recently with the m4a1 carbine becoming standard issue did the US military finally ditch the burst fire mode and replace it with full auto for their standard issue service rifle
All I know is it was one of my 'go to' guns in Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Especially in clan matches.
Loved that game. Just like blood rein
same here
Yeah! I usually like mp40's in games more but in RtCW it felt a bit clunky. Sten was just awesome and that extra damage per bullet is a godsend!
*Pjupp pjupp pjupp, psssschhh*
@@Erikcleric lol. Love the sound effects. God I miss that.
I was deadly on top of beach bunker with it. Popping snipers on the left hand mountain with it, such fun. DSB. MightyMo
You seem to have a weakened spring as the bolt travels much further back than I have seen in other videos of the sten firing, I think it even hits the back of the slot which mankes it recoil more than usual, as for accuracy see Hick45 shooting one on his utube channel and he does pretty good with it.
That also may depend on what loading the 9x19 parabellum cartridge is being used. The most dangerous load in an open bolt slam fire design is a load that does not drive the bolt past the sear. With those you get a run away gun that can only be stopped by dropping the mag or securing the bolt.
At home for my glock I have loadings that for the 115 bullet that vary between about 1000 fps to about 1300 fps: standard, +P, and +P+. The 9mm nato load is said to be close to the +P is what I have read. Italy did at one time have a 9mm gilsenti cartridge that might not be capable of driving a sten gun bolt to the rear.
The 9mm Glisenti is based on and is dimensionally identical to the 9×19mm Parabellum cartridge. However, the 9mm Glisenti has a smaller powder charge (reduced by 25% compared to the Parabellum), making it much decidedly less poweful. Fiocchi Munizioni occasionally produces batches
a bulged barrel is not going to do wonder for accuracy either..
If anyone is interested in practical shooting of Sten or wants something for a cross-ref, I'd recommend to watch a video about Sten, or Brit SMGs from forgotten weps a.k.a. Gun Jesus.
His will be done
I found one of these disassembled in a hatbox, hidden away in our attic, when I was a boy, 50 years ago. What fun I had secretly putting it together! Dad had been an 18 year old second lieutenant in an infantry regiment, preparing for the invasion of Japan, when the US dropped the atomic bombs. None of my family would be here now if that hadn’t happened 👍
In regards to the inexpensive production costs of the Sten Gun, I remember being told at school in the mid-1960s that its price, in the 1940s, came to “thirty shillings” ( i.e. £1.50 or around 1.80 Euros). The probable lesson being: “You get what you pay for”.
During his time in the LRDG, my old Dad's personal weapon of choice was either a Thompson or a 'liberated' Afrika Korps MP38
The German Schmiessers weren't bad either.
@@biggusdickus5986 MP-40's were not Schmeissers......that was the marking on the magazines. The predecessor to the MP-38 and MP-40 was a "Schmeisser " designed by good old Hugo for Theodor Bergmann in 1918.
btw, the seatless bikjes shown @5:10, are bikes used for stunts. The seat is removed so the rider has an uninpeded space between the legs so they can freely move and lock in different positions to help balance the bike during the stunts. Also when doing stunts you generally don't sit anyway as standing up on the pedals gives you more accuracy with your movements
That is literally the first time I am happy to see Advertisement in a video. You, my friend, deserve every cent of those stupid mobile games companies money!
Plus I know how to tap fast forward six times......
Perhaps this gun could be described as a ‘spray gun’. At boarding school in the UK in the late ‘60s we had quite a good arsenal (I was on the school shooting team so we were shown the interesting stuff). One of the items we had was a Sten gun, sadly we never were given the opportunity to try it out. We were informed that it cost ten shillings to produce in the 1940s.
Before my father joined the Canadian 1st Parachute Battalion in 1943, he worked at Long Branch Arsenal, then just outside of Toronto, Ontario where he lived. One thing he told me was the barrel had a tendency to work itself loose while firing.
That did not stop him from the collecting parts to assemble his own gun to practice with before he went into actual military training.
When judging the effectiveness of a weapon system, historian have learned to look towards logistics as the key indicator of utility and value to the military. In the world of AFVs, we now talk about the over-engineering of the German Pzkw-V and -VI. Most German panzers suffered from high cost, low production rates, and low MTBF. The Soviets, by contrast, were driving T-34/76 AFVs right out of the factory and into battle (Stalingrad). No smooth finishing, no pretty welds, no complex fire control systems. BUT, they had superior MTBF numbers and they could be repaired by peasant-soldiers IN THE FIELD. The German, meanwhile, were hobbled by major component failures and a shortage of spare parts (engines and trannys) that required panzers on the Eastern Front to ship disabled vehicles all the way back to Germany for depot-level repairs while the Russians were doing comparable repairs in the field. The Sten gun had many failings, but its one salient saving grace was its simplicity, low cost, availability, and its ability to be efficiently serviced by untrained partisans in the dark in some cold, wet cellar in France.
The T34 straight from the factory fighting is a myth. Along with the welding story.
Stalin demanded T34s be built. Problem was not a lot of Russians could weld such things. So welds were at important points. The tanks leaked water into the hulls. This affected ammo. The fuel tank had no protective bulkhead between it and the crews. It was actually an unreliable tank. 57,000 T34s were made. Only 12,000 tanks of all makes were left in the Soviet arsenal at the end of WW2.
What you see in photos, films and what you are told, is not true. The Soviet myth of the T34. Looked good on paper. Like today, reality was somewhat different.
My Father was Special Investigation Branch of the British Military Police in WW11 and had to investigate numerous cases of dropped Sten guns wounding and Killing Biritsh soldiers, especially among Tank crew. He hated the Sten because of this.
my grandfather had the same experience. A guy in his company was accidentally killed when a NCO bumped his Sten next to the bunk bed he was sleeping on. Shot him trough the heart a month before they got discharged.
My father told me that he was sitting in the guard room when someone returning from patrol dropped his Sten gun on the table and it went off - rotating itself until it was directly pointing at him. It did not fire again but he was not amused. Another friend of mine told me that he was once watching a convoy of lorries going over a dip in the road and time after time, when the lorries hit the dip, the jarring set off the Sten gun carried pointing upwards by the guard sitting next to the driver. It was very common for soldiers to carry the gun with the bolt in the forward position when it should be in the rear position in the safety notch. I've read elsewhere that this bad habit resulted in quite a few soldiers being accidentally shop as troops passed through jungle.
The Sten was my personal weapon in the Suez Canal Zone in 1953/4. Was easily taken to bits to get rid of the sand, which got everywhere, but you could easily damage your left hand fingers if you got hold of it wrongly and there were often accidents when someone had the butt on the floor of a truck and it fired, fortunately upwards as the truck went over a bump
how old are you?
Fascinating. How did you like it? Did you wish you had something else?
That's a bit dangerous. Did the guys around him have a word?
@@BrutusAlbion sounds like mid 80s at least
@@MusMasi He said and I quote ''The Sten was my personal weapon in the Suez Canal Zone in 1953/4''
1953/4 indicates his time period when he used the sten ... bro that's nearly 70 years ago. Even considering that this guy had to have been 18 to do military service, he must be close to 90 years old by now. Somehow I don't think a grandpa of 90 is here on youtubez talking about his suez canal days using a sten gun. I could be wrong ... but ... ya know ... this sounds like a troll who played a video game and is recalling his glory days.
When I was a Royal Navy apprentice in the mid 60's, at HMS Collingwood in Fareham, weekly gunnery drill meant marching about the parade ground with a Lee Enfield. Seriously boring stuff. Then one day, to our surprise, the Chief GI (called "Wingnuts" on account of his big ears) too us to the gunnery range, and introduced us to the Sterling sub machine gun ("Sten"),
"The Sterling sub machine gun. Produced during the war for 3 main reasons: It was cheap, inexpensive, and doesn't cost very much". (A succinct phrase that I regularly bring out on various subjects)"
"Accuracy is terrible, range is very short, but that is not its purpose. It is designed to be used from the waist, spraying bullets as the troops advance, to make the enemy keep their heads down. That is its sole purpose. If it kills anyone that is a bonus"
The targets on the range were cardboard heads sticking out of foxholes, and Wingnuts demonstrated, firing short bursts from the waist position, from only 5 to 10 yards
Please bear this in mind when watching this video. If it's range and accuracy you want - then the Bren gun is the answer, said to be too accurate, in that the bullets did not spray around, but followed an accurate trajectory. There's no point putting 50 bullets through the same bullet hole, you want them to spray a bit to take out other targets too. The same Chief GI also demonstrated the Bren - another escape from that damned parade ground!
These three reasons are what the English live by in general. Isn't most weapons fire in combat interdictory, though? We have special names for the individuals who actually manage to hit a target with a side arm.
The Sterling 1. Wasnt produced during the war, 2. Was a different weapon in quite a few places. The Sterling had a double stack double feed mag for one. The Sterling is the Stens successor and didn't appear till the '50s.
Going back to this video I noticed there was one thing not mentioned - the double stack single feed magazine causing jams. Some users in WW2 used to get round this by loading 30 or 28 (the full capacity is 32) thus reducing the pressure on the top round. The German MP40 also used this type of magazine and had the same problem.
The Indian Army modified the magazine, so it was a 19 round, single stack magazine. This was easier to load and did not jam.
@@thomasforsyth4462 It may have been easier to load and less prone to jamming but 19 rounds wouldn't last long in combat.
@@Nooziterp1 My M-16 in Vietnam used 20 round magazines. When the 30 round magazines arrived, they too used to jam. Have a good day, and let's recall all those who served but did not return.
@@thomasforsyth4462 As with the dead in all wars.
Yes, even the vigneron submachine gun had the same issues, 32 rounds but was loaded at 28 to stop jammings. as the mags are copies of the MP40.
You answered all the questions I'd had about the Sten. Thank you for the very in-depth and interesting video!
The 3 Thompson mags cost more than a STEN or 20 STEN guns for one Thompson, that makes it better.
Yeah, Thompsons were very neat, but at the time they were just ABSURDLY expensive. I think if I was procuring arms for Britain I'd definitely stall for time until I had a cheap domestic equivalent. And if I remember right the Sten was leaps and bounds better in dirty conditions.
You did a good job reviewing the STEN. It's been years since I last disassembled one, but one thing I recall, which might save some wear and tear on the barrel ratchet, is to rotate the magazine housing before you remove or install the barrel assembly. This should lift the ratchet off the threads while you screw or unscrew the barrel assembly. I used to own postwar STEN MK II that was built from a new tube and surplus parts. I found it to be light and controllable at 25 yards or less. A range of 50 meters would have been pushing it if fired from the shoulder, but every gun is different. I later acquired a short threaded barrel and mounted a silencer on it, but I had to use subsonic ammo to avoid a sonic crack. I briefly had a Lanchester SMG which was much heavier and more rugged. It was extremely soft shooting, but I would not want to lug one around all day.
A Sten was used in the Reinhard Heydrich assassination. It failed and they had to use a bomb, which almost cost them their lives.
The two SOE agents used a hand grenade !
The two agents Used a modified anti tank canister in operation anthropoid . hydritch had to go
@@nigelfelangue2295 Yes, but immediately after failing of this unreliable piece of shit...
I wonder how much they hated the weapon after that.
All the bullets probably went right over Heydrich. He said, "Gee, that was close."
You could've mentioned the sling; where it attached near the barrel, you could grip that instead of resting the stock on your forward hand. You could also adjust the sling length so it was tight around your left elbow; the grip and the sling around the elbow allowed you to pull the gun tighter into the shoulder.
My father had a sten when he was in the army in the early 50s. He got into trouble though. Was on guard duty, tapping the gun against his leg when 2 or 3 rounds were fired. Shot through the stitching on the outside of his boot but he didn't get hurt! Can you imagine what he thought right then? 😂
Crude, flimsy, dangerous weapon.
*do it again*
I’ve fired a Sten exactly like the one shown here. It felt cheap, looked cheap, felt a bit uncomfortable, BUT; had NO misfires, & it would work just fine WITHOUT sights as long as it’s used for close-up fighting. It’s NOT a target-shooter! It did its job. Inside of about 50 meters, it’s great!
I have photos of my father with a Sten during his service in Malaya during the "Emergency". It was an updated version of this. He didn't have a good word to say about it. "Terrible bloody thing". As an end user I doubt he appreciated the necessities behind it's origins. He became a Bren-gunner, a weapon that he loved.
I saw a photo on FB of British troops in Malaya during the "Emergency" armed with Australian Owen Sub Machine guns. Maybe only used in theater.
Sten kits were sold through Shotgun News until fairly recently for about 50.00 with three mags. The receiver tube (needed cuts following a template) cost another $20.00. I went under how many folks completed them.
I knew of one, they had purchased 10 kits with demilled receivers at $20 ea. They just wielded the receivers together and re-cut the safety notch. I got to fire it, great ammo burner. I couldn't hit much. Needed a lot more practice, but was a lot of fun.
Even the Americans realized the excessive cost of the Tommy Gun was inhibiting the war effort in its own way and developed the M3 "grease gun" as an inexpensive alternative mostly for units that did not use side arms extensively like tank, tank destroyer, halftrack and truck crews, artillery gun crews, etc. Conveniently chambered in the same .45 ACP as the Tommy Gun and Colt M1911 of course.
What Always needs to be remembered about Sten guns is that they we Designed to be fabricated (if necessary) out of a garage or barn in an extreme resistance scenario. And they were just supposed to be bullet hoses. Point, Burst, point Burst, point Burst
And they did NOT jam if you used 19 round, single stack, Indian Army magazines.
The bulge in the barrel may have been from cosmoline or oil remaining in the barrel when the gun was fired. Neither would be especially surprising if it was used by an untrained guerrilla fighter.
I had a D DAY veteran living next door to me and he told me that sten gun killed more allies than germans .he told me on training one his m8s jumped in to a ditch an the gun fired and killed him outright. Also when you fire the sten it shoots to the left .
It was one the army knows when the army and RAF used to do shooting comps the RAF used to get beat due to not knowing the sten .
If your firing the sten best sand in front of it your safer .
I had one in Rhodesia in 1978. I dropped it when unlocking a security gate and it emptied the magazine. I was lucky not to be hit in the ankle. I was told that the reason for the runaway fire was that the magazine contained pistol 9mm rounds that were less powerful than 9mm SMG rounds. As a result, they did not throw the working parts back far enough for them to catch.
My dad had a Sten in WWII, He said it had a little hole in the left side of the receiver, near the chamber. The cocking handle could be pushed to engage that hole. This locked up the bolt so the piece would not fire. I am surprised your Sten did not have this safety.
@@thomasforsyth4462 Not as surprised as I was! I have a Dutch friend who was a farm assistant in neighbouring Chipinga. He was ambushed in his vehicle but managed to crawl with his Sten into the bush and ended up behind and above the Terrs who were inspecting his wreck. He says he did not open fire because he didn't trust his Sten to work properly and it wasn't very accurate anyway.
Known by us Brits as the "Stench gun". It cost about £2.50 ($3 US) to make at the time, but it did it's job, I suppose you could say it was cheap and cheerful....but a necessity of the time. No match for the Thompson in regards to quality, but then again it was a lot more expensive.
100% agree on the “stench” comment. I had one once back in the mid80’s , those single stack mags were a pain in the scrotum to load !!
@@keithdaniels5918 The mag was actually copied from the German mp38/40 mag I believe and was also a weakness in those guns. So blame the Germans.
@@Twirlyhead yep..owned a MP40 as well, those mags sucked too. Happy to hear from someone who knows about them. I fell in love with the MP5 mags after I got my hands on one of those ! The Uzi mags are a close second to the MP5 ….for me anyway.
@@Twirlyhead , thought the STEN magazine was lightly modified to stop it fitting the MP40, while the STEN would still accept an MP40 magazine?
The price of a sten gun was 2 pounds 10 shillings a lee Enfield rifle was £11. The exchange rate though was a bit different to what it is today I think that there was 4 to 5 dollars to the pound ar the time .
A bicycle without a seat. Thankk you for providing a picture, because I imagined it waaay differently
My grandfather's brother designed the sten. When I became a RN marksman and was trained on multiple weapons he advised me when clearing a room don't use a grenade, throw your sten in instead.
Same with the Sterling. It can still fire UNCOCKED, as the Malaysian army found out with accidentally dropped guns in the 70s. They finally dumped it.
My grandfather, who served with the Royal Norfolk Regiment in Burma, was told to not even bother trying to un-jam it in CQB, just throw it away and use whatever else you could find (rock, knife, revolver, branch, bayonet). Scary stuff..
When I trained with the North Novies back in the mid 1950s I had the pleasure of firing the Sten a number of times - along with LeeEnfield rifles & Bren guns. The Sten gun was meant for very close combat and most of us could hit a six inch target at 20 yards single shot, and it was deadly when firing automatic at the same distance. I thought it was a pretty good weapon for its purpose.
The Sten SMG was what the UK had to come up with in the middle of a war, with limited time and resources. Some of the other guns that I have heard were of poor quality for whatever reason were some of the Imperial Japanese guns. Not sure name or model but that was the scuttlebutt amoung US Marines who served in the Pacific theater during WW2. And probably for the same reasons as why the Sten was not a top-notch weapon. But both the Sten and JP firearms did the job...
The WWII Japanese Nambu pistols were pretty awful...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nambu_pistol
The Sten Gun was mass produced in Garages and Small engineering factories in England to help re-arm it's army after Dunkirk. It's a close-quarter weapon for street fighting and such. It wasn't made to use in longer distance fighting. Also, it was used to arm various Resistance groups. Plus I wouldn't stand opposite a person armed with one 10-15 feet away, confident that I wouldn't be hit by it.
My great grandfather worked as a foreman at Brown Bailey's steel works in Sheffield, UK. The Sten was cheap and relatively easy for any machine shop to produce.
To check security one day, he walk down the production line stopping at each station to look at each part, placing bits in his pockets or under his smock. Went out side, and re-entered with a fully assembled Sten. That caused a bit of a stir.😳
"...mostly shit metal..." Yeah you're not wrong there lol.
2 great advantages 1)magazine at the side and you can shoot from ground all other submachineguns can not do that and when you are on the ground you give a big target to the enemy and 2) angle hold on the back that means the barrel was at the exact line of your hand no heir and not lower that give you minimum upper recoil and you can point at the target without any effort to find the target again
Ah you forgot that the Australian Owen Gun was easy to use lying down, with it's magazine mounted on top.
I had a friend whose Uncle was a Sten gunner in the war. The family went to do a clay pigeon shoot for fun. Apparently, after the safety talk etc he took hold of his shot gun and held it firmly at his waist. The instructors were not happy, but curious when he told them he always shot like that because of his training. He went on to shoot EVERY SINGLE CLAY. Amazed, the instructors asked how he learnt such skill. His reply - "Killing Germans with a Sten"
Excellent presentation. I've always been interested in this weapon, and learned a lot from your video.
You've taken a gun that was designed for someone to charge into a small room (usually after throwing a grenade) and spray bullets on full auto from the hip; and analysed how good/bad it is based on single shot target aiming down the sight at 50 meters.
That's like judging how good/bad a Land Rover or Jeep is by racing it round a Formula 1 track.
Funnily enough, it was the exact reasons the British Army did not like submachine guns pre-war, they took one look at the price, then a second at the horrid accuracy over 50 yards, and then made a hard pass.
Love my MKII Sten. Its about the cheapest full auto gun you can buy here in the States.
Your right they are now the bottom of the class three market. Mac 11’s used to be but they have recently increased in value.
Second most produced SMG in WW2 the first was the soviet PPSH-41
More than the PPS-43?
@@andresmartinezramos7513 and made over 6 million PPSH-41 and only 2.1 million of the PPSH-43
An excellent version of the STEN Mk II (relatively speaking) was manufactured not far from where I live in Long Branch Ontario. As was the norm for the time, most of the work was ably performed by local women. They manufactured over 126 thousand STENs for the war effort including a contract for the Chinese army.
David, I own one of those "Chinese-bound" Stens too. Long Branch-1944
Very interesting. I thought the sten was actually borrowed from a Czech design originally. Also, the inaccuracies and tendency to jam was what caused the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich to initially go wrong. A sten burst was fired at him in his open car but the damn thing jammed and the two assassins tossed a bomb into the car which fatally wounded Heydrich. If the sten had worked he would have been killed on the spot. An example of where the American “gangster” Thompson would have chopped him into so much stew meat.
The sten is one of the most underrated and misunderstood gun EVER.
Yes, it was uncomfortable to shoot.
Yes, many pieces were unsafe to shoot.
Yes, it was not user friendly.
But it was not meant to be neither comfortable, safe nor user friendly:
It was meant to be produced fast, cheaply and give an automatic pistol caliber weapon to those who needed such weapon and in that circumstance, it was more than enough. Not to mention how it was so easy to produce and cost effective that it was widespread among resistance fighters around the world who fought against the axis powers.
Used its descendent, the Sterling in the Canadian Army. One could get amazing accuracy firing from the hip.
My wife served in the British Army, her main weapon was Sterling SMG. Not a front line soldier, she was trained to protect the depot (urban warfare) where the SMG excelled. As a NCO she had a Browning Hi power as backup. A short scouser gal thus equipped would be scary.
Couple of things that need to be taken into consideration: Though early UK military doctrine dismissed sub machine guns, once WW2 started, Thompson's weren't 'sold out'. The UK purchased 300,000 units and 5m rounds of .45ACP. It was paid for in Gold Bullion. Unfortunately, of the 300,000 units shipped to the UK, 200,000 ended up at the bottom of the Atlantic due to German subs. Hence with very few weapons, and almost zero money left, the UK needed guns quick and also CHEAP. Shepherd and Turpin were asked to design a CHEAP gun that could be easily and quickly produced, using basic materials. They were NOT asked to design a 'perfect' gun. In fact if you watch the (very good) video by Tommy Atkins media about the Sten gun, you see that the early designs were rejected as being 'too costly'. Even the 'cheap' design was refined to be 'cheaper' rather than 'better'. A Sten cost $11, a Thompson cost $200. A Sten is basically one step up from a Zip gun. It wasn't meant to be an HK MP5 market stealer. Stens were never 'sold', they were given away. Dropped by the hundreds of thousands in occupied territory to arm resistance and partizan groups to 'set Europe a blaze'. It's pointless comparing a Sten to anything other than a broom handle with a carving knife tied to the end, because THAT was the alternative weapon you'd have been offered in the British army or home guard if there was no Sten.
"It was paid for in Gold Bullion."
As of 2006 Britain still owed the USA 4.4 Billion 1934 USD in WW I debt.
@@nickdanger3802 Maybe they should ransom some random UK tourist for the cash like Iran recently did? Worked a teat...
It's a shame we never used the Owen gun. A similar "basic" design, but much better I think.
A fellow tanker of my grandfathers was killed by a Sten when it fell against his tank, shooting up through his chest. I don't think I'd feel safe around anyone carrying one. The fire selectors and safeties often didn't work, and they were known to dump the entire magazine when dropped.
The method of carrying was bolt forward, which was relatively safe for infantry, but dropping from a height could lead to an AD.
My father said you never put the magazine in till you absolutely had to!
The army wanted the Finnish Suomi, which they had tested and considered the best sub gun available. But it was still too expensive and time consuming to build to replace the Thompsons lost in France.
Most open bolt SMG have the fault of if dropped can AD, ALL german SMGs would do it, greasegun will, berettas etc. Thompson was the only wwii gun that would not do that that I can think of. Unlike most of the german guns, the sten had a extra safety that would allow the bolt to be locked forward so it is SAFER than most other SMGs of the period.
@@woodshopsquared3183 The MP40 didn't have this problem actually, they solved that. The Sten's safety wasn't reliable and often didn't work at all. Same goes for the fire selector. I would never call it one of the safest open bolt designs.
My father was a major in the Royal Signals at the time of the Normandy landings. His signalmen were armed with stens as personal weapons. Sadly he lost two of them under German fire on the beach due to sten gun malfunctions. All the guns were new and stiff and signalmen were given very little, if any, range time to familiarise themselves with their new weapons. These two soldiers were trying to get a new magazine in under fire but they would not go in, leading the soldier to press the muzzle against his stomach, while lying on the beach, as he tried to force the magazine in with the bolt back. When they managed to bang the magazine home the gun discharged the full mag into their stomachs. My father didn't want the stens in the first place, as he regarded them as too dangerous for untrained users but that was the only weapon offered to signalmen in the front line. He carried only his officer issue Webley & Scott .455 revolver.
My Father was issued with a Sten gun, a Sergeant in the Canadian Army, WWII. He said the Sten was crap, not something to depend your life upon. He was always on the lookout for a cast off Bren gun in the ditch and would swap it out.