Posted on 10/14/2014 7:11:06 AM PDT by C19fan
Few weapons in the modern era ever had a poem penned its honor. But few weapons were ever like the Sten gun.
Hastily contrived in the early, desperate days of World War II, it looked like a last-ditch effort to arm British troops—and it was.
Terrified Britons knew they did not have enough weapons to repel a German invasion force. The British lost thousands of small arms that were destroyed or simply abandoned after the devastating rout at Dunkirk.
(Excerpt) Read more at medium.com ...
Ive had several. Only the MK III would get close to awful. As with any SMG, if you have crappy magazines, you'll have a crappy shooting experience. I bought Sten Mags 100 at a time....would throw 30 or so away after a day at the range.
Oh, and you need a sten gun/Lanchester magazine loader or you are going to have a very bad day loading.
That MP44 would as well if dropped.
Not a big fan of the open bolt system.
Read a long time ago the Sten cost about $5
They CAN rotate the mag well. It functions as a dust cover in jump operations, but you cannot fire it.
The reason whey went with a horizontal mag feed is to get more prone and lower profile to shoot at. Pretty effective IMHO. The Bren gun did most of the dirty work. VERY accurate and reliable full auto.
the Volks-MP.3008 did have a bottom feed mag, it is the German ver of the STEN more or less.
Having a gun and knowing how to use it.... Do I need to explain it further? Hope not...
Reliable - yes, accurate - no. Not that the latter matters much in a full-auto only weapon. In fact, an accurate submachine gun is almost an oxymoron. The intended purpose was to spray lots of bullets towards a target and hope that at least one ends the threat.
The M3 series fires from an open bolt and incorporates a massive bolt to counter the recoil momentum. Upon squeezing the trigger, that bolt slams home and greatly disrupts the gun from wherever the sights may have been pointing. I carried one in Vietnam until I bought a much better M1A1 Thompson Submachine Gun on the gray market.
In the 1980s some of the SAS communications guys were still using the Sten gun.
Exactly & that is what scares the political class silly & with 3D printing makes it even simpler for those who don’t have heavy duty machine tools in the basement. The STEN gun is a simple weapon but with 3D printing you can make parts for bigger & far more effective weapons.
I have (yet another) dumb question: Isn’t 3-d printing done with plastic beads?
How could plastic be strong enough to withstand the pressures for use in a firing mechanism?
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