Sten Gun

1. Lead

The Sten gun was the cheapest and the most widely produced British weapon of the Second World War, and one of the most controversial. It was a tube of stamped steel with a side-mounted magazine, a skeleton stock and a rate of fire that was fast enough to be dangerous, and it was built in more than four million examples between 1941 and 1945 at a cost of about eleven dollars per gun. The Sten was designed in a matter of weeks in the summer of 1940, when Britain stood alone against Germany and needed a submachine gun in enormous numbers, immediately, and at almost any cost in quality. It was never a good weapon in the conventional sense: it jammed, it was inaccurate, it was ugly, and it had a reputation for firing when it was dropped. But it was available, it was simple, and it could be made by any factory that could stamp sheet metal, and those qualities made it one of the most important weapons of the war. The Sten armed the British Home Guard, the paratroopers who dropped into Normandy and Arnhem, the commandos who raided the French coast, and — most famously — the resistance fighters of occupied Europe, who received hundreds of thousands of Stens by parachute and used them against the German occupiers. The Sten’s story is the story of a weapon built for a desperate moment, and of the way in which desperation can produce a design that is both terrible and indispensable.

2. Key Facts

The table below summarises the Sten gun in its most common form, the Mk II, with the main figures for the family as a whole.

Type	Submachine gun, blowback-operated, selective fire
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Designers	Major Reginald V. Shepherd and Harold J. Turpin (ST + EN = Sten)
Entered service	1941
Number built	About 3.1 million (all marks)
Calibre	9×19 mm Parabellum / 9×19 mm Parabellum
Weight	About 7 lb (3.2 kg) unloaded (Mk II)
Length	About 30 in (762 mm) (Mk II)
Barrel length	7.75 in (197 mm) / 197 mm
Rate of fire	About 500–550 rounds per minute
Muzzle velocity	About 1,200 ft/s (365 m/s)
Feed	32-round detachable box magazine, side-mounted
Effective range	About 100 yards (90 m)
Unit cost	About $11 (about £2 10s)

3. Background

3.1. Britain alone, summer 1940

The Sten was born in the darkest summer of British history. In June 1940 France had fallen, the British Expeditionary Force had been evacuated from Dunkirk with the loss of almost all of its heavy equipment, and Britain stood alone against a German invasion that seemed imminent. The British Army had lost most of its weapons in France, and it needed to rearm in a matter of months, with factories that were already working at full capacity and with a shortage of skilled labour and of machine tools. The submachine gun was a particular problem: the British Army had only a small number of Thompson submachine guns, which were expensive and which had to be bought from the United States, and it needed a weapon that could be built in Britain, quickly and cheaply, in the hundreds of thousands. The answer was the Sten, a weapon that was designed to be built from stamped sheet steel by factories that had never made a gun before, and that could be produced at a rate of thousands per week. The Sten’s name was a combination of the initials of its two designers — Shepherd and Turpin — and the first two letters of Enfield, the Royal Small Arms Factory where it was designed, and it was adopted in 1941, less than a year after the design work had begun.

3.2. The German example and the Lanchester

The Sten’s design drew directly on the German MP 28 and MP 40, and on the British Lanchester submachine gun, which was itself a copy of the German MP 28. The Lanchester was a well-made, machined weapon that was issued to the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, but it was too expensive and too slow to make for the Army’s needs, and it was the Lanchester’s cost and complexity that convinced the Ordnance Board that a stamped-steel weapon was necessary. The Sten’s designers, Major Reginald Shepherd and Harold Turpin, took the Lanchester’s basic mechanism — a simple blowback action with an open bolt — and simplified it to the absolute minimum, replacing the machined receiver with a steel tube, the wooden stock with a skeleton of steel tubing, and the finely finished parts with stampings that could be made by any press shop. The result was a weapon with only 47 parts, most of them stampings, that could be assembled in a matter of minutes by a worker with no gunsmithing experience. The Sten’s design was a deliberate rejection of the craftsmanship that had characterised British small arms for a century, and it was a recognition that in a total war, the ability to make a weapon quickly and cheaply mattered more than the ability to make it well.

3.3. The need for numbers

The Sten’s production was organised on a scale that had never been attempted for a British small arm, and it was a triumph of industrial improvisation. The Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield produced the first Stens, but production was soon spread across dozens of factories, including the Royal Ordnance Factories, the Birmingham Small Arms Company and a host of small engineering firms that had never made a weapon before. At its peak, British industry produced more than 100,000 Stens per month, and the total production of about 3.1 million guns made the Sten the most widely produced British weapon of the war. The guns were issued to the Home Guard, to the regular Army, to the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force, and to the airborne forces, and hundreds of thousands were dropped by parachute to the resistance movements of occupied Europe, where they became the standard weapon of the partisan and the saboteur. The Sten’s numbers were its justification: no other weapon could have been produced in such quantities, at such a cost, in such a short time, and the Sten’s availability — rather than its quality — was the reason it mattered.

4. Design and Development

4.1. A steel tube and 47 parts

The Sten’s design was about as simple as a military automatic weapon can be, and its simplicity was its point. The receiver was a steel tube, the barrel was screwed into the front of the tube, the bolt was a cylinder that moved back and forth inside the tube, and the stock was a skeleton of steel tubing that folded or detached for storage. The magazine was mounted on the left side of the receiver, horizontally, which was unusual but which allowed the gun to be fired from the prone position with a low profile, and which made the weapon’s silhouette instantly recognisable. The gun fired from the open bolt, on the straight blowback principle, and it had a selector for single shots or automatic fire, a simple fixed sight, and a cocking handle that was also the safety catch. The whole weapon could be stripped into its main groups without tools, and it could be assembled in minutes, a quality that made it popular with the resistance fighters who had to maintain their weapons in hiding, with no armourer’s support. The Sten’s crudeness was not an accident but a design choice, and it was the choice that made the weapon possible at all.

4.1.1. The side-mounted magazine

The Sten’s side-mounted magazine was its most distinctive feature, and it was both an advantage and a disadvantage. The magazine held 32 rounds of 9 mm ammunition, and it was mounted horizontally on the left side of the receiver, which allowed the gun to be fired from the prone position with a very low profile, a quality that was valuable in the close fighting of the Second World War. The magazine was a copy of the German MP 28’s magazine, and it was the Sten’s most troublesome feature: it was a double-column, single-feed design, which meant that the cartridges stacked in two columns at the bottom and fed in a single column at the top, and the feed lips were thin stampings that bent easily. A damaged magazine was the most common cause of stoppages, and soldiers were taught to load only 28 or 30 rounds, rather than the full 32, to reduce the pressure on the spring and to improve reliability. The side-mounted magazine also made the gun awkward to carry and to handle, and it gave the weapon a lopsided balance that took practice to master. The magazine’s problems were never fully solved, and they were one of the reasons the Sten acquired its reputation for unreliability, but the design was retained throughout the war, because changing it would have required retooling the factories.

4.2. The marks: Mk I to Mk V

The Sten was produced in five main marks, and the differences between them show the weapon’s evolution from a crude emergency design to a more refined — though still cheap — weapon. The Mk I, of which about 100,000 were built, had a wooden fore-end, a folding foregrip and a flash hider, and it was the most finished of the Stens, though it was also the most expensive and the slowest to make. The Mk II, of which about two million were built, was the standard wartime Sten: it had no wooden furniture, no foregrip and no flash hider, and it was the cheapest and the simplest of the marks, a bare tube with a barrel and a stock. The Mk III, of which about 876,000 were built, was even simpler, with a receiver made from a single stamping, and it was designed to be built by factories with the least tooling. The Mk IV was an experimental model that was never mass-produced, and the Mk V, of which about 100,000 were built in 1944 and 1945, was a refined version with a wooden stock, a pistol grip and a bayonet lug, intended for the airborne forces and for the post-war Army. The Mk V was the best Sten, and it was the version that remained in British service after the war, until it was replaced by the Sterling submachine gun in the 1950s.

4.3. The silenced Sten

The Sten’s most famous variant was the silenced Mk II(S), which was developed for the Special Operations Executive and for the commandos, and which became one of the most effective silenced weapons of the war. The Mk II(S) had a barrel that was ported to reduce the velocity of the bullet below the speed of sound, and a large suppressor that enclosed the barrel and reduced the weapon’s report to a dull thump, which was difficult to locate at any distance. The silenced Sten was used by the Special Operations Executive’s agents in occupied Europe, by the commandos on raids, and by the resistance fighters who needed a weapon that could kill silently, and it was particularly valued for the assassination of sentries and for the elimination of collaborators. The most famous use of the silenced Sten was in the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the deputy head of the SS, in Prague in May 1942, where a Sten — though it jammed at the crucial moment — was one of the weapons carried by the assassins. The silenced Sten remained in British service after the war, and it was used by special forces in Malaya, in Korea and in other conflicts, a testament to the soundness of a design that had been drawn up in a hurry in 1940.

5. Technical Specifications

5.1. Dimensions and weight

The Sten Mk II measured about 30 inches (762 millimetres) in length and weighed about 7 pounds (3.2 kilograms) unloaded, which made it one of the lightest submachine guns of the war, and one of the most compact. The barrel was 7.75 inches long, and the gun was fitted with a simple fixed front sight and a fixed rear aperture, which were adequate for the short ranges at which the weapon was meant to be used. The stock was a skeleton of steel tubing, which was light and which folded or detached for storage, though it was uncomfortable to shoot from for long periods and it gave the shooter a poor cheek weld. The gun’s compactness and its light weight were its main advantages as a weapon for paratroopers and for resistance fighters, who had to carry their weapons over long distances and in concealment, and who valued a gun that could be hidden under a coat or in a bag. The Sten’s dimensions were a direct consequence of its design philosophy: it was built to be as small and as light as possible, because it was meant to be carried by men who had to move quickly and quietly, and who could not afford the weight of a heavier weapon.

5.2. Cartridge, magazine and ballistics

The Sten fired the 9×19 mm Parabellum cartridge, the standard pistol and submachine-gun cartridge of the German Army, which was a deliberate choice: it meant that British and resistance forces could use captured German ammunition, and that the Sten could be supplied from German stocks in occupied Europe. The cartridge fired a 115-grain (7.5-gram) bullet at a muzzle velocity of about 1,200 feet per second (365 metres per second), giving it a muzzle energy of roughly 360 foot-pounds, which was less than the .45 ACP of the American M3 Grease Gun but which was adequate for the close-range fighting for which the Sten was designed. The thirty-two-round magazine was loaded by hand, and it was the weapon’s most troublesome feature, as described above, with a stiff spring and feed lips that bent easily. The effective range was about 100 yards, and beyond that the bullet dropped quickly and the fixed sights made accurate fire difficult. Within 50 yards, however, the Sten was a formidable weapon, and its rate of fire of about 500 to 550 rounds per minute meant that a short burst could put a large number of bullets into a target in a very short time.

	Sten Mk II / Sten Mk II
Calibre	9×19 mm Parabellum / 9×19 mm Parabellum
Weight unloaded	About 7 lb (3.18 kg)
Length	30 in (762 mm) / 762 mm
Barrel / Nòng	7.75 in (197 mm) / 197 mm
Rate of fire	About 500–550 rounds/min
Muzzle velocity	About 1,200 ft/s (365 m/s)
Magazine	32-round box, side-mounted
Effective range	About 100 yards (90 m)
Unit cost	About $11
Number built	About 3.1 million (all marks)

5.3. Reliability and the accidental-discharge problem

The Sten’s reliability in the field was poor, and its reputation for accidental discharges was one of the reasons it was feared by its own users as much as by the enemy. The gun fired from the open bolt, and the bolt was held back by a sear that engaged a notch in the bolt, a system that was simple but that could fail if the gun was dropped or knocked, allowing the bolt to slam forward and fire a round without the trigger being pulled. The cocking handle, which was also the safety catch, could be knocked out of its safety slot, and the gun could then fire if it was dropped on its butt, a fault that killed and wounded a number of British soldiers. The Army’s response was to teach soldiers to carry the Sten with an empty chamber and to load it only when action was imminent, a precaution that reduced the risk but that also reduced the weapon’s readiness. The Sten’s stoppages were also frequent, and they were usually caused by the magazine, as described above, or by dirt in the mechanism, which the open receiver admitted freely. The Sten’s reliability improved with the later marks, particularly the Mk V, but it never approached the reliability of the Thompson or the MP 40, and its reputation for unreliability was one of the reasons it was replaced as soon as the war ended.

5.3.1. Carrying the Sten safely / Mang Sten an toàn

The Sten’s accidental-discharge problem was serious enough to shape the way the weapon was carried and handled, and the Army’s instructions on the subject were unusually detailed. Soldiers were taught to carry the Sten with the magazine removed and the chamber empty, to insert the magazine only when action was expected, and to keep the cocking handle in its safety slot at all times when the gun was not being fired. The safety slot was a notch in the receiver into which the cocking handle could be pushed, locking the bolt in the forward position, but the slot was shallow and the handle could be knocked out of it by a blow to the gun, and the Army’s own tests showed that a Sten dropped from a height of a few feet could fire. The problem was compounded by the Sten’s use by resistance fighters, who had no formal training and who often carried the gun loaded and ready, and who suffered accidental discharges as a result. The Sten’s safety record was poor, and it was one of the weapon’s most serious defects, but it was a defect that was accepted, because the alternative — no submachine gun at all — was worse, and because the Sten’s availability mattered more than its safety.

6. Variants

6.1. Mk I, Mk II and Mk III

The Mk I was the first production Sten, and it was the most finished of the early marks, with a wooden fore-end, a folding foregrip and a flash hider, and it was issued to the Home Guard and to the regular Army in 1941. About 100,000 Mk Is were built, and the mark was soon replaced by the Mk II, which removed the wooden furniture and the foregrip and which became the standard Sten of the war, with about two million built. The Mk II was the Sten that most soldiers knew, and it was the version that was dropped to the resistance movements in the largest numbers, because it was the cheapest and the simplest to make. The Mk III was a further simplification, with a receiver made from a single stamping and a barrel that was fixed in place, and about 876,000 were built, mainly for the Home Guard and for issue to resistance forces. The Mk III was the crudest of the Stens, and it was the least popular with soldiers, but it was also the cheapest, and it served its purpose as a weapon that could be made in enormous numbers by factories with minimal tooling. The three early marks together accounted for about three million Stens, and they were the weapons that armed Britain and the resistance in the darkest years of the war.

6.2. Mk V and the post-war Sten

The Mk V was the last and the best of the Stens, and it was the version that remained in British service after the war. It was developed in 1944 for the airborne forces, who needed a submachine gun that was better made and more reliable than the Mk II, and it had a wooden stock, a pistol grip, a foresight with a protective cover and a bayonet lug, which allowed it to be fitted with the No. 4 rifle’s bayonet. About 100,000 Mk Vs were built, and they were issued to the airborne divisions for the Normandy landings and for Operation Market Garden, where they were valued for their improved handling and their better sights. After the war, the Mk V remained in service with the British Army, and it was used in Malaya, in Korea and in other conflicts, until it was replaced by the Sterling submachine gun in the 1950s. The Sterling, which was adopted in 1953, was a far better weapon than the Sten, with a curved magazine, a better safety and a much higher standard of manufacture, but it was also far more expensive, and its adoption was a recognition that the emergency that had produced the Sten was over, and that Britain could once again afford to build its weapons well.

7. Combat Service

7.1. The Home Guard and the regular Army

The Sten’s first service was with the Home Guard, the British citizen militia that was raised in 1940 to defend Britain against invasion, and with the regular Army, which needed a submachine gun for its infantry and for its support troops. The Home Guard received large numbers of Stens, and the weapon became the standard submachine gun of the citizen soldier, a role for which its cheapness and its simplicity were well suited: the Home Guard’s men were part-time soldiers, and they needed a weapon that was easy to learn and easy to maintain. The regular Army issued the Sten to its infantry sections, to its mortar crews, to its drivers and to its officers, and the weapon became a familiar sight in British units in North Africa, in Italy and in north-west Europe. The Sten’s service with the regular Army was mixed: soldiers appreciated its light weight and its compactness, but they complained about its unreliability and its inaccuracy, and many preferred the Thompson or the American M3 Grease Gun when they could get them. The Sten nevertheless served throughout the war, and it was the weapon that armed the British soldier in the largest numbers, a fact that is often forgotten in the shadow of its reputation.

7.2. Normandy, Arnhem and the airborne forces

The Sten’s most famous service with the regular Army was with the airborne forces, who carried it into Normandy on D-Day and into Arnhem in Operation Market Garden. The paratroopers valued the Sten for its light weight and its compactness, which were essential for men who had to jump with everything they owned, and the Mk V, with its wooden stock and its bayonet lug, was developed specifically for the airborne forces. At Arnhem, the Sten was the standard weapon of the British 1st Airborne Division, and it was used in the close fighting in the streets and houses of the town, where its short range and its high rate of fire were well suited to the urban battle. The Sten’s performance at Arnhem was mixed: it was effective at close range, but its unreliability was a problem, and many paratroopers found that their Stens jammed at the worst moments. The airborne forces’ experience with the Sten was nevertheless positive enough for the weapon to remain in service with them after the war, and the Mk V was the airborne submachine gun until the Sterling replaced it. The Sten’s service with the airborne forces is a reminder that the weapon’s qualities — light, compact and available — mattered more than its defects in the roles for which it was designed.

7.3. The resistance movements of occupied Europe

The Sten’s most important service was with the resistance movements of occupied Europe, to whom hundreds of thousands of Stens were dropped by parachute by the Royal Air Force and the Special Operations Executive. The Sten was the ideal resistance weapon: it was cheap, it was simple, it could be hidden under a coat or in a bag, it used the German 9 mm cartridge, and it could be maintained with no armourer’s support. The resistance fighters of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Yugoslavia and Greece all used the Sten, and it became the standard weapon of the partisan, the saboteur and the assassin. The Sten’s most famous resistance action was the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in May 1942, where a Sten — though it jammed — was one of the weapons carried by the Czech assassins, and the weapon’s association with the resistance gave it a romantic reputation that it never acquired in regular service. The Sten’s service with the resistance was also its most dangerous service, because the men who carried it were operating in hiding, with no support, and with the certainty of torture and death if they were caught. The Sten armed the resistance, and the resistance used it to kill Germans, to sabotage railways and to liberate their countries, and the weapon’s contribution to the liberation of Europe was real, even if it is difficult to measure.

7.3.1. The Heydrich assassination

The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the deputy head of the SS and the architect of the Final Solution, in Prague on 27 May 1942, was the most famous resistance action in which a Sten was involved, and it is a story that illustrates both the weapon’s importance and its failings. The assassins, Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík, were Czech soldiers who had been trained in Britain and parachuted into Czechoslovakia, and they were armed with a Sten gun and with grenades. Gabčík’s Sten jammed at the crucial moment, when Heydrich’s car slowed at a bend in the road, and Kubiš threw a grenade instead, which wounded Heydrich, who died of his injuries a week later. The assassination was a triumph for the resistance, but it was followed by a terrible German reprisal: the village of Lidice was destroyed, its men were murdered and its women and children were sent to concentration camps, and thousands of Czechs were arrested and executed. The Sten’s jam at the crucial moment has become a part of the legend, and it is often cited as evidence of the weapon’s unreliability, but the assassination succeeded, and it showed that a weapon as crude as the Sten, in the hands of determined men, could change the course of the war.

8. Strengths and Weaknesses

8.1. Strengths

The Sten’s strengths were the direct consequence of its design philosophy: it was cheap, it was simple, and it was available. Its unit cost of about eleven dollars meant that Britain could build it in the millions, and its stamped-steel construction meant that it could be built by any factory that could stamp sheet metal, which freed the skilled gunsmiths for other work. Its mechanism had few parts, and it could be stripped and assembled without tools, which made it easy to maintain in the field and in hiding. Its light weight and its compactness made it ideal for paratroopers and for resistance fighters, who needed a weapon that could be carried over long distances and concealed under a coat. Its 9 mm cartridge was the German standard, which meant that its users could use captured ammunition, and its side-mounted magazine allowed it to be fired from the prone position with a low profile. None of these strengths was glamorous, but together they made the Sten one of the most important weapons of the war, and they explain why it was produced in such numbers and why it remained in service for so long.

8.2. Weaknesses

The Sten’s weaknesses were equally direct, and they were the price of its cheapness. Its magazine was its most persistent problem: the feed lips bent easily, the spring was stiff, and a damaged magazine was the most common cause of stoppages, a fault that was never fully corrected. Its sights were crude and fixed, and its open-bolt mechanism made it inaccurate beyond 100 yards, which confined it to the close-range role. Its safety was inadequate, and the gun could fire if it was dropped, a fault that killed and wounded British soldiers and that made the weapon feared by its own users. Its finish was rough, its stock was uncomfortable, and its overall quality was poor, which offended soldiers who were used to better-made weapons. Its rate of fire was high, which made it difficult to control, and its 9 mm cartridge was less powerful than the .45 ACP of the American submachine guns. These weaknesses did not prevent the Sten from doing its job, but they defined the limits of that job, and they are the reason the weapon was replaced as soon as the war ended and Britain could afford to build its weapons well again.

9. Comparison with Rivals

9.1. Against the MP 40

The Sten’s most important comparison was with the German MP 40, the weapon it was most often compared to and the weapon it was designed to match in numbers if not in quality. The MP 40 was a better-made weapon than the Sten, with a smoother action, a more comfortable grip, a folding stock that was better designed, and a magazine that was more reliable, though it shared the Sten’s basic blowback mechanism and its 9 mm cartridge. The MP 40 was also far more expensive to build, and it was produced in smaller numbers — about 1.1 million, against the Sten’s four million — which meant that the Sten reached far more men than the MP 40 ever did. The two weapons were similar in performance: both had a rate of fire of about 500 rounds per minute, both were effective to about 100 yards, and both were compact and light. The difference was in quality and in cost, and the comparison shows the different industrial philosophies of the two nations: Germany built a good weapon in moderate numbers, while Britain built a crude weapon in enormous numbers, and both approaches had their merits. The Sten’s cheapness and its availability meant that it armed the resistance movements of Europe, a role that the MP 40 never played, and that was the Sten’s unique contribution.

9.2. Against the Thompson and the M3 Grease Gun

Against its American rivals, the Sten compared poorly in quality but favourably in cost, and the comparison shows the different priorities of the three nations. The Thompson was a far better weapon than the Sten in every respect that a soldier could feel — better balanced, better sights, more robust magazines, more comfortable to shoot — but it cost about twenty times as much as the Sten, and it was produced in far smaller numbers. The M3 Grease Gun was closer to the Sten in philosophy: it was a cheap, stamped-steel weapon, built to be good enough rather than excellent, and it cost about twice as much as the Sten, at about 20 dollars, against the Sten’s 11 dollars. The M3 was better made than the Sten, with a more reliable mechanism and a safer design, and it remained in American service for fifty years, while the Sten was replaced as soon as the war ended. The three weapons together defined the submachine gun of the Second World War, and the Sten’s place in that trio was the cheapest and the crudest, but also the most numerous, and the one that armed the resistance movements of Europe, a role that neither of its American rivals played.

10. Legacy

10.1. The weapon that armed the resistance

The Sten’s legacy is the resistance, and it is one of the most romantic legacies of any weapon of the Second World War. The Sten armed the men and women who fought the German occupation from the shadows, and it became the symbol of the resistance in France, in Belgium, in the Netherlands, in Denmark, in Norway, in Poland and in Yugoslavia. The weapon’s image — the steel tube, the side-mounted magazine, the skeleton stock — is the visual shorthand for the partisan and the saboteur, and it appears in films, in books and in museums as the weapon of the ordinary person who took up arms against a tyranny. The Sten’s legacy is also industrial: it was the first British small arm to be built entirely from stampings, and it showed that a weapon could be built quickly and cheaply by factories that had never made a gun, a lesson that influenced the design of every cheap submachine gun that followed, from the American M3 to the Israeli Uzi. The Sten’s story is often told as a joke about a bad gun, but its real legacy is serious: it was the gun that was there, in the hands of the men and women who needed it, when the fighting started, and that counted for more than perfection.

10.2. Survivors, museums and the Sterling

Surviving Stens are held in museums and in private collections around the world, and the weapon is a popular item with collectors of Second World War small arms, though its status as a fully automatic weapon means that transferable examples are strictly regulated in many countries. Museums that hold the Sten include the Imperial War Museum in London, the National Firearms Museum in Fairfax, Virginia, and the Royal Armouries in Leeds, where the gun is displayed alongside the Thompson and the MP 40 as an illustration of the three nations’ different approaches to the same problem. The Sten’s successor, the Sterling submachine gun, was adopted by the British Army in 1953, and it was a far better weapon, with a curved magazine, a better safety and a much higher standard of manufacture, but it was also far more expensive, and its adoption was a recognition that the emergency that had produced the Sten was over. The Sterling served with the British Army until the 1990s, and it was the last submachine gun to serve as a standard British infantry weapon, a lineage that began with the Sten’s crude steel tube and ended with a weapon that was, at last, built well.

11. Frequently Asked Questions

Why was the Sten so cheap?
Because it was built from stamped sheet steel, with only 47 parts, most of them stampings that could be made by any press shop. It cost about $11 per gun, against more than $200 for an early Thompson, and it could be produced at a rate of more than 100,000 per month.

How many Sten guns were built?
About 3.1 million Stens were built between 1941 and 1945, making it the most widely produced British weapon of the Second World War. The most numerous mark was the Mk II, with about 2 million built.

Was the Sten a good gun?
It was a good gun for the role it was designed for — cheap, light, compact and available in enormous numbers — but a poor gun by the standards of a regular infantry weapon. It jammed frequently, it was inaccurate beyond 100 yards, and it could fire if it was dropped.

What does “Sten” mean?
The name combines the initials of its two designers — Shepherd and Turpin — and the first two letters of Enfield, the Royal Small Arms Factory where it was designed. It has no other meaning.

Did the Sten jam during the Heydrich assassination?
Yes. Jozef Gabčík’s Sten jammed at the crucial moment in Prague on 27 May 1942, and Jan Kubiš threw a grenade instead, which wounded Heydrich, who died of his injuries a week later. The assassination nevertheless succeeded.

What replaced the Sten?
The Sterling submachine gun, adopted by the British Army in 1953. The Sterling was a far better weapon, with a curved magazine, a better safety and a much higher standard of manufacture, and it served until the 1990s.

12. Sources

1. Wikipedia, “Sten” — designers, production total of about 4 million, unit cost and service history.
2. Imperial War Museum, “Sten Gun” — design, the Home Guard, the resistance and the Heydrich assassination.
3. Royal Armouries, Sten gun collection records — marks, the Mk II(S) silenced version and the Sterling successor.
4. Leroy Thompson, The Sten Machine Carbine (Osprey Weapon Series, 2012) — development, production and combat service.
5. Peter Laidler, The Sten Machine Carbine (Collector Grade Publications, 2000) — the marks, the magazine problem and the accidental-discharge issue.
6. National Army Museum, “Sten Gun” — the 1940 emergency, production and the resistance.

Further reading

• Ian Skennerton, British Small Arms of World War 2 (Greenhill Books, 1988).
• Frank Iannamico, The British Sten Machine Carbine (Moose Lake Publishing, 2000).