Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the National Firearms Centre
part of the British Royal Armouries in Leeds.
And we're taking a look at a Sten gun in 7.62x25 Tokarev calibre.
This is a Chinese converted Sten gun,
and actually quite a lot of these exist.
A lot of them were captured by British forces, in particular in Korea.
Some of them were also run into in Vietnam or in Malaya, they really kind of got around.
Now part of the reason that these are so predominant is the Canadian government during World War Two
actually provided a substantial number of Sten guns to the Nationalist Chinese forces.
These would have been in 9mm Parabellum, but they number something like almost 73,000 guns were sent
as part of basically Canada's version of Lend- Lease. They called it the Mutual Aid Program.
And this included Sten guns, it included Browning Hi Powers, it included Bren guns.
Lots of firearms were sent to the Nationalist Chinese, at the time in hopes that they would help fight the Japanese,
and take some pressure off of the Allies in World War Two.
However, since the Nationalist forces ultimately lost [the civil war], a lot of these guns fell into the hands of the Communist forces.
Where a lot of them were re-chambered for cartridges that the Communist forces tended to have as standard.
And for that reason we see things like Canadian 8mm Bren guns re-chambered to 7.62x39 and set up to use AK magazines.
And we see 9mm Sten guns rebuilt in 7.62 Tokarev.
So let me show you exactly what they did here, it's not all that complicated.
So there are only two ... aspects of the gun that really have to be changed to make a conversion like this.
One is the magazine well, and of course the magazine. And the other is the barrel, very simple things.
You need a 30 calibre barrel, 7.62x25 chamber instead of a 9mm barrel.
However, with these conversions, and this is normal for all of them really,
you'll find that they actually added a substantially longer barrel.
So the 7.62x25 barrel is 10.5 inches long, which is quite a bit more than the ... original standard Sten barrel.
Exactly what their rationale for doing that was, I don't have documented anywhere.
But of course the Tokarev cartridge does benefit from a bit longer barrel,
and so that may have actually been on someone's mind when they developed this.
The other aspect of course is the magazine well. So this was originally a standard 9mm
Long Branch production Sten, and what they did was just chop off the magazine well,
you can see it quite clearly there, and added on their own magazine well.
Basically modelled after the PPS-43 submachine gun.
Big spring-loaded magazine catch here to make use of the same magazine as the PPS-43.
Now this magazine has been modified slightly. They've cut down the locking catch just a little bit.
You can see that there. Whether that had to be done on all of them or not is not clear to me.
A conversion process like this is a little bit customised and kind of ad hoc. ...
There are some versions that will have the original square magazine well
coming straight out here, as this one originally did.
But there are some conversions that retain that magazine well
and then have an insert in it to fit a Tokarev calibre magazine.
But on this one they went ahead and added their own magazine well.
There are a couple markings on here.
This "54 - 7.62" indicates that it was converted to 7.62 calibre in 1954.
072 is the serial number, because we have the same number on the barrel,
right there.
And then to be entirely honest I do not know what the "25 - 05" indicates.
But that is not a unique marking to this particular gun, I have seen pictures of another converted Chinese gun
in fact it's in the Collector Grade Sten book, that has these same markings and they identify what the top line is.
But they don't mention what the bottom line means, so I'm not sure about that.
... There is nothing marked on the bottom side of the magazine well.
We can disassemble this guy.
But,
there is nothing different or unusual about the bolt.
The 7.62 Tokarev case head is basically identical to 9mm Parabellum,
certainly close enough that the same bolt is interchangeable.
And the power of the two cartridges is also similar enough that you don't have to change the recoil spring or the bolt weight.
These guns just work as long as you give them the new chambering and a magazine that will feed reliably.
That's all you have to do for this conversion. So a pretty simple thing.
Certainly makes sense that with the access that a lot of the Communist forces had around the Korean War
to PPS-43s and Tokarev as a standard cartridge, makes sense that they would convert Sten guns that were available.
Needless to say, it was really a matter of quite some annoyance to Canadian troops in Korea, who found themselves
capturing Canadian manufacture both Sten guns and Bren guns that people had been using to shoot back at them.
They were not happy about that, but such is geopolitics.
Now there are a couple different versions of these that actually are out there because some,
like this one, are actual Canadian Mutual Aid guns that were modified and changed over.
There are also domestic Chinese manufacture (M38 is the designation they go by), Sten guns.
And some of those are in 9mm, and some of those are in .30 Tokarev.
The easiest way to distinguish the domestic Chinese production ones is that they dispensed with the whole selector switch entirely.
So where the standard Stens, including the Canadian ones, are select fire, semi-auto or full-auto,
the domestic Chinese made ones are full-auto only.
So simplifying a very simple gun even farther.
Well, hopefully you guys enjoyed a chance to take an up-close look at a Sten gun in 7.62 Tokarev.
A lot of people really like the Tokarev cartridge. It really does have a lot going for it as a submachine gun cartridge in particular.
So neat to take a look at this one. This of course came out of the Royal Armouries collection.
A big thanks to them for giving me the opportunity to bring it down and show it to you guys.
If you would like to visit the Royal Armouries, well, they have a big public museum that's open almost every day of the year.
And then the reference firearms collection is a separate entity which is not open to the general public,
but it is available on appointment to serious researchers.
So if you are doing some firearms study, either in print or in other media, definitely
get in contact with them if there's something here that you'd like to take a look at.
Their contact information is available through the link in the description text below.
As is the entire on-line photographed catalogue, which has some really cool stuff to poke through.
Thanks for watching.
[ sub by sk cn2 ]