Initially designed and produced during WW2 for British soldiers, the Sten was developed
as a direct response to both dwindling supplies of American made Thompson machine guns and
the evacuation of Dunkirk, during which the British abandoned many thousands of guns.
In an effort to re-arm its troops as quickly as possible for the defense of the homeland,
the British Government requested that the Royal Small Arms Factory in Enfield design
an alternative to the increasingly hard to obtain Thompson. As the old maxim states,
“You can have it fast, good, or cheap- pick two”. Given the title of this article, you
can guess which two were emphasized.
The original design for the Sten is chiefly credited to two men, Major R. V. Shepherd
and Harold Turpin who finalised the design in the closing months of 1940. The first Sten
prototype was reportedly of reasonably high quality for what it was, featuring a flash
hider, a foregrip as well as wooden finishings that gave the gun a sleek appearance. About
100,000 of these were produced in the summer of 1941 before the government decided to strip
the already spartan Sten down to save money, materials, and reduce build time even further.
The result was the Sten Mark II. Just a few months after it entered production, the Mark
II became both the bane and the boon of many an Allied soldier’s life.
On the one hand, the Sten Mark II could be produced for less than $10 (about $160 today)
in about five man-hours. (In contrast, the Thompson cost about $140, or about $2,300
today, to produce.) Not only that, but the Sten used only two machined parts, the barrel
and the bolt, with the rest being made, as a 1943 edition of Popular Science put it,
from “the cheapest kind of stamping”. Initially the design even used common bed
springs as a main component.
With the help of assembly lines, all total an estimated two million Sten Mark II’s
were produced during the war (and approximately four million total in the Sten line of guns).
Due to its simplistic design, the Sten Mark II was remarkably easy to maintain and required
virtually no lubrication to function properly. In fact, the construction was so simple that
resistance fighters who couldn’t get their hands on the genuine article even sometimes
just made their own. Another benefit of the Sten’s jury-rigged design was that it could
be easily customised to accept magazines from other guns, silencers and viewing sights.
The ammunition for the gun was also easy to come by, given that the Mark II was specifically
designed to use the 9mm German Parabellum bullets, which were the most commonly used
round by the various European militaries. Needless to say, they were readily available
even to resistance fighters in Nazi occupied territories, particularly as the Germans started
to retreat.
The Mark II was also literally murder in close combat, able to fire off rounds at a rate
of 500-550 per minute (though its clip only held 32 rounds). It was also relatively accurate
up to 100 metres (if one kept a firm grip and used short bursts) and was light and easy
to conceal. Essentially, the weapon was ideal for taking out many enemy soldiers in close
range, and if you surprised them, perhaps even before they’d have a chance to raise
their weapons.
So what was the problem then?
Well, if you, say, bumped the gun hard enough or dropped it (or just set it down too firmly),
it had a tendency to fire on its own. What’s worse is that if it was in full-auto mode
(or sometimes even if not due to failures in the mechanism that would occasionally make
it fire single shots when in auto-mode and vice-versa), it would unload the entire clip
in its self-firing frenzy.
Beyond the gun firing when soldiers didn’t want it to, it also was ridiculously prone
to not firing when they did want it to. This was due to the inherent flaw in the magazine
feed design, which was intentionally based on the magazines used in the German MP-38.
(They did this for compatibility’s sake.) The problem with this design was that it used
a double column, single feed mechanism, meaning two columns of bullets would have to merge
into one for firing (requiring an extremely precise feed angle to work).
This is in contrast to the double column, double feed design in the much more reliable
Thompson. The former is still fine if the parts are well manufactured and sturdy…
but the Sten parts were anything but that, particularly in the early going when the British
were desperate to churn out as many of the guns as possible and had little in the way
of quality control. (For this reason, Canadian produced Mark II’s were noted as being much
more reliable than their British equivalent.)
This jamming problem was so bad that it was common for soldiers to extensively test fire
each of the Sten’s they were issued before trying to use them in combat. Units that were
determined to be more prone to jamming than others were tossed aside.
But even if you had a Mark II that seemed to perform well at first, small amounts of
dirt or other debris could cause the guns to jam, which was a particular problem in
the muddy conditions prevalent across the Eastern front. This problem was exacerbated
by the fact that the long opening that the cocking knob ran along readily allowed such
debris to enter the gun.
Heydrich-mercedesThe most famous example of a Sten Mark II jamming at an inopportune time
was in the assassination attempt of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, “The Butcher of Prague”,
in Operation Anthropoid on May 27, 1942. The assassins waited along Heydrich’s normal
daily commute, which would necessarily pass a certain bend where they knew the car would
have to slow to a near stop. In a move that later resulted in Hitler calling Heydrich
an idiot, Heydrich chose to drive his daily commute in an open-top Mercedes, rather than
in an armored car with extra guards, as you’d expect one of the biggest mass murderers traveling
in, essentially, enemy territory to do.
As such, when the exposed car reached the bend in the road, one of the would-be assassins,
Jozef Gabčík, pointed his Sten Mark II at Heydrich at near point-blank range. He pulled
the trigger and the Sten gun did what it was wont to do- jam.
Luckily for the assassins, rather than order his driver to speed off, Heydrich told him
to stop so he could go after the attackers. While Hydrich did eventually manage a rousing
chase, when the car stopped, one of the other assassins, Jan Kubiš , chucked a modified
anti-tank mine at it. The resulting explosion and shrapnel severely injured Heydrich’s
spleen, left lung, diaphragm, and fractured a rib. Nevertheless, bleeding profusely, he
still chased his attackers for a time before becoming too weak from his injuries. Later,
surgery was partially successful, in that he survived at first and his wounds began
to heal, but a few days later he succumbed to infection and died.
Despite its many problems, the Sten Mark II played a significant role in the Allies’
early efforts in WW2, managing to put an exceptionally deadly close-range weapon in the hands of
Allied fighters, instead of the hunting and bolt-action rifles left over from WWI, which
were all that some soldiers had to use before the Mark II.
That said, the Sten’s importance didn’t stop soldiers from giving it colorful nicknames
like the “Stench Gun”, the “Plumber’s Nightmare”, and the “Woolworth’s Wonder”
after a popular British retail chain known for selling cheap toys and gifts.