Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today courtesy of the
French Gendarmerie taking a look at a very rare,
very cool, French-made version of the Sten gun.
This is a Gnome et Rhône R5.
And this is a gun that was developed and manufactured
just after the Liberation of France in late 1944 and early 1945.
And its roots basically lie in the fact that a tremendous number of
British Sten guns, mostly Mark IIs, were dropped to the French Resistance.
It was one of the most common firearms that was supplied
to the French Resistance, as well as many other resistance movements.
But the French became very accustomed to it, they liked it, they understood it.
And when France is formally liberated in August of 1944
the Allies stopped dropping guns to the French Resistance.
... Like, "We don't need a French Resistance any more, the Germans have been driven out of France."
Well, there was a lot of ... disparate political positions within the overall idea of the French Resistance.
There was far-right, there were far-left groups, and it was kind of well known
that there was some sort of political showdown coming.
And so a lot of the Maquis, the resistance groups, wanted to continue to arm themselves
as a way to maintain or gain political power in the post-war years.
So ... as far as I can tell it was the Communist Party of France, the PCF,
that originally started the program for the R5 here.
It was manufactured by a company called Gnome et Rhône, as the name implies.
They were an aircraft and motorcycle manufacturer,
they're known for doing some World War One aircraft. And they're in the Limoges region.
By the way, the reason this is "R5" is almost certainly that Limoges
was in the 5th District of France, and so they just gave it that name.
Now the PCF gets set developing this, ... the blueprints for this ... survive and are known.
They ... have dates between August of '44 and February of 1945,
so that's the time period when this is being developed.
And ... the plan is put it into production and use it to arm Communist forces in France.
Well, the new Free French government discovers what's going on,
they find out that these are going to be manufactured.
And they don't shut it down, but they also don't let them get delivered to the PCF.
Instead the French government says, "We will take those, you can give them to us."
Because the French military was at this point largely equipped by the US and the UK.
But the French Army had plans for a substantially larger force
than what the US and the UK were planning on arming.
And so the French set up a plan to quickly manufacture substantial numbers of arms
to increase the size of their armed forces.
"And hey, if we've already got some Sten guns being manufactured,
well that's great, bring them in, we can use those too."
So let's take a quick look at this, let me show you how it differs
from a regular Sten, aside from the things you can obviously see.
And then we'll talk about what ended up happening with these.
Let's start with a look at the magazine well markings,
typical place that a Sten gun is marked and the R5 was no different.
We have the R5 designation up here, serial number 2181-02.
There's also a "35" stamp and some style of little proof mark down here.
Not clear to me exactly what the specific meaning of these extra numbers are.
There's not a lot of surviving documentation on these.
Build quality is pretty typical of a Sten gun,
you can see fairly crude welds holding the magazine well in place,
they've been kind of ground down.
But I mean, don't let that fool you, the Sten guns are all pretty crude guns.
The Gnome et Rhône guns were in fact parts interchangeable with a standard British Mark II Sten.
This is a proper production line gun, these were not something that were being made
in a shed by a couple of guys hiding from German patrols.
Now the distinctive elements of the R5 begin with the barrel, which unfortunately on this example
appears to be a ... replacement standard British Mark II Sten barrel.
On the R5s the original barrels were actually about 6 centimetres longer,
or about 2.5 inches longer than the standard Sten barrels.
... They were 10 inch barrels, or 24.5 centimetres long.
This one like I said is standard Sten length, I think it's simply been replaced.
The R5 then also has a much shorter barrel collar, or locking nut, here than a standard Sten gun.
For comparison's sake, that's a standard Sten Mark II.
The front sight is also different, it's just a sharp post welded on.
Where the standard Mark II has this gigantic triangular front sight.
One of the most distinctive features of course is this wooden front grip.
Very definitely inspired by the Thompson submachine gun, very distinctive to the R5.
And that's just on there to improve handling, and it does that well.
Having that vertical front grip is much nicer than ... holding onto the barrel shroud.
And I think that's the reason why these have a much shorter barrel shroud.
You could use a lot less material, because you didn't really need to protect
the shooter's hand from the barrel, because they are going to be holding onto the vertical front grip.
One more element that is missing on this gun is a rotating sleeve
that went here on the ... front of the receiver
that could be used to lock the bolt in the forward position.
So rather than using this safety notch
like so, with the spring compressed,
on the R5s you could leave the bolt forward, insert a magazine
(chamber empty of course, this is an open bolt firing gun)
and then you could rotate this cover up into place to lock the bolt home.
That's why there's this little notch right here, cut out in the fire control cover plate.
However on this one, as with some others, that rotating cover has been removed.
You can see there's a hole here, you also have a safety
in the form of pushing the bolt handle through.
If I can get it lined up just right, there we go.
That essentially does the same thing, pushing the bolt handle in locks it in place in the receiver.
The buttstock is also unique to the R5, being solid wood.
None of the other Sten variants did that.
And if we compare it to our standard Sten Mark II here,
you can see that the stock profile has just been copied from the British metal stock.
It's held onto a central flat metal tang with these two rivets, right there.
And then of course you've got a hole in it for a sling.
With a front sling ring, very typically French small arms,
a ring like that attached to the barrel nut.
Everything else here is pretty standard Sten.
The rear sight is the same sort of rear aperture as a Sten.
We still have the semi-auto selector switch there.
It is an open-bolt firing gun, 9mm Parabellum.
It uses standard Sten magazines, and frankly I have no idea if this is one of them,
because the R5 magazines were not specifically marked.
So it's basically impossible to distinguish them from any other Sten magazines.
And disassembly is identical to the regular Sten.
Push that in and you can pull the buttstock off.
So there's our buttstock. This is actually numbered 381, there you go, 381 on the inside.
You then just push this in and rotate it.
There we go.
So the cap is actually a slightly different design.
This is a machined cap where the British used a stamped cap.
There's the R5. The British cap is two pieces made of stamped steel.
As opposed to one solid piece turned from a bar.
Standard recoil spring.
And then we can pull the bolt handle out.
And pull the bolt out, fixed firing pin, typical Sten design.
If you want to remove the barrel nut, lift this up,
and then you can unscrew the nut here.
And then the barrel and barrel nut come out.
Like I said, this is a generic British Sten barrel,
the R5 barrel would have been a couple of inches longer.
And then there's the R5 barrel nut.
And then you can lift this up, pull this notch out of the hole, and rotate this guy 90 degrees.
That was a design feature on the original Sten
so that they could be packed nice and flat with the magazine wells down.
It doesn't really do you a whole lot of good when you've got this vertical front grip on there.
But as you can see, this is manufactured in the same way as the original Stens.
Go ahead and put that back in place there.
Ultimately the R5 does go into serial production.
It's being manufactured by Gnome et Rhône with the exception of a few parts.
The stocks are made at the Tulle Arsenal, at MAT.
The magazines are made by a different French company.
They are different magazines, but they're not marked, and so you really can't tell what they are.
But they were made and supplied with the guns.
They were produced in batches of 300, there was a total of 20,000 that were ordered.
But only about 8,000 were actually delivered before production is shut down.
... Obviously the Sten gun is a relatively crude weapon,
and once more modern, more advanced, or just better guns
become available to the French Army they switch over to using those instead.
But these did see use in France, as well as going to Indochina
and apparently even some use in Algeria as well. So they got around.
They are really very scarce guns today though,
because they didn't tend to survive all that well.
This isn't the gun that the army wanted to keep for a long time.
So it is very cool to get a chance to take a look at this one.
It may not be completely perfect and original,
but it is the best example of an R5 that I have yet seen.
So a big thanks to the Gendarmerie for that opportunity.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.