Be vewy quiet, I'm hunting Nazis.
[ Sten Mark II(S) at the Range ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm out here at the range today
courtesy of Morphy's with
a fantastically rare submachine gun.
This is of course a Sten Mark II(S), Special Purpose.
The original World War Two standard issue,
(well, maybe not super-standard issue),
but the standardised suppressed Sten gun.
These are extremely rare today, and it's very cool to get a chance to do some shooting with one.
You'll notice I'm not even going to bother to wear ears today
because these are remarkably quiet guns.
So, I will point out before we get started,
we did some high-speed video of this gun before we started filming this.
And we discovered that with the ammo we're using today,
the bolt and spring are not quite balanced right for our ammo,
and the gun doesn't quite cycle far enough to catch, so it runs away.
This, by the way, is why you always test machine guns with a small magazine,
just 3 or 4 rounds, if you've never shot them before in case they do run away.
So, it is not considered safe to fire long full-auto through this suppressor,
you will compress all the baffles together and potentially damage them.
So what I'm going to be doing today is just firing single rounds at a time
through just ... loading one in the magazine at a time.
So we're going to get started with standard 115 grain commercial, typical ammunition.
This is supersonic. However the Mark II(S),
(and if you didn't see yesterday's video on the history
and the mechanics of this, you should check it out),
the Mark II(S) has a tiny little short ventilated barrel
that ... shouldn't allow this ammunition to reach supersonic velocity.
That, ... in fact I think it is actually louder
to snap the bolt shut than to actually fire the thing.
Let's load another round and try that again.
I can very clearly hear the "thunk" of that round, that bullet, hitting the backstop.
... Oh, and it actually locked open on me for that one,
so it's right on that border line.
The way this would have originally been built in the British military
is an armourer would have got the lightened bolt, and the recoil spring,
and the issued ammunition, and in theatre - where the atmospheric conditions,
the humidity, all that stuff are like it's going to actually be used in service -
they would have then cut down the recoil spring
until the bolt cycles just far enough to actually catch on the sear.
I have a little bit of an experiment that I want to try here,
I also have some 158 grain subsonic 9mm.
And I'm curious if that is noticeably quieter than the 115.
It shouldn't be, because neither of them should be hitting supersonic velocities, but let's find out.
It might actually be a little quieter.
Frankly, the ... powder is being vented just like the ... high speed ammunition,
and so we should end up with it going even slower than the 115.
That is absolutely ... like the loudest part of that is the bolt smacking back and forth.
That's really cool, I'm really impressed!
... Legitimately, I did not have particularly high expectations
for a suppressor that is, what, 80 years old now?
It's like 78 years old, these were manufactured in 1944.
This is an original tube, the baffles are original, the wire mesh in it is original.
It never was a wipe-based gun, so there are no wipes to deal with.
But holy cow.
That's legitimately really quiet, that's awesome!
Ker-thunk.
Alright, yeah, I'm legit impressed by this, this is super cool.
I wish this weren't super-incredibly rare, but it is, it's really a treat.
A big thanks to the consignor who gave us permission to come out here
and put some rounds through this thing. It's a rare experience.
And especially with the suppressor being all original condition.
But while we're here I'm going to keep shooting a few more through it, ... it's just so cool!
Ker-thunk.
I know you guys are used to seeing mag dumps at the end of a video,
but there will not be a mag dump through this gun.
Even in operational use, full-auto was not indicated for these guns.
In fact a lot of them actually had the selectors blocked in the semi-auto only position,
because it would have to be the utmost of emergencies to use this,
and probably actually damage the suppressor with something like a magazine dump.
And well, you know that they were going to do it in training.
So what apparently happened for a lot of the training bases
is the armourers would just pull the core out of the suppressor.
And give them to the guys with an empty suppressor that didn't really do anything.
Knowing that they were going to try it in full-auto,
and that was a way to preserve the parts.
So ... I'll tell you what, I will do a complete mag dump of this magazine, and its one cartridge.
Ker-thunk. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.