The STEN submachine gun was born, as it often happens, to the inertia of military officials.
In 1938, when the Second World War was already clearly smelling, the British Defense Department rejected the idea of expanding the production of American Thompson assault rifles in their country. Conservatives in uniform contemptuously declared that the royal army was not interested in gangster weapons. Two years later, the British Expeditionary Force suffered a heavy defeat in France. Escape from Dunkirk cost the Empire treasury dearly. In France, the Germans got almost 2,500 guns, 8,000 machine guns, about 90,000 rifles, 77,000 tons of ammunition and a huge amount of fuel.
After the expeditionary force was evacuated across the English Channel, the soldiers of the newly formed formations during the exercises were given dummies of rifles - there were not enough weapons. An infantry company had one or two rifles. Faced with the firepower of the Wehrmacht, which has already begun to receive submachine guns, the British War Department has come to terms with the purchases of the American Thompsons. However, mass deliveries did not work out - in 1940, overseas cousins were able to ship just over a hundred thousand machines. In addition, German submarines were hunting for transports heading to Great Britain. Mass production of their "Lanchesters" could not be quickly established due to the complexity and, accordingly, high cost. This assault rifle was produced in a limited edition and was adopted only by the Royal Navy.
It was required in the shortest possible time to establish the production of a technologically advanced and cheap sample. Leading designer of the Royal Small Arms Factory Harold Turpin and the director of the Birmingham Small Arms Company, Major Reginald Shepherd, took up the solution to the problem. I had to work with an acute shortage of time. The prototype of the machine was presented by the designers in early 1941, and after a month of testing in the British military department, STEN was recognized as one of the best developments. The name was formed from the first letters of the names of the creators (Shepherd, Turpin) and the name of the manufacturer (Enfield arsenal).
They took the MP-18 submachine gun of the end of the First World War, developed and patented in 1917 by the famous Hugo Schmeisser, as a basis. The design was simplified as much as possible. The machine gun was made from tubular blanks and stamped parts, although the barrel and bolt were still machined on machines. The simplicity of the design (only 47 parts) made it possible to establish production on any, even outdated equipment throughout the country and was within the power of an unskilled worker. The army received a fairly technologically advanced and cheap weapon - in 1943 the cost of an assault rifle was a little more than five dollars, the Tommy Gun was dozens of times more expensive.
The creators were originally "laid" under the 9-mm parabellum cartridge - in Albion, it was mass-produced for civilian weapons. And the fact that trophy ammunition could be used in the future was also calculated.
Already in January, the production of the submachine gun was mastered. The layout was very similar to the Lanchester Mk-1, but the rest of the machines differed radically. The designers chose a sliding bolt scheme, the firing mechanism made it possible to fire both single and bursts. The receiver is cylindrical in shape and the casing was stamped from steel sheet. On the right side, a push-button translator of the firing mode was placed. The fuse was a groove on the receiver cover, where the bolt cocking handle was wound. The 32-round double inline magazine was actually a copy of the MP-40 and was attached horizontally on the left. However, it quickly became clear - due to the two-row arrangement and a weak spring, the cartridge could jam. This feature became fatal in the assassination attempt on the protector of Bohemia and Moravia, Reinhard Heydrich in 1942. When Josef Gabczyk tried to open fire, clicks were heard instead of a burst. The weapon was new, so most likely it was jammed precisely because of the nature of the store. Or because Gabchik carried it in a briefcase full of hay. Heydrich was nevertheless killed, only he died of blood poisoning as a result of a wound received from a single fragment of a grenade thrown into his car during an assassination attempt. British soldiers solved the problem empirically - instead of 32 rounds, they began to invest one or two less.
The assault rifle turned out to be poorly balanced, with an uncomfortable butt. A simplified sight - a front sight and a shield with a diopter - did not guarantee high accuracy, and the accuracy was lame, which is why the soldiers called these machines "hole punchers". And also - "a plumber's dream."
Since the weapons were made decentralized and with large tolerances in the processing of parts, then the samples of the first series did not differ in reliability. If the cartridge was in the chamber in the machine on the fuse, then it could fire when struck or dropped. With intensive shooting, the barrel overheated. And in hand-to-hand combat, the "hole punch" of the first modifications was of little use, since its butt could be bent. As a result, it had to be strengthened.
The submachine guns with which the commando units were armed differed from the infantry models in a shorter barrel, pistol grip and a folding stock. But since the flash during firing was very noticeable, an addition had to be made to the design - a conical-type flash suppressor.
The assault rifles of the first modification had a muzzle compensator, wooden forend and lining on the butt neck, and a shoulder rest made of steel tube. The Mark II model, which went into production since 1942, lost both the front grip and muzzle compensator, and was distinguished by a steel wire stock. The barrel-to-box connection was threaded. The sight consisted of an unregulated front sight and a diopter rear sight, aimed at 100 yards.
The soldiers tried to rebel - they did not want to rearm, the solid Thompsons seemed to them more reliable. But regimental officers quickly explained to their subordinates the depth of the delusion. The paratroopers first went into battle with this weapon when they landed on the French coast at Dieppe. Operation Jubilee ended in great blood - of 6,086 British soldiers were killed, more than half were wounded and captured. However, the weapon passed the exam, and STEN gradually began to gain popularity among the troops. It was a simple, lightweight and compact submachine gun. From 1941 to 1945, about 3,750,000 WALLs of various modifications were produced in Great Britain and Canada.
For the commando units, the production of a silent Mk IIS wall was launched. It was distinguished by a shorter barrel, closed by an integrated silencer, fire was fired by special cartridges with a heavy bullet with a subsonic initial velocity. In addition, this model differed from the prototype with a lightweight bolt and a shortened reciprocating mainspring. The commandos fired single shots and only in extreme cases - in bursts. The maximum sighting range is 150 yards.
The British parachuted half a million submachine guns to the Resistance fighters, some fell into the hands of the Germans, who appreciated the simplicity of the design, and in 1944, Walls by order of the Imperial Security Directorate (RSHA) began to be produced at the Mauser-Werke plant. The counterfeits were called "Potsdam device", more than 10 thousand copies were stamped. The "device" differed from the real one in the vertical arrangement of the store and in a more careful factory execution. True, it was delivered not to the linear units, but to the Volkssturm detachments. Walls were produced for a long time in factories in Canada, New Zealand, Argentina, Australia and Israel.
