The Collector The Sten

FRENCHIE CONTINUES HIS “COLLECTOR” SERIES WITH A WEAPON THAT CAME TO SYMBOLISE THE UTILITARIAN, “MEND AND MAKE DO” TIMES IN WHICH IT WAS CREATED.

This month’s “Collector” is a complete cheat which, given the month I have had, I’m simply not going to apologise for! Ladies and Gentlemen, the very apex of British gun making, the striding colossus of World War II small arms: The Sten gun! It’s a cheat because it is almost impossible to find anything other than the AGM version of this gun, but I’ll come to that later when we look at the airsoft options.

Let us turn first to the gun itself, it’s genesis, service and endearing quirks. The Sten gun arose from the confluence of two circumstances – Dunkirk and the cost of the Thompson submachine gun. When the British Expeditionary force was plucked from the shores of Northern France they left behind the vast majority of their equipment, so although Britain succeeded in pulling back hundreds of thousands of soldiers, it was woefully short of weapons and equipment with which to reconstitute its shattered army. Britain had been buying Thompson submachine guns from the USA but demand constantly outstripped supply, and the cost was prohibitive. The Thompson was a product of the previous war and previous manufacturing practices involving many machining operations. Other nations had already begun to replace such expensive weapons with far simpler options; Germany’s MP38/MP40, the Soviet Union was developing the PPSh41, both designs which minimised production time and importantly the skill necessary to produce components.

As the RAF fought the Battle of Britain and the nation waited for invasion, the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield was commissioned to develop a cheap, easy to produce submachine gun to re-equip the British Army. The design work was carried out by Major R.V. Shepherd and Harold John Turpin and it was their initials plus those of Enfield that would give the new gun its name – Sten.