the German MP28 was copied by the British to make the Lanchester the Lanchester was simplified to make a Sten the Sten was simplified by the Germans to make the MP3008 it went full circle!

The curious case of WW2 Germany actually *simplifying* something.

"A simplified version of the Sten gun..." Did a double take at that. What is it, throwing a 9x19 cartridge at the enemy and yelling "Bang"?

Haha a gun designed to be as cheap as humanly possible and constructed in a single man hour sold for over $12k. Man that gun really appreciated in value.

Well, I feel better about my welding skills now than I did about 10 minutes ago.

Calling the gun the MP 3008 was a desperate German attempt to convince the allies that they had invented a time machine.

The irony would've come full circle if the British had captured the MP 3008 and used it to improve on their own Sten ;-)

Probably as "last-ditch" as you can get - what a contrast to the serialized screws (!) of the German gun in the recent video!

It's nice to see that someone actually made a Sten with the magazine pointed in the right direction.

"A masterpiece of insane optimism" sums up the entire german efforts in 1945

I hear the later models were just a steel pipe and a pin hammer. The deluxe version included a leaflet with some choice swear words to shout at the enemy.

The British actually made a simplified version of the Sten. They called it the Sten MKIII. It turned out to be not as good as the MKII and production ceased. As the War progressed the British actually made the Sten more complicated with the Sten MKV. But they were winning the War by then.

1 hour of 1 man work... that's the simpliest magazine fed select fire weapon I ever heard of

germans making mechanicals less complicated?? is this the twilight zone?

It's funny. Just as we the British were beginning to make improved better stens like the mk5. The Germans make this thing

this is one of my favorite german guns actually. i like the vertical mag well and the single man-hour of production time. never seen one shot on the internet though.

Thank Ian. The MP 3008 is a fascinating bit of history I truly needed to understand.

With welds like that, it looks like something I would make on a Sunday afternoon while bored in the shop, ha.

The gun is ugly as a mud fence. I love it! Kinda' surprised they bothered with a single shot (semiauto?) feature though.

This is what I would make if I was a post apocalyptic arms manufacturer

Worth mentioning, and this is also true of the original Mk.II, the sight picture is pretty decent on this type of subgun. The front post is usable, the sight radius is a decent length, and the rear sight is close enough to the eye to provide a wide field of view without being so close as to eliminate any hope of precise aiming.

Hi Ian, The "eu" in Neumünster is pronounced like "oy" in boy Greetings from Germany

I literally have nothing with guns but video games but your videos are so informative that every now and then i like watching and learning some stuff, keep it up man!

Been waiting for a forgotten weapons video on the sten gun for ages. My life's complete.

You know you’re in trouble if you have to SIMPLIFY the Sten!

one has to ask why the STEN had the magazine on the side. The answer is that the sear is actually on the bolt, so in the british version the sear machining (ie almost none at all.) was on the bottom of the bolt and all the machining to clear the magazine lips was on the side. Move the magazine to the bottom and the the trigger group has to work on a bolt that has been cut away to clear the magazine and machined to strip fresh rounds. So not quite a trivial piece of redesign. The main fault with the STEN was the use of mp-38 magazine. A two position feed double stack would have reduced the tendency of the magazine to jam.

There is one of these in JoJo rabbit being used by a German girl in a final stand against Americans, nice detail

I always heard about German engineering, but this channel is how I truly saw examples and learned how legit great they were.

" Ludwig Vorgrimmler was simplifying the Sten design even farther" Sometimes people dont know when to stop

"Given up the ghost" ? This saying exists in english ? :D How funny. It exists in german aswell.

"Copying is the sincerest form of flattery".

That was really interesting. Thanks!

I always loved the Sten. It looks like they understood the real value of the design. An expedient firearm that any machine shop can manufacture.

Very interesting! Thank you for sharing !

Ian, buddy, audio is just fine. Thanks for another cool video.

Damn what a rare gun. Thanks RIA.

3:29 so they removed the shoulder thing that goes up? But I'm informed that makes the gun 10x deadlier!

this thing just screams desperation out of every bit

greetings from germany ! first of all i want to say that i absolutly love your videos keep up the great work they are very informativ and interesting :) but i have one question ... could you take a look on other totaly minimalistic and simple guns ? i m absolutly fascinated about the fact how simple and improvised a gun can be :D have a nice day and thank you for your answer (if you give one ^^)

MP 3008 being issued to the Wehrmacht makes sense. Germany expected more and more urban warfare in German cities at this point, and equipping more and more soldiers with SMGs made sense. MP 40s certainly couldn't be cranked out fast enough for this.

Last ditch weapons are easily the most interesting war guns. Not just the Axis ones but the Allied ones. The Sten definitely falls into that category.

A study I did some years ago of the STEN - I was surprised to learn the main tube is made from standard car exhaust tube - 1.5" dia with a 1/16th inch thick wall - mild steel. With the single difference was that an extra process was added forcing a mandrel through the tube to flatten the inside weld seem, so the bolt was not impeded in its movements.

Ten thumbs up! Great educational video

Such an eerie fire arm.

I like your videos, Ian. You present everything in a calm voice and have interesting details about the weapons. "Heer" meaning German Army spells like the english word "hair".

Never even knew this existed! wow very informative

It's mind boggling to think that the Germans actually simplified the British Sten. Damn that's like simplifieing the M3 grease gun.

"Feuer" is pronounced "foyer"

Man when i heard Mauser and Improved i expected a little better looking workmanship or just simplified but that thing looks like something out of Royal Nonesuch's workshop and they wanted a million ! Truly a monument to mans determination to kill one another.

I remember being trained on both the MP 40 and the STEN many years ago. I was able to fire each of these as well as the Thompson, Swedish K , our own grease gun,and some others. I liked the feel of the MP 40 much more than the STEN. There seemed to be less recoil impulse, or anyway better dampened, and it seemed easier to hit with repeated shots. The MP 40 was also more reliable. The STEN gave a lot of stoppages, mostly due to poor magazine quality. Interestingly, the magazines looked a lot alike, but were not interchangeable.

I did not know the words "simplify" and "sten" can exist in one sentence!

Simply the best place to cometo to get to know something about "forgotten weapons". Ian is able to give tons of facts and information about very exotic guns in an entertaining way. It's awesome, and by the way, Dauerfeuer and Einzelfeuer, Feuer is pronounced foire... I understand that it is difficult for an American to pronounce these strange sounding German words...

there was second prettiyer version called the " MP-3008 Blohm & Voss ' - i161.photobucket.com/albums/t206/poppapolar/MP3008.jpg

I did not know anything about this before!!! 😮 What a "romance"!!

You know you need to cut corners when you need to simplify the Sten

my granddad was a royal engineer and faught in Korea,he told me that Sten guns were death traps he said if they were knocked about or dropped they would discharge and often empty there full magazine,he never had a good word to say about the sten and said they were one of the worst guns in the army at the time

I don't see why they didn't spend a couple extra pennies and a couple minutes forming a pistol grip into the stock. I couldn't have taken more than 4 or 5 bends in the stocks overall manufacturing. The Sten had to have cost less than a m3 grease gun and that was I believe less then 10 dollars per copy. I know that the Liberator 45acp single shot that America dropped into Europe for the resistance was extremely inexpensive to manufacture. Heck the m3 grease gun actually got easier and cheaper to make when they did away with the weak charging lever and just put a hole in the bolt to cock the gun. So basically the grease gun evolved on its own pretty much. And GM's guide lamp division tooled up and produced the m3 grease gun in a matter of weeks not months. And a relative of mine used a grease gun in Vietnam and he said it was extremely reliable and quite surprisingly accurate for what it was intended to be used for. A spring, a wire , and a prayer is what I've heard how the soldiers Described the m3 grease gun. Not as effectivein combat as a m1 carbine but a lot more firepower than a Colt 45acp pistol. And when the conversion parts were handed out to make the m1 carbine a select fire weapon the little m1 became the m2 and a squad could have weapons that ranged from m60 , BAR , S&W m76, m1 and m2 carbines and of course they had tim3 grease guns. Quite a variety of ammunition but that was before the military got really serious about interchangeability of ammunition like almost all modern militaries have been doing for a long time now. Oh and don't forget the m14 and I'm sure they were still using some m1 Garands also.

Love the new beard style! Suits you very well. Sometimes less is more :)

Building the V2 and a sten gun copy at the same time…

Also came a suppressor with it, very rare.

Would like to see this thing demonstrated at the range by you guys.

Wasn't the vertical magazine on the MP40 a nightmare for shooting when prone. Seems like the horizontal one would be more practical in combat.

very interesting

There is a chapter devoted to German copies of the STEN in Peter Laidler's book, The STEN Machine Carbine, published by Collector Grade Publications. No longer in business and the book is out of print.

I think, the source of some solutions in this weapon (vertical magazine of MP40) was in MP "Blyskawica" (Lightning) developed by the Home Army (resistence movement) in Poland in 1943. Conspiracy factory made 700 of those MP until the August of 1944 when this weappon were used in the Warsaw Uprising. The Germans get the specimens of this weapon in mid-1944, so it is very likely that they used this solution in their own MP 3008.

Great video as always, thanks for uploading! Just a very minor correction: The "E" is for "Einzelfeuer", not "Einfeuer".

Landwehr units were used to having sten guns and other captured equipment which explains the markings

they put the mag well in the right place!

How was the barrel held in? Pinned? And does the front sight come off, or is it welded to the trunnion?

By German logic this would have come out in the year 3008. Shouldn't it fire plasma or something?

This gun sounds like it was named after Gary numan. The guy that made that song called cars. " Here in my car, Iv'e got a machine gun and i do it for fun been shooting my gun, in cars"

huh, always wondered how a STEN gun would look like with a vertical mag well.

0:42 the first thing that came to my mind was "how on earth could they simplify the Sten any further?!" lol

Ian, I am curious about something. You've run into a lot of rare weapons from all eras, but this video really piqued my interest. I never knew the Germans used the Sten at all! So, I would like to know, have you ever run into a MP41(r), or the MP717(r)? Other than a few pictures, and a few articles, i've yet to find much information on German-used PPsH 41s. Thank you for all of your videos, they've led me to learn a lot more about the history of firearms-and the situations that led to their development-that I may never of heard about. Greetings from Canada!

When mom said we have Sten at home

Wow this sure sold cheap for such a rare and unusual last ditch German weapon, especially being a papered mg. Even as a dewat. I’d buy that in a heartbeat!

First of all I love your Videos. As a German, german weapons are always of big interrest for me. Seeing some of the weaponery I read about in books on that level is just amazing. One Thing i noticed waching your Videos is that you refere to the E on the selecter switches as Einfeuer, thats unfortunatly not completly true, the right term would be Einzelfeuer. But actually thats just a minor sidenote. Thanks a lot for the great work.

Simplified Sten? Single man-hour of production time? I didn't think such a thing was possible.

Now we know where Sig gets the trigger shoes for their XFIVE Supermatch.

Hi Ian, I read an article about the nomenclature of WW2 German weapon factories in a Hungarian weapon themed magazine. According to that, there is a German book which contains all codes of the factories which produced any kind of military products even in the collaborating counties. I'm going to put the link of the book under this comment as soon as I find the ISBN code of the book

I wonder what the finished cost of one of these was against the 7/6 (37.5p) ($3.00) of the Sten. Simplification aside, transportation of parts must have pushed the final price up somewhat.

Beautiful German engineering

At least they went with the Canadian pattern stock.

Wow, pretty rare weapon there.

Do you think it will be possible to do a video on the Claridge Hi Tec S9s of the 90s?

I've heard reports from people who have used sten guns saying that they were feared by the people who operated them because they would go off when bumped or dropped. Some guy I heard saying "if you want to clear a room with a sten gun, throw it inside on the floor then slam the door shut"

I have a suggestion for the weapon to be featured in this channel - Błyskawica. or Lightning smg, the only smg mass produced in underground factories of the resistance, used by Polish Home Army especially during the Warsaw Uprising. I saw a couple of people saying it was inferior to MP-40, but none bothered to tell what they based their opinions on. Would be nice if You talked about Błyskawica and even field tested it, to say how it actually performed.

My friend owns one like this with no knowledge of what it is. His father took it as a cash trade situation for a Carmen ghia. Now he has a gem and it fires

Hey Ian I really like all videos Great info!! any chance you can review a French Mas 38 SMG

Two points. 1. I recall reading a story that the Germans captured a truckload of Stens, the first they got their hands on, and after sending them back to Germany the powers that be took one look at them and melted them down for scrap. The story may be apocryphal but, if true, it would show how the Germans abandoned their penchant for quality over quantity as they became more desperate. 2. I get gun collecting. I have a very small collection myself and, for example, paid a premium for a 1970's Colt-Sauer .30-06, bolt action that had been "shot out" and, rather than hanging it on a wall, I had a gunsmith friend of mine convert it to "8mmX06" which merely uses 8mm Mauser bullets in a .30X06 case. Since I haven't bought any factory ammo other than .22 rimfire in about 40 years; the need to load my own wildcat cartridges is actually a plus and that rifle is far, far, more accurate than I ever was. I also have a 1951 Winchester 94 that I wouldn't trade for love or money. In fact; I was only half joking when I told the person I have bequeathed it to that he should load my ashes into 30-30 rounds and fire them out of the old Winchester in some of my favorite places! All that being said; It is a bit shocking to see that someone probably paid more than it cost to build all the "3008's" for a single, deactivated, example.

Very interesting. I think I prefer this one over the British one.

That's a gun everyone looking to survive the apocalypse should acquire. Such a minimized design can be built under almost all circumstances.

I'm from Neumünster.

The stock actually looks relatively comfortable for its cost. Did it shoulder well? Better than a wire stock?

I like your videos bro.

I’m pretty sure this is the gun that’s used by the armed gunmen at the beginning of the first Incredibles movie.

Dear Krauts, it doesn't matter how fast and cheaply you can make guns when you don't have anyone left to use them

I know this is an old video, but I'm curious does anyone know what kind of welding they used for these guns back in the day? Did MIG welding exist? Or was it all done with stick welds, because if so that's impressive.

i just like how the mag is not on the side

It looks like the Germans made a significant upgrade - that stock actually looks like the most comfortable that was ever put on those sub gun abortions. A painful wire stock doesn't get used, 'accuracy' (Ha!) falls off, rounds are wasted, all at a time when these things matter the most.