Play World of Warships here:

Our first lesson with the STEN was memorable. Our Sgt said, "select auto, toss it into a room you wish to clear and slam the door. Grenades are safer."

I really appreciated "as comfortable as riding a bike without a seat"!!! This is a very clear description of the STEN, its design, and its function. Thanks.

The Sten played a huge part in helping to win the war, very cheap and easy to manufacture in massive numbers. It re-armed the Brittish after Dunkirk and also armed resistance forces across Europe. It was never meant to be the finest weapon, but had a very important part to play.

I imagine that if you were being shot by a Sten, even at 50m, the inaccuracy of the shots would not be your first thought

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When I was about nine, my dad drove a lorry for a local scrap metal company, who shipped in a load of World War Two scrap and brought home a disabled sten gun. We painted a piece of wood black for a magazine and my brother and I ran around with it, how we were never stopped by the police I’ve no idea. One thing for certain, we were well respected by our “colleagues”.

What soldiers really liked about the sten gone was the fact that you could fire it from a really low position and thus not give yourself away as easily fired in 3 round Bursts it was effective if cleaned regularly. I love the fact that these were found in a cellar and just cleaned up

My father fought in Sicily, Italy, and Holland. He had been issued a Thompson SMG like the rest of the 8th Army. Some of the American paratroopers of the 82nd had been issued the new M3 " grease gun ". They preferred the Thompson so a lot of Canadians traded their worn-out 8th Army recycled Thompsons for the paratrooper's brand new M3's. When they were moved to Holland, they were rearmed with STEN's

My cousin has a farm in the Dordognes, FR. He has never found a sten gun but he frequently gets "treasure hunters" knocking on his door asking about Sten guns as, it seems, during WW2, this area was a favourite spot for the allies to drop materiel for the resistance.

We trained on the STEN and the proper way to hold it was magazine on the forearm, hand palm down on the barrel guard, fire from the hip. It was meant for the resistance thus the 9mm caliber. Accuracy was never a consideration, and never single shot. Basically you sprayed the area or room for maximum effect. At the time, a factory just west of Toronto, Ontario, Canada manufactured them for $2.36 CDN. It was never intended to be sophisticated or pretty, and if it didn't jam, it was effective.

My dad dumped the sten gun he was issued as a sergeant in the Royal Army Service Corps, and picked up a captured German MP40 which he carried through Holland til the end of the war.

“You wicked piece of vicious tin!

"How bad was the Sten?"

A friend of mine used a Sten gun as his personal weapon from D+6 right through to the end of the war. His job was driving a Bren gun carrier, pulling a trailer carrying shells to the front areas for the Royal artillery. He was also a armourer. He told me that the Sten saved his life on numerous occasions. It was his favourite weapon. Sadly he’s no longer with us, but I remember fondly listening to his stories of the war..

Nothing but respect to the men who went into fights with this as their weapon.

my farther who was in the lieutenant in the household cavalry blues and royals during ww2 and his weapons were a revolver and the STEN he said " it went off when you didn't want it too. and didn't work when you needed it too."

I used to have a Sterling SMG as my personal weapon so I’m reasonably au fait with how it and the Sten behaved. First, neither the Thompson or the Sten were considered an alternative to the 303. The Sten was developed as a cheap, mass-producible, close-in weapon. It’s basically an automatic pistol with a longer barrel. Think of it that way and it makes more sense and going for single aimed shots at 50 metres was definitely not its intended use. House clearance at 5 to 10 metres was more it’s forte. Remember it only used a pistol round! The torque reaction on full automatic took some getting used to and the potential for stoppages and unintended discharge was as bad as you say. By the way, my memory may be faulty but the return spring on your weapon (originally manufactured by a bed spring company) looks like it’s allowing the moving parts to go a long way back. A stronger spring might improve things🙂

I was trained on the Sterling SMG. If you had to aim, the target was too far away. At 15 meters you could get a 6in group but on full auto from the hip the group was the size of a man's torso.

My great grandfather worked as a foreman at Brown Bailey's steel works in Sheffield, UK. The Sten was cheap and relatively easy for any machine shop to produce.