STEN Suppressed Sub Machine Gun
The Sten machine carbine was one of the most hastily completed and most expediently made submachine gun of the Second World War. Although it was reliable, a number of users didn’t like it simply because they saw it as a cheap pipe gun created as a last ditch effort. Nonetheless, there were a number of suppressed versions of it, two of the most prominent featured here, the Mk. II(S) and the Mk.VI with the wooden stock and furniture. Initially, the first suppressed version created for SOE was a Mk. II with a suppressor that was 22 inches in length, horribly heavy and unwieldy for the operations that the British clandestine service found themselves in most of the time.
Although the suppressors shown here are integral, due to the construction of the Sten, they could easily be dismantled with the barrel itself. This was an inherent feature with the Mk. IIs, and the Mk.Vs. One of the problems with the suppressed versions was that they could overheat. Thus on many versions, a canvas guard was added to the suppressor to keep a shooter’s hands from burning. In addition, the bolts had to be lightened because they couldn’t cycle reliably with the additional pressure from the suppressor.
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Infantry Marine, based in the Midwest. Specifically interested in small arms history, development, and usage within the MENA region and Central Asia. To that end, I run Silah Report, a website dedicated to analyzing small arms history and news out of MENA and Central Asia.Please feel free to get in touch with me about something I can add to a post, an error I've made, or if you just want to talk guns. I can be reached at miles@tfb.tv
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Now, you owe it to yourself to shoot a Sterling... either suppressed, or not. Imagine the STEN, as designed and fabricated by people who weren't being bombed by the NAZI's every night. The Sterling was probably the apex of the open-bolt SMG genre.
IT WAS A CHEAP PIPE GUN!
I've seen examples made in bicycle shops that didn't even bother with a rifled barrel