The British Stern Submachine Guns

Close combat weapon -- British Stern submachine gun

Arms File

Model: Stern submachine gun

Weight: 3.18 kg

Length: 760 mm

Caliber: 9 mm

Minimum speed: 365 m/s

The British Stern submachine gun is a new type of submachine gun developed on the basis of the German MP40 submachine gun.

British Stern type submachine gun is a new type of submachine gun successfully developed on the basis of the German MP40 submachine gun, its structure is very simple and cheap, very suitable for mass production in wartime, it adopts the international common 9mm Parabellum ammunition, and the cartridges can be common with the German MP40 submachine gun.

Model Development

The Stern submachine gun had several sub-models, the earliest being the MK-I, which was the parent model of the Stern series of submachine guns, and was developed in 1941, and the MK-II appeared in late 1941, which was smaller and lighter than the -I model, and had a silencer added, and the MK-II was the most commonly used and highest-produced of the five models.

The MK-II(S) silent submachine gun, which was converted and produced in early 1943, was the only World War II submachine gun that could be fitted with a silencer.

Toward the end of 1943, Rains Brothers designed a simplified version of the "Sten" submachine gun, the MK-III, which was mass-produced to equip the troops who landed at Normandy, while the MK-V was only an experimental submachine gun and was not formally produced.

The last model, the MK-V, was designed to improve on the usual ugly, crude appearance of the Steno, but it gradually became the weapon of choice for British paratroopers.

Classic examples

The Sten submachine gun was used for the first time in combat during the Dieppe raid in August 1942, and by the time of the Normandy landings in June 1944, it had become the standard Allied submachine gun.

While compared to traditional rifles, the Stern sub-machine gun was far less accurate in both range and accuracy, its high rate of fire of up to 550 rounds per minute made the Stern sub-machine gun an invaluable weapon in short encounters.