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The Denix Sten Gun is a lifelike imitation of the original Sten Gun originally built to quickly supply the need for automatic weapons in the impending World War 2. With it's rich history to accompany it and its sturdy build-to-last-forever construction, the Denix Sten MKII is a true masterpiece for any military enthusiast, history buff and anyone with an appreciation for highly detailed souvenirs. The Sten is a great conversation starter and the below history of the gun will surely leave you with a greater insight and appreciation for one of the most famous guns in history.
A Brief History of the Sten Gun
With a Nazi invasion of the United Kingdom all but certain in the summer of 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously vowed that Britons would fight the Axis on the beaches, landing grounds, fields, streets and hills of England. But to do so, the nation would need weapons… and lots of them — weapons like the Sten gun.First dreamed up in the opening months of the war and then rushed into production during the Battle of Britain, the Sten was a bargain-basement sub-machine gun that could be produced quickly and in great numbers.With a Nazi invasion of the United Kingdom all but certain in the summer of 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill famously vowed that Britons would fight the Axis on the beaches, landing grounds, fields, streets and hills of England. But to do so, the nation would need weapons… and lots of them — weapons like the Sten gun.
First dreamed up in the opening months of the war and then rushed into production during the Battle of Britain, the Sten was a bargain-basement sub-machine gun that could be produced quickly and in great numbers.
The three-kilogram, all-metal weapon fired eight rounds per second from a horizontally-loaded, 32-round magazine. Cleverly chambered for German 9 mm pistol ammunition, the Sten was effective to about 100 meters (300 feet).
At the time, each Sten gun cost as little as £2 ($10) to produce – roughly equal to about $130 or £80 today. By comparison, the American M1A1 Thompson went for a staggering $200 per unit in 1940!
And while by October of 1940, Hitler had postponed his plans for a cross-channel invasion, Allied factories continued to crank out Stens by the thousands and would do so for the next five years. In fact, nearly 5 million Stens were manufactured before the end of 1945. The weapon would serve in every theatre and go on to become the most recognizable British small arm of the war.
- What’s In a Name? — “Sten” is actually an acronym for its inventors: Reginald Shepherd and Harold Turpin of the Royal Small Arms Factory of Enfield(Shepherd, Turpin and Enfield = “sten”).
- The Simplest SMG — Made from cheap, stamped-metal parts and requiring only a bit of welding, a single Sten could be produced at a workbench by a semi-skilled labourer in few hours — a fully outfitted factory could produce hundreds of the weapons in a shift. Early variants of the gun were built with fewer than 50 parts. What’s more, stens required almost no oiling, making them a snap to maintain in the field.
- Untraditional — Awkward, the Sten’s all metal construction, from the tip of its stubby barrel to end of its skeleton butt stock, was a clear departure from the more elegant looking American Thompson SMG or the Royal Navy’s Lanchester (which itself was a direct copy of Germany’s First World War era MP-18 ‘machine pistol’). Even Germany’s entirely utilitarian looking MP-40 was considerably more handsome than the ungainly Sten. Despite this, the British public adored its homegrown submachine gun.
- Post War Stens – The British army continued to use the weapon into the 1960s, as did a number of other militaries the world over. Belgium, Israel, Jordan, India and Pakistan all either used British-built Stens or produced their own knock-offs for decades after the Second World War, as did Argentina, South Vietnam, South Africa and Indonesia. During the 1991 break up of Yugoslavia, Croatian nationalists manufactured a domestic Sten-inspired SMG known as the Pleter 91