The British Bren and Sten guns: why?

Cool guns, no doubt; I'm dying to get a hold of a Sten for a movie of mine, it's a great French Resistance gun.

Anyway, my friends keep joking and saying that they had no idea what to do with the clip, so they just threw them on. What are the advantages to having clips on the side and on top? I know for the Sten you can hold the clip and it's more stable, but what else is there about the two?

 

Well for the Sten-holding it by the magazine would cause it to jam. It is also easier to use prone. And probably something to do with the feeding mechanism too.

Oh yes-it's a bad thing to throw away the empty magazine, because you can't refill an empty one one bullet at a time in the heat of battle, you take the empty ones back to base and refill them there.

 

Interesting. I never considered the prone position. I thought about the feeding mechanism, but I couldn't think of anything that might have been better than what they had already.

 

oh yes-If your going to make a movie with a Sten in it, please, don't hold it by the magazine! In almost every movie/game they always hold it in a position that would damage the mechanism and jam it.

 

Have a read,
Bren light machine gun - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
There were many other LMGs with a top mounted magazine such as the French Chatellerault FM24/29.
Think how easy it was to change mags with it being on top.

As Joe, rightly says, never fire the Sten holding the magazine.
I fired the Sterling SMG and we were told never to hold the mag.

PS Joe, like the Red Kite.

 

I read recently that some German soldiers on the Eastern Front preferred captured Stens to the MP40, just because they could fire them while lying flat on the ground. Apparently to fire the MP40 they had to raise their heads up higher and a lot of men were lost to headshots from snipers as a result.

Changing mags on a Bren was extremely fast. This was usually done by the loader (not the gunner) who could whip a mag off and slap on a fresh one with only a fractional pause in the firing. Compare that with changing the mag on a BAR, say. And of course having gravity-aided feeding didn't hurt reliability.

 

They had quite a reputation for jamming. Was this ever officially addressed by the authorities or was it ignored ?

 

I apologise that as usual I have along post as a response for your consideration.

George G. Blackburn, Veteran FOO, reporter, and author of the books Where the Hell Are the Guns?, The Guns of Normandy, and The Guns of Victory describes the experience the Canadian Infantry had using the Sten in Chapter 55, pages 349 to 353, titled "The Night A Sten Gun Doesn't Jam!"

"...and suddenly the cellar is full of laughter from others who have been listening and who obviously also consider it hilarious when a Sten gun actually fires when the trigger is pulled. You can't believe your ears....You question the narrator. Surely he meant he was afraid his Sten might jam from dirt in the mechanism, picke up when he rolled along the bottom of the trench?

"Dirt, hell! There doesn't have to be any dirt, for right after you've cleaned and oiled it, the bastard takes the notion. You never know..."

Blackburn continues and notes that back in England he and another officer were given the Sten to try... "While very suspicious of the effectiveness of the so-called safety-catch arrangement, you didn't mention it, for you hadn't yet seen the Sten on being accidently dropped on its butt end, fire off its entire magazine of bullets, pinwheel fashion - while revolving slowly on its side on the floor - causing everyone in the room to leap into the air as the barrel swivelled in their direction." His commentary in the chapter continues with "...being told that the manufacture of these primitive gadgets had been undertaken primarily to satisfy the need for cheap, easy-to-produce weapons that could be dropped to the underground Resistance fighters, that the Sten was chosen because it was of German design and could use 9-mm rimless ammunition which the Resistance fighters could steal from enemy dumps. In the desperate days of 1941 and 1942, the Sten may have been a justifiable compromise for securing arms for the Resistance, who would otherwise have been weaponless...But to supply these totally unreliable weapons to regular trooops..must surely rank among the foremost criminal acts perpetrated on Allied troops in World War II....But these soldiers here tonight, and countless others like them who have managed to survive after being let down in a crisis by its fickle mechanism, would surely agree that the Sten is among the most successful booby traps planted in the way of Canadian and British troops." The Footnote goes on to state "When the British War Office ordered the Sten into production in 1941 they were aware that the design from which it was derived had already been rejected in scorn by the German Werhmacht. In a rare defense of the the freakish Sten...Lieut. F. Matthews of the South Sasskatchewan Regiment reported that in the muddy conditions brought on by the torrential rain during the attack on Verrieres Ridge, July 20, 1944, they were more reliable than the normally highly dependable Bren. Their Stens worked okay if they were fired "holding the mags vertical and the ejection slot to the bottom, so that if the force of the ejection was insufficient, gravity would push the spent casings out."

Michelle

 

More...From official records of the Canadian Military Headquarters (CMHQ) Reports 1940-1948:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060215053000/www.forces.gc.ca/dhh/downloads/cmhq/cmhq141.pdf

13. Machine Carbines. Two principal types of machine carbines were in use in the Canadian forces throughout the year. In the Allied Armies in Italy the Thompson machine carbine continued in use. Supplies, from British sources, were adequate to meet the requirements of the field units and to train and equip reinforcements in the United Kingdom proceeding to Italy (C.M.H.Q. file 13/Equip State/2/4: Equipment States, Cdn Forces in A.A.I.: C.M.H.Q. file 13/Equip State/1/7: Equipment States, C.M.H.Q. and C.R. Units). This weapon proved quite satisfactory in action (Cdn Ops in Med Area, series 9, p.8; series 19, p.1).

14. In North-West Europe the Sten Machine Carbine was the standard issue to the Canadian Army. Supplies were adequate, and in May an additional pool of 12 Stens over and above 7 Report No. 141 establishment was allowed to each infantry battalion for the use of platoon commanders as desired (C.M.H.Q. file 1/Sten MC/1: Equipment Policy Letter No. 120,, 10 May 44).

15. Soon after the Canadian forces went into action in Normandy complaints began to be received concerning the performance of the Sten (Cdn Ops in N.W.E., series 2, p. 11; C.M.H.Q. file 1/Sten MC/1: Tel S.D.W. 2593, CANMILITRY to S.D. Main H.Q. First Cdn Army, 4 Aug 44). These came from 3 Cdn Inf Div and may be summarized as follows:
a. Troops have lost confidence in the weapon;
b. Jamming of the mechanism by slight dust or sand;
c. Action not reliable; no certainty whether it will fire automatic or repetition or at all;
d. Failure of magazine spring;
e. Not safe unless cocked; if cocked dirt gets in the chamber through the ejection slot;
f. Magazine too wide for the rounds;
g. Lips of the magazine easily bent;
h. Firing pin not long enough and easily worn causing too many misfires;
i. The magazine held by the left hand while firing loosens the clamp causing jamming.

It was recommended that either these faults be corrected or the sten replaced by the Thompson submachine gun.

The complaint was investigated by Second British Army, of which 3 Cdn Inf Div formed a part at the time. They recommended modifications to incorporate (1)(**) safety catch, (2)(***) better magazine, (3) improvement of the repetition and automatic lever. It was "considered that good maintenance and cleanliness will eliminate troubles. No other fmn reports bear out 3 Cdn Inf Div report". (ibid. Tel S.D. 92, S.D. Main First Cdn Army to S.D.W., C.M.H.Q., 5 Aug 44). A detailed comment by D.Q.M.G., C.M.H.Q., on these criticism is attached as Appendix "A" to this report. However the unfavourable reports continued. Early in August various substitutes were being suggested (ibid: Extract from Notes on Visit by Col. F.F. Fulton, S.D.W., C.M.H.Q., to H.Q. First Cdn Army, 9 Aug 44). It should be noted that the objections were not unanimous; the S Sask R in July reported the Sten gun to be excellent; "we killed more Jerries with Stens that day than with any other weapon" (Historical file AEF/6 Cdn Inf Bde/C/D: Account of the Attack by S. Sask R on 20 Jul 44 by Major L.L. Dickin).(****)

16. Apart from the replacement of a few of the Stens by the Browning 9-mm automatic pistol (para. 12 above), no change took place in policy with regard to machine carbines in 21 Army Group. In Italy issues were made to British forces of the American S.M.G. .45-in M3, though up to the end of November Canadians had not received any (C.M.H.Q. file 1/Sten MC/1: Tel A.C.C. 2401, CANDEX to CANMILITRY, 29 Nov 44). Canadian reinforcement units in the United Kingdom held some of these for the purpose of training reinforcements destined for Italy (C.M.H.Q. file 13/Equip State/1/7: Equipment State, C.M.H.Q., AND C.R. Units as at 30 Nov 44).

17. Sten production in Canada had ceased by the end of 1944. In the United Kingdom it had switched over entirely to the new Mk 5. But a new design was also being undertaken on long term basis (C.M.H.Q. file 1/Pers Weapons/1/2: D.G. of A. Cdn T.L.G. Staff Memorandum, 3 Nov 44).

 

The basic problem with the Sten was the single-feed magazine design. This was a double-stack mag in which the two stacks were forced together into a single-feed column before chambering. This is inherently more troublesome than the alternative double feed design, in which the two rows of interlocking rounds are retained right up to the mag lips, the bolt picking up a round from each side in turn. There really was nothing much that could be done about that, it was an inherent design fault.

Coupled of course with the fact that the mag didn't lock to the gun with sufficient rigidity, which meant that if you gripped the mag when firing and pulled it towards you, this pulled the nose of the bullet at the top of the mag below the feed ramp so it would jam.

Having said that, there have been worse weapons and it seems to have been regarded as just about acceptable. There were certainly better guns around, notably the Aussie Owen, but that was very heavy.

 

Gotcha!

 

I am interested in reading that holding the stern by the magizine can cause jams. But in actual WW2 footage british soldiers are shown holding it by the magizine as they are firing

 

The problem was that that people didn't necessarily do as they were told, and it was the natural place to put your left hand

The operative word is of course "can" cause jams - it didn't necessarily do so, it would have depended on the particular magazine and gun, and the way in which the soldier held it.

 

Exactly. All soldiers are different. Some might have pulled on the magazine while holding it, others might just let it rest in the hand.

And if the hold it at the bottom of the mag, there is less chance of it jamming than holding it at the top (because of leverage).

 

Between the two guns, which one would of been more reliable? The Sten looks streamlined and lightweight, but I don't know the difference in rate of fire. Which one is faster?

 

The rate-of-fire comparison between Sten and Bren is rather academic as they fired pistol- and rifle-calibre cartridges respectively.

The Sten could fire between 500/550 9mm rounds per minute, the Bren rate of fire ( which could be manually adjusted ) was 450/550.

I would rate the Bren as by far the most reliable ; it is quite beautifully engineered and built and the only notable problem was jamming due to incorrectly-loaded magazines.

 

I agree. The Sten was a barely acceptable short-term expedient, but the Bren was one of the all-time great small arms, loved by its users. It survived the switch from .303 to 7.62mm, being rebarrelled in the new calibre, and remained in British front-line service until well into the 1980s. Even now, many old soldiers wish that it was still available.

 

I recall stories from my Grandfather of the Sten being feared by many British troops for emptying it's entire clip if anyone was foolish enough to drop it. Even leaning it against a wall might mean a slip to the ground which would be enough to kick it off.

Also remember reading about many British Infantry preferring the MP40, which was not only more reliable but during the fight for Europe tended to have an unlimited supply of ammunition.

cheers,

 

Wern't the magazines for the MP40 interchangeable with the Sten?

 

I must admit I've no idea, but I know a man who would.