Although the British Army, accustomed to its high quality Short Magazine Lee Enfield rifles and handsomely finished Bren light machine guns, joked about their tin Tommy-gun' they got good value out of it. This was a most useful refinement at a time when the British Army was engaged in large-scale fighting in North Africa. Nevertheless it worked, and not only worked but managed to incorporate one or two improvements, notably by attaching the magazine housing to a rotatable sleeve, held by a spring, so that in bad conditions it could be turned upwards through 90° thus acting as a dust cover for the ejection opening. It looked cheap because it was cheap, with its great unfiled blobs of crude welding metal, its general appearance of scrap-iron, and its tendency to fall to pieces if dropped onto a hard surface. This resulted in the Sten gun Mark 2, the ugliest, nastiest weapon ever used by the British Army. Nevertheless Great Britain was by this time fighting very literally for her existence and had therefore reached the inevitable conclusion that in emergencies, appearance was not important, only effectiveness, which set a fashion particularly in world sub-machine guns, for many years afterwards. The British gun trade had always prided itself on the finish of its weapons almost as much as on their effectiveness, and the tradition of machined and blued metal allied with polished walnut was a strong one. the intention being to simplify manufacturing processes wherever possible. The Mark 2 was basically a somewhat stripped-down version of the Mark I.
#STEN MARK 2 SPRING SERIES#
this being the first of a long series of changes in the general design of the weapon. Towards the end of 1941 a modified version of the Sten Mark I appeared in the form of the Mark 2. 303" SAA Ball Great Britain STEN aim MARX 8
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