Sten Mk5: The Cadillac of the Sten Family
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- Опубликовано: 25 авг 2024
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The Sten Mk5 (sometimes written Sten MkV) was really the Cadillac of the Sten series. It was designed in 1943, and featured a full wooden buttstock patterned after the No4 Enfield rifle, as well as a front sight abductor bayonet lugs for the Enfield. It has a wooden pistol grip as well (and early production examples also had a wooden vertical front grip). It was mechanically the same as the earlier Stens, simply with the fire control group moved forward to fit the pistol grip.
The Mk5 was not quite as insanely cheap and fast to make as the MkII and MkIII, but by the time it went into production British arms supply had largely caught up to demand, and they could afford to be a bit less economical. The Mk5 was really much better handling than earlier models, and was well liked, seeing combat as early as the invasion of Normandy in June 1944. In total, 527,428 of them were produced and they remained in service until the adoption of the L2 Sterling submachine gun in 1957 (and they were not completely phased out until at least the late 1960s).
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Remember when you were a little kid and all your friends had toy guns but you had to make one from crap your dad had around the house? All stens give off that same vibe
But yours ended up functional... 😮😁
My dad was a plumber and I had way too much time on my hands 😊😊😊😊
I had a life-size toy MP-40 ☺️
Mind you, if you actually *had* a Sten gun you would rule the playground
@AshleyPomeroy _Naughty_ =)
Wow this looks like a halfway decent SMG and not a loose collection of rejected plumbing parts.
Only British Paratroopers used the Sten Mk V
yet, it still is, a loose collection of rejected plumbing parts
I object. They were a loose collection of top quality plumbing parts.
Loose collection of rejected plumbing parts ❌
Loose collection of approved plumbing parts and recycled wood from a random door and/or fencepost ✅
@@azimisyauqieabdulwahab9401 Yes, issued to all UK Airborne troops (except the SAS who preferred the Thompson) from early 1944-45. Then issued to all units alongside the Sterling in the 1950s until the 1960s.
"We can put some wood into the design"
British Army: "At last - a real gun"
Me: At last, a real gun
you've never been in a Rolls Royce and it shows lol
It's worth noting that that the Lee-Enfield buttstock is what the original Lanchester machine-carbine had and the official title of the original STEN was "improved Lanchester". Also, the reason why they never changed the magazine well all that much was because the Lanchester remained in service with the Royal Navy for even longer than the Army kept the STEN and the magazines had to be interchangeable, albeit different capacities (at least to begin with. I doubt that anyone kept making the 50-rounders when 32 rounders were available by the million).
Dad had one of these in Suez and loved it. The only malfunction was a misfire, the round was head stamped 1943.
I've fired lots of 1940's rounds in the 20th century which worked fine (and had some modern misfires). Bad luck.
It does not matter whether it is a car interior, household items, ablative heatshield for orbital re-entry or a utilitarian SMG, wooden furnishing just gives that extra bit of classyness. Chefs kiss.
I agree. Wood, or good imitations of it, look great.
My very first gun was a short length of thick black hosepipe with an invisible magazine - ! 😅
I had never realised the Sten was used so late after the Sterling had been adopted. The Sterling, along with the Browning pistol, were the weapons I used most during my service with the Royal Navy.
British Army continued to use them along with the Thompson in Cyprus during the Emergency from 1955-1959. Finally phased out by the 1960s, but US special forces still used some suppressed versions till 1971.
@@monarchist1838I seem to recall Ian firing a silenced Sten, and it was nuts... The bolt working was louder than the sound of the shot
I believe the Royal Navy used the Lanchester SMG up until the 1970’s. Which the Sten had been a replacement for the Lanchester
@@alankordzikowski7670 - They did. In very small amounts until the early 80s, so I’m led to believe.
@@revlewisrees9880 crazy that essentially 3 generations of submachine gun were being used by the RN at once. The Lanchester, the Sten and the sterling
It would be more appropriate to describe the STEN MKV as the Austin A35 of the STEN family: surprisingly good for what it is and for what it cost, but still cheap and cheerful.
The best riposte to Ian's description of the STEN MKV would be that the Thompson 1928 is the Humber Saloon of the Thompson family: much heavier and more expensive than it needed to be.
(There was a haulage boss in East Yorkshire who collected Humber cars and when a lorry of his broke down, he would drive out in one of the vintage Humbers and tow the HGV home.)
As a long-time Humber owner, (various models), all I can say is that the HGVs would have needed to be emptied first.
@@oldcynic6964 Well, if you apply practical logic you would see that offloading the cargo onto a fresh lorry and getting it on its way is exactly what the haulier would have needed to do anyway: Commercial deliveries have to be made when the premises are open, and in the case of building sites things have to arrive in the right order because there's not always enough space to store things on site until they are needed. In the case of deliveries to food processing plants the plant gives the haulier or his client an _appointment which they have to keep_ or face a deduction in payment or outright refusal to take the delivery.
The second reason he would have done this is that taking the cargo back to his own depot still inside the broken-down lorry would have left him responsible for storing and insuring the cargo and he would have to tell his customer this had happened, which he probably couldn't afford to do either.
It's like in video games when people fully upgrade a cheap gun or starter weapon. It only needs a charm and a modern optic.
Yeah, and a drum mag. Because every game gun needs a drum mag. 😁
This one happened to find its way into Cultic, with even more upgrade options included.
The modernized M3 grease gun the Filipinos are/were using comes to mind
Rainbow 6 seige
@@nomad_boreal Oh hey, a fellow Cultic player!
Enfield, "What do you feel The STEN needs?"
British Army, "There's a distinct lack of pointy and sticky about this weapon, a bayonet, please!" Walks off giggling maniacally !
That’s a nasty pig sticker
Yes the US sticks machine guns on everything, and the British stick bayonets on everything.
I'm sure that says something about our national characters.
@@KillrMillr7standard Lee-Enfield Mk. IV bayonet.
There've been bayonet charges done by us as recently as Afghanistan, so... In the words of our transatlantic chums, "That's how we do" 🤣
@@benholroyd5221 the Japanese fitted bayonets to machine guns, so the Brits aren't the only ones, must be something to do with Island nations!
Thanks for the comprehensive series on the Sten family, I really enjoyed it!
The wood stock & grip and the brass buttplate give the ol' "Plumber's Nightmare" some class. 😊
These kinds of series are the ones I appreciate the most; it's nice to learn the fundamentals.
The Gucci Sten! If you wanted to see Jonathan's thoughts take a gander at Part 1 of our D-Day special...
I will I deed
Cadillac and Sten, two words that should never appear in the same sentence!
Pontiac of sten manybe ?
Rolls Royce, Bentley, Jaguar, Aston Martin… Just nothing American! 😂
Obviously an American labouring under the impression Cadillacs are any good.
Cadillac Cimarron?
But you just wrote a sentence with them in
Gun Jesus’ most favorite Sten gun because of being comfortable and he always prefers the fixed and solid buttstocks.
It's astonishing that Ian is wearing gloves to 'protect a Sten'! It says a lot about how the passage of time can turn a hodge podge like the Sten into a rare collector's piece that needs to be preserved;).
Ian it´s at the Royal Armory. In The Royal Armory (and most museums) if you handle anything, even the broomstick to clean the room, you wear gloves. Period. Standard procedure and all that...
Yeah, museum policy is to wear gloves with everything.
A hundred years from now someone's going to do a video presentation of Ian's gloves - they will be holy relics. And the presenter will be wearing gloves. It'll be gloves, forever.
It's the RA's policy when handling guns in their collection.
@ForgottenWeapons I wince every time I see Ian handle an old or collectible firearm with uncovered, salty, greasy filangies.
I’ve never seen someone so enthusiastic about a sten
The best Sten. I have an Mk5 in my collection, it's made around October/November 1944. It's beautiful, looks like it saw very little use. It's almost in mint condition. One of my favorite guns.
One major dofferenxe betaeen the MkII and MkV Sten that didnt get covered.
Unlike the MKII, barrel orientation in the MkV *matters* , becahsr the front sight is mounted on the barrel. So the barrel collar has a keyway cut in it that matches a locating pin that is inserted into the barrel trunion from the top. You can fit a MkV barrel into a MkII in a pinch, but you might end up with the front sight obscuring the sight picture. You can't insert an unmodified MkII barrel into a MkV because of the pin.
Israel decided to enshre the barrels were fully interchangeable in their Stens. So, they cut keyways into their MkII barrels, and inserted pins into the MkII barrel trunions *from the bottom* . This fixed the MkII barrels in place (theoretically better accuracy), allowed use of their MkII barrels.in a MkV in a pinch (albeit without a front sight), and allowed the use of MkV barrels in their MkII guns (the MkV barrel mounted sights ending up upside down and out of the way).
Ian's the only RUclipsr that actually puts in the links that he says he will.
Great series on the Sten and derivatives. Well done, fantastic work.
I'm sure this is the Sten I saw in a photo in a cheap compilation firearms book it was in a homemade wooden carry case with magazines and was stated to be a 'special edition' Sten presented to King George VI and that as an amateur carpenter he had made the case, members of the Royal Family travelled in 'armoured' Wolsey limousines accompanied by true armoured cars and apparently he carried this case everywhere and was determined to use it in an SHTF situation (highly unlikely he would be allowed to get in a firefight in transit, but the whole family had in fact received intensive weapons training and let's face it everywhere they stayed was an arsenal
The King was a professional sailor who saw combat at the Battle of Jutland, commanding the forward turret on the dreadnaught-class battleship HMS Collingwood.
Hey Ian, just wanted to say thank you for covering these guns. As a Brit I feel it's important to learn about these things, and you cover them all with your usual eloquence and brilliant informative methodology. Cheers mate 👍
Good job Ian, always nice to have the Sten series in your playlist.
Sights, on a STEN? Luxury, you'll be spoiling Tommy Atkins next. I see you did, wooden stock and a pistol grip??? A stamped one was good enough for me dad!
I took my Sten MK2 to a Service Rifle match. I did not place last. IIRC there were four or five people behind me. The MK2 sights are certainly crude but they do the trick inside 150yds or so.
FINALLY; I've been waiting for Ian to cover the Mk V!
Been waiting over a week for this video
Ian, thank you for showing us the Sten series. It just shows what a country can do when it's put under economic pressure to produce firearms to arm not only it's armed forces, but also supply resistance groups that were fighting the nazis under occupation. A lot of viewers have missed the point about the Sten.
The critics here in the comments I'm very sure that have never ever handled or fired a Sten. The closest they've been to one is on COD or they've been reading off some crap website when using google. Google isn't always accurate! As noted on the Sten MkII video, my grandmother was manufacturing Stens & used them when she was working for SOE when she was parachuted into the Cotentin peninsula in 1943. The critics here have forgotten how important the Sten was obtained, used & even put together using the most basic of tools for their service in occupied Europe. It was copied everywhere & even the Nazis copied it when they were defending the Reich!
To those who dismiss the Sten (and have most likely never even used one) should do more research before criticizing it. The Sten has been copied by Israel, Argentina, Belgium, France, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Indonesia, Poland, Germany, Guatemala, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Italian partisans, Ireland, Croatia, India, Bangladesh, China, various parts of Africa & more! The old saying, Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery applies to the Sten which can't be said to most firearms used today!
Ian, the Sten series has brought up a lot of memories for me & for remembrance of my grandmother who served while she was in constant danger. Without people like her passing intelligence, the Normandy landings, especially on Utah Beach sector could have faltered.
The British Army carried the Sten into Korea and Malaya and the Australian Army carried the Owen into not only Korea and Malaya, but also Vietnam. Of course, both nations replaced their WW2-vintage SMGs around the same time. Oddly, the British replacement for the much-maligned emergency wartime SMG served for decades of reportedly happy use by the troops, while the Australian replacement for its beloved emergency wartime SMG served for a short time in frontline use before being relegated to rear-echelon, reserve and cadet service.
For anyone who watched The World at War and/or SOE at an impressionable age, the Mk II Sten is iconic.
Australia should have adopted the Sterling Mk 4 and not try to make a poor mans Owen gun with the F1! I know how a very small number of Mk 4's were in Aussie inventory but still...
@@bushranger8960 I guess they still had PTSD from their failed STEN clone.
I do get a sense that the F1 as a frontline complement to the SLR was replaced by the M16 before the whole force went to AUGs, where the British never used the M16 as widely.
@bushranger8960 Basically, the F1 was a Sterling with minor modifications, top mounted magazine which was the sensible decision.
@@bushranger8960 Look at the F1 SMG.
Michael Caine fought in the Korean War and hated the Sten: "It consisted of learning to shoot a Lee-Enfield rifle-obsolete by the end of the Second World War-and how to fire a STEN gun. This machine gun had a major design flaw. It either jammed after the first three rounds, or kept blasting even after your finger was off the trigger. That happened to one of my mates at the firing range and the idiot turned around to ask the sergeant what to do, still holding his gun spraying bullets in all directions. You've never seen a bunch of squaddies hit the floor so fast."
-In 1950 were front line British soldiers issued Mk5s? Curious which one he carried, and loathed.-
Edit: correction -Caine was part of a Bren MG team. He was over there from 52-53, and fought in the Battle of the Hook. Anyways, what was the general opinion among troops of the Mk5 in the 50s?
He didn't say he carried the Sten, if you read carefully. And as a conscripted private in the infantry he would have been issued a Lee-Enfield. Stens were for officers and NCOs. Caine was neither, he was on a .30cal MG crew as a private soldier. Also, he was in Japan and Korea in 1953-4.
That story has been told around the world and back again, even so it is probably true.
Always enjoy the history aspects of your presentations. Be well!
Yes, I did wonder what happened to Sten Mk. IV, so much I had to go back and double check if I missed an episode!
Why do I love the thought that you could produce Stens in a small machine shop with just a TDP plan and some basic instructions and tools?
Because it's pragmatic. For all the faults of the Sten, it was precisely what we needed the moment we needed it. An okay-at-best gun right now that we can give to literally everybody in vast quantities is better than a perfect gun too late to help.
Get a hold of those plans....you never know
Check put the ones the Polish resistance made themselves,,,,crude but worked 💪
The machine shop level design reappeared in the 1970s and 1980s in the Rhodesian and South Africa 9mm semiautomatic "subguns."
Nice another interesting sten variant. Gotta watch em all
Wow a fancy angry toob
End of the series ? Not possible the Sten goes on forever !
Neumünstergerät and MP 3008.
man and they finally got it proper!
Thanks for the run down of the different versions. I recently visited the royal armouries in Leeds which I would highly recommend for anyone. In the demonstration of ww2 weapons a story from a veteran was to clear a room in a building you just tossed a sten in. Maybe the "improvement" of adding a method of locking the bolt wasn't necessary 😂
Thank you Ian, I've been waiting for this. It feels like a long time coming!
Thanks Ian, I did enjoy the series. I now look forward to a future episode/s of some of the 'oddball' Stens. Cheers.
My thanks, as always, for your erudite and informative presentations. Thanks, team ! You enlighten me.
Love watching these videos! Was watching LockerNuts the other day any he found half of a stem mk2 at the bottom of a box so I said “that looks like half of a sten!”
This “fancy” British toob is equivalent to the “last ditch” italian TZ 45
Contemporary not equivalent.
Ian, i'm going to be honest with you: i really enjoyed your series about the variants of the STEN and this was a very satisfying conclusion with one of the better variants of the STEN. The STEN Mark V is indeed the Cadillac of this iconic SMG.
The Grease Gun was merely a Chevrolet
I can't wait for the DMR Sten video.
It's beautiful...
Have to appreciate the standardization of the buttstock mount on the stens
Watched them all. Looking forward to the od balls😊
Ian your knowledge is legionary, and l do like watching more than once, please keep up your high slandered.
Great video as always and a nice "end" to a great series too! Which the Sten has to be my favoite British/commonwealth gun of all time... Looks and runs nice.
Watching from Canada . Very cool thankyou ian .
I believe there is a picture of a Para in Market-Garden with one of these on patrol....Good video, thanks!😊
Just stumbled across this and its thumbs up before i have even seen the video. Carry on Ian....lol
I see they raided the Lee-Enfield parts bin for that one.
Good series, Ian! Nice to know the full history, too. I got to shoot a Sten many years ago when I lived in Tucson and attended a machine gun & sniper match, even tho I didn't own anything full auto. I was fortunate to get to quite a few machine guns at that are real classics. Ripping a mag off out the Sten was fun but so was ripping a mag off from the Grease Gun! I think the Grease Gun was quite a bit more powerful than the Sten, and easier to keep on target but in the end, they both look like they were made in a plumbing shop!
Keep it up, I love your channel!
Cheers,
jc
Love seeing the tube guns!
Fricking early gang checking in
I’m right here.
Here I am
Bonjour
Wooop woop
Gang gang
Sterling: Excellent weapon. Used it. Simple mechanism, but properly made.
This was such an informative series! The STEN is probably my favorite firearm of all time that isn't a pistol. I love ugly guns.
The pin to lock the bolt forward was also to keep it quiet when using a silencer, it limited it to single shot, but it stopped the noise of the action recycling.
I’ve seen that to be a feature for closed-bolt firearms. As the Sten fires from an open bolt, I believe this bolt lock feature is purely to prevent accidental firing from bolt snags and dropping the gun.
I still come across these demilled kits from time to time. May have to pick one up, although I think they are mostly MK 3.
I've loved this series - thank you to Ian, everyone at Forgotten Weapons and the Royal Armouries for putting the series together.
I understand the Sten was a last-ditch throw-together as the Germans were literally coming in and so was only ever seen as "good enough" and fit for replacement as soon as feasibly possible. However the more I learn about the design the more impressive I find it - it really seemed to do its job and do it well by all accounts; they were light, easily handleable, had very little recoil & the silenced variants seemed especially whisper quiet. I'd love to see a proper comparison between it and the Sterling - I know the Sterling is better finished but I'd love to know how much of an improvement it really was in any practical terms - I know it looks like a million bucks in comparison and is much more pleasant to hold but I'd like something that goes deeper than that
This was a great series. You should consider doing series on the development history of other guns. Maybe the Bergman pistols.
Thanks Ian.
I knew that Sten Guns existed but not that much about them.
As far as the fore grip for the Sten Gun - what I've mostly see was people using the magazine. I don't know how accurate that is as much of that may be from Hollywood Movies. I would imagine that the area around the barrel would be pretty hot to be gripping without some kind of Hand Guard.
As to 1943 - it looks like late '43 and things were a lot different then. Right after Dunkirk you had outright desperation but especially once the Americans got into the war - Churchill at least knew they were going to win - it was just a question of how long it would take.
.
My father did his CMT here in NZ during the early 1950's. He said that he trained with Stens but never mentioned the version.
One thing he did mention was the tendency for your left hand to slide back until the tip of your little finger would creep into the breech, so I assume it was an early model he trained with.
Thanks Ian, would love to see you do a comparison of the various SMGs in service in 1943 on the range.
I just so happened to be watching the Sten Mk.4 video when this popped up. Neat.
Great stuff Ian
Can I also point out that the vertical foregrip is very impractical for most right-handed shooters, being as the magazine well is close to it that holding that grip would be awkward at best in any position outside of already sighting down the barrel position.
I believe that Jonathan pointed this out in a recent video about the 80th D-day invasion and weapons used for it.
I remember seeing these in a book when I was little and thinking it really looked a bit too classy - not the *real* Sten gun we kids always thought of when playing soldiers in the school playground.
But, with the various refinements, accoutrements and just generally superior *finish* to it... what a difference to 1941-2!
It really is the whole British war experience in microcosm, or rather summed up in one weapon design tree, isn't it?
Start with standards, lose that in 1940, scramble for absolutely *anything* in the meantime, doesn't matter how it looks or even how well it functions, as long as it functions at all... then by 1943 there's time for introducing a whole load of higher-quality and supplementary things for making warfighting just that bit more of a sure thing and 'easier' for the end users - the PBI and their other-service buddies.
Yep, the Sten MkV really says "we've got a handle on this thing now" like no other weapon - and in the most literal sense I just realised! That was *not* an intentional pun, honestly!
So nice to see armoury spelled correctly!
I want to say the Mk2 Sten was the standard weapon of UNIT but I am not entirely sure they weren’t Mk1s.
Edit: Shows what I know or remember. Thanks for pointing this out!
My memories of those UNIT 'documentaries' they showed at teatime on Saturday was more SLRs.
SLRs and Sterlings is what I remember.
Thanks for another interesting series about probably the most influential of the open bolt SMGs. Always thought the MK.V was somehow the coolest of the lot.
Would you consider making a playlist starting from these recent videos and then continuing through the development of the Patchett and Sterling, interspersed with curios like the suppressed version, the German MP3008 and the 7.62 Tokarev conversions that you've already made videos on?
Great series - enjoyed every video, but the one I’m looking forward to most is the one that hasn’t been made yet - oddballs!
As a Brit I look at the Sten with equal parts affection and horror - calling the MkV the Cadillac of Stens is, I’m sure, part ironic!
Love the SMLE brass butt plate. As my grandfather once remarked about them when looking at my mates SMLE "it really splits them open when you hit em in the head"
That from a Rat of Tobruk who later served in New Guinea
Putting a wood, pistol grip and a wood for grip and my gosh, a Woodstock with a brass butt plate that makes the gun a lot more solid as a platform to handle under full auto and yes, it probably adds another pound and a half to the gun but then again that makes it more solid to handle the full auto fire so that’s actually an improvement than having somebody in advertently hold the magazine and maybe knock the magazine loose or maybe burn their hands on hot barrel just as a safety item
Great idea to make it more retro
I noticed that the parts kits from the stand where the stem mk one in the mk two and maybe even the mk three That were deeded and then moved and sold to the US public. I’d rarely see this mark five as a parts kit.
love this video
Nice adaptation of the No. pigsticker bayonet....probably useless in real time but it fits well
Probably perfect for guard duty keeping privates from pinching extra rations or herding prisoners. Fighting is after all a minor part of war
I fired a Sten mk.5 with the front grip, I stopped using it when it started rotatating on the barrel shroud. Other than that though it was a pretty fun gun to shoot and felt just as controllable as an MP-40.
Cadillac? How dare you, Rolls Royce more like.
True...
Mercedes. Nuff said.
would the mk 2 be a 2007 honda civic that, while simple looking, has a body count and 4 million miles on it
@@themilkman6969 The mk1 was a lada, tatty to look at, but a trusty work horse 😎
Look up the definition of Cadillac… It means more than just a car. lol
TY Ian. Nice. We see this one at Arnhem with the para's. Still not a Cadillac , but maybe the Rolls-Royce, or closer to the mark ; a Bentley of the STEN family. The Thompson is still a Cadillac of SMG's..
Austen: "The last Sten? Am I a joke to you?"
(1 hangfire later...) "Forget I said anything"
The history of the STEN is a tale of attempting to making a sows ear into a silk purse. The men who used it deserved better and did a smashing job with what they had. Because they were British / Commonwealth.
I love the little brass butplate hatch for your cleaning bottle: it's painfully british and I lvoe it.
It is especially painful if you weren't listening properly and try to put it in your wrong butt...
Informative and entertaining as always, Ian. Thanks! The Sten is an interesting thing. I'd like to see a deep dive comparing it to the US Grease Gun. They're pretty similar in concept.
I remember my dad telling me about the Sten from his army days. Shame I can't ask him which version he was issued with, RIP.
Review the Brigade Makasi. It’s a FAL /AR hybrid and it’s pretty new so there hasn’t been time for anybody to forget it or to remember it but it’s probably worth reviewing.
It's fascinating how it evolved to meet wartime demands while maintaining reliability. Great video!
That bayonet is crazy,Wars scary.
Oooo new vid! *watches over breakfast*
I guess with the wonderful way the British Army works it is pretty hard to exactly tell when any of these things went "out of service". My dad was issued a Webley Mark IV as a personal protection weapon as late as 1972, and they leveled that up to a Browning. They did at least eventually give him an SLR and Sterling for normal duty so good on them. But definitely stuff like this that was knocking around a warehouse I bet would have been pulled out for ageeees to come, especially for units like the UDR or overseas and especially if they had half a million of them.
@1:00 "The Sten Mk. V is the really high quality, nice version of the Sten"
Which is still not saying very much...
Almost a gunsmithing backhanded compliment. lol
The Sten really does need a front grip, otherwise people are going to keep grabbing it by the magazine and evenly making them sit loose.
Pop an optic onto it and shoot yellow tracers out of it for that Mandalorian effect.
I really enjoyed this series. I had no idea British paratroopers were armed with STEN Mk Vs at D Day.
I'm not sure they were, but glider-borne troops had them.
@@tonybanham2301Thanks
I watched, "The Guns of Navarone" t'other night and the Allies (played by Greg Peck, David Niven, Tony Quinn) carried Stens.
It seems to me that they could have left the trigger alone and had a butt with an attached pistol-grip that just clipped on in place of the earlier butts. It would be an inch or 2 longer and it would be virtually impossible to fire without the butt, but are those serious problems?
If they had to mess with the trigger, moving it well forward, like a Sterling, would have been a useful improvement.
Good video.
I can imagine some hairy Sgt Maj in the '50s wanting to keep hold of their wooden stocked Sten mkV, rather than having a new-fangled folding stock Sterling.
They put all that effort into the rotating magazine well and the front grip, and somehow never concluded that the sensible solution was to just make the magazine well vertical and let the magazine well also function as a front grip. That would've literally fixed a bunch of the issues they were trying to solve while also making the gun simpler, cheaper, and more compact.
British engineering really is special sometimes.