The Diggers' Dismay: Austen Mk I SMG
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- Опубликовано: 16 июл 2024
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When World War Two began, Australia saw little threat of invasion from Germany (obviously), and sent a substantial number of firearms to Britain to help arm the Home Guard there, which was seriously concerned about the possibility of a German invasion. When Japan and Australia declared war in December 1941, the situation immediately became much more serious for Australia, and the government began looking for arms.
At the start of the war, there were effectively no submachine guns at all on the continent - just a couple examples. These included an MP38 somehow confiscated by Australian customs, which would take on a significant role. Australia looked to Britain for arms, and they were sent a technical data package to produce the Sten MkII - but found the design pretty underwhelming. Australian manufacturers decided to make their own improvements to it, using elements of the MP38 - specifically the sealed telescoping recoil spring system and underflowing stock. They also gave the gun a pair of pistol grips for improved handling.
The Owen SMG was going into production at this time, and had been in development for a while under private civilian supervision. The Australian Sten, called the Austen, lacked that developmental track record and it went into production without passing proper trials. It faced significant manufacturing delays and reliability problems, and was not well liked by troops - in contrast to the excellent Owen. The Austen was ultimately made in smaller numbers than the Owen (19,914 of the MkI guns) and pulled from combat use in August of 1944.
Many thanks to the Royal Armouries for allowing me to film this rare artifact! The NFC collection there - perhaps the best military small arms collection in Western Europe - is available by appointment to researchers:
royalarmouries.org/research/n...
You can browse the various Armouries collections online here:
royalarmouries.org/collection/
Contact:
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"When Australia went into World War 2, they had, apparently, a grand total of three submachineguns.-"
Oh three models in their arsenal? That's not bad.
"One was an MP18 in a museum, one was a Thompson submachinegun that a captain brought back, and one was an MP38 confiscated by customs."
Oh.... you meant literally three SMGs....
My thoughts exactly.
Same lol
It's true, while we had some heavy machine guns leftover from the 2nd world war, no development had continued in Australia on improving our military assets up until the threat of Japanese invasion. In fact we didn't even take the threat seriously until the Japanese where on our doorstep in Papua New guinea.
"30 Years of Electricity"
@@matthewtscott1 "In fact we didn't even take the threat seriously until the Japanese where on our doorstep in Papua New guinea.
" The threat was taken very seriously, just not by some.
Churchill declared that Australia could fall and the English would get it back after the German were defeated. John Curtin argued that Australia's defense was paramount. Churchill thought it was ungrateful, impudent and highlighted innate “Australasian anxieties”. Roosevelt thought that Curtin's argument “tasted of panic and disloyalty”(this is after Pearl Harbour).
Even after the fall of Hong Kong, The Philippines and Singapore, Churchill still refused to release the Australian 6th and 7th Divisions from the Middle East. Thankfully, Curtin persisted against Churchil's and Roosevelt's strategy to "defeat Hitler first" and brought Australian troops home to defend Australia and the Pacific.
Mathew, maybe you should study Australian history and politics a little more, before indulging your ignorance and rubishing Australia and your fellow Australians.
"The Austen stock is much more complicated to produce." Yes but the sten stock is made entirely of sharp edges and sadness.
I thought the "die casting expertise... or rather experience" would result in more than ONE PIECE being cast. How hard would it be to cast a simple one-piece stock?
@@AM-hf9kk Very, in fact I would got as far as to say trying to cast one piece stock would be an exercise in stupidity, especially in the 40's. Casting is great for large pieces like armour plate, say the transmission cover, front glacis plate and turret pieces of the M4 Sherman, but for small, complex pieces with lots of tubes and bends like a stock? You are throwing good money after bad. The only way you are going to get good reliable complex castings like a stock is probably the lost wax casting method, and that is a method of production more suitable to artists or jewellers (my casting experience comes from the latter), not mass manufacture of 'cheap' SMG's.
This is before you consider that after casting you then have to 'finish' the cast, so remove sprue etc, and then you have to machine in various parts of that stock. The ones that spring to mind are the catch system to attach stock to the receiver (has moving parts, they need to be manufactured and fit seperately), and machining out the wells for the screwdriver and cleaning rod as you are NOT going to try casting a hollow tube!
Believe me, it would be much easier and a LOT cheaper simply stamping or pressing the various parts and welding them together. Casting had its place in the weapons of the 1940's, but SMG stocks was not that place!
@@alganhar1 I agree that this catastrophe would be a bitch to cast. But the cheap simple version wouldn't have any of the odd features. It could be a single part with two flats and a hole to pivot on a bolt in a simple bracket, allowing it fold fold beside the action instead of around the mag and grip. Outside of the pivot area the sprue wouldn't matter at all and there would be no finishing work. It might run slightly heavier and uglier, but who cares? It's designed to be a quick, cheap, disposable weapon in desperate times.
@@AM-hf9kk Maybe, but you are still better off just stamping or pressing tubular steel, it is faster, cheaper, and uses less material than casting. The only way you are going to get an effective cast is to move to a flat casting rather than a cylinder design, sort of like an I beam type arrangement. Even so, for this type of thing stamping/pressing is simply more efficient.
Casting takes time, you have to regulate the pour, you have to ensure there is no bubble formation (which will seriously weaken if not outright ruin the cast), and you have to wait for it to cool. Then of course you have to clean it up. With pressed/stamped pieces you can make those pieces far, far faster, and simply weld them together. Clean up is as simple as sanding or grinding down the sharp edges and you are good to go.
As I said, casting did and does have its place, but there are reasons it is generally not a method used in the mass production of metal items, especially small ones. Stamping and pressing are simply cheaper, faster and usually use less material.
alganhar1 you’re assuming there was a high throughput stamping press available in wartime Australia to make SMGs. Australia didn’t have a car industry until after the war. We were eating up industrial resources by doing things like trying to turn out our own fighters from modifying Trainer designs. Just sticking a wooden stock on the thing would probably have matched our available technology better.
When he said they had three SMGs, I first thought they had three types in service.
well, technically we did!
Lol, yeah, me too! Didn’t realise he meant literally!🤣😭😱
Same here
@@Galf506 public service!
reminds me of Flight of the Concords, when Murphy remarks that "well, we've got the one gun, but the army's using that".
Germany: "Guten tag!"
Australia: "You blokes are ages away! No worries!"
Japan: "Konnichiwa!"
Australia: "CRIKEY!"
That actually made me lol
Nice
As an Aussie, that was really funny.
Can't help but hear "crikey" in Steve Irwins voice.
Shit that’s funny
Thinking they can improve the Sten? Austentatious.
👏👏👏 Comments winner right here lads! Pure class. Bad Tanker, I doff my hat to you sir.
Brillient 1🤣🤣🤣🤨
Genius.
Ohhhhh, Austen is short for "Australian Sten"
How many smgs do we have?
Three sir!
Three what? hundred? thousand?
No sir , only three one in a museum one in private ownership and another was confiscated by the authorities at the port.
Some guys must have had pretty strong headaches for a while.
Well, I mean, what do you really expect for a country that doesn't have an extensive history of private gun ownership, AND up to WW2 has literally never actually had to defend itself from well... Anything?
I mean, pretty much every battle Australians have ever been in has been on foreign soil, and more often than not for the sake of defending an ally, not ourselves...
@@KuraIthys Yeah smg and rifle bullets do not do much aganist spiders or snakes so i understand that you needed none of them. joking aside you got a pretty gun up in a rather quick time with the owen.
@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine yeah i saw that "tank" that they had made as a stop gap mesure it looks fun like the ones i drew when i was a kid. But if you have jack shit and the enemy is at the porch you toss the shit in his face , it might work or slow him down.
@Billy sorry i was thinking about the bob semple but i now look it up and it was new zealand design
@Billy i mean, you probably could penetrate japanese tanks with machineguns and their asian wide conscripts aint gonna do much either
Why is it that every Australian gun was designed on a napkin, as a dare, and then when asked whether "the new submachine gun design was ready", they told their boss "nah yeah she'll be right"..
Liamv4696 whats funny is their best submachine gun from this era was designed by a teenager, the Owen smg.
edit: Oops, he was a young man not a boy, 22 iirc.
@@andreahighsides7756 On a napkin at home....
Don't you mean beer coaster?
@@andreahighsides7756 It wasn't just "their" best. It was the best smg of the war.
michael scott Yes good point! Still used in Vietnam like the grease gun
You'd think it would be impossible to make the Sten Mk 1 any worse. Instead, they took away the one good thing about the Sten, the fact that it was cheap. Quite impressive.
I guess it seemed like a good idea after 24 cans of Fosters...
@UC0cCf-YP5pY870l0XKBn2sQ sold to us gormless poms to get mashed on whilst teetotal Ozzie-land produces a race of cricketing super humans like Steve Smith to keep our ashes for the rest of eternity 😆
@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine Agreed, which is what makes it so sad. If they'd just limited themselves to welding on a couple of simple pistol grips, they would have made a major improvement for minimum costs.
ZB6 uk Aussies don’t drink fosters.
Do you mean the mk1* or mk2/3? At least the mk1 had a flash hider and grip
Gonna need a follow-up on the story of that rouge MP38.
Dark Docs would have to cover that. Maybe Ian and Dark 5 could collaborate
Have you seen that MP38? I know the Aussies painted the Owen in camouflage colours but who would paint a MP38 rouge?
@@ahorsewithnoname643 Not as in colour. Rouge as in shady, off-the-grid, spy-hush-hush-business.
Just realized I spelled it wrong. Mah baedz.
@@John-un3lj
Did you go a bit rogue ?🙂🤗
Blue gloves, for when you have a gun video at 10 and a colonoscopy at noon.
Two by two...
Hands of blue
No chance of combined the two together with the current barrel fitted ?
They're common in biochemistry, so maybe he'll be looking at biological weapons next?
Just..... try to... relax.
The mk 2 austen looks like a 1990's tippman paintball gun
98 custom*
@@bensevrywere The earlier ones were just marked "Tippmann 98" the 98 customs came a bit later with some revisions, kinda a 98A1
@@esrvdb88 that what I have,98 custom,been gathering dust for almost 20 years 😂😂
God forbid someone rigs a large optic on to it, then it'd just look like the paintball hopper xD
look at a tippmann SMG 60
i have one shooting on my channel it looks like a sten with a cast recevier
Took me a minute to realize that it stood for Australian Sten and wasn't just named after some dude named Austin.
Jane Austen - Pride and Extreme Prejudice.
Yep and only one bullet shared across all 3 machine guns. It was the wrong caliber for all of them but we made do.
I’ve heard throwing the actual machine gun might disable someone long enough to run away but only if you make a precision hit on their funny-bone or eye.
"The Sten gun is able to be produced quickly, simply and cheaply... but don't worry, we can fix all those problems!"
That putting "Austen" in quotes is still something they do today, the Steyr AUG is designated the F88 "Austeyr"
pretty sure we use the F90 now though
Ian self corrects from “Mel-born” to “Mel-burn”... good on ya mate
I prefer to describe the pronunciation as "Mel-b'n"...but yeah, that was a good effort from GJ. :-)
Was waiting for melbs. 😂
@@70zenboy good effort and good info on the Austen..
It's pronounced "Mel-bourne". The r is hidden in the Australia accent which puts r's everywhere.
@@TonkarzOfSolSystem It's the "O" that is hidden, which the Aussie accent puts everywhere mate-i-o
I can imagine the Australian military watching this video and just thinking to themselves "Shit. We forgot one."
"The Germans aren't going to invade Australia"
*laughs in HOI4*
I just got done island-hopping as commie Anzacs lol I forgot how crappy their population was
*Laughs in Scrap Iron Flotila*
Even more laughable is the idea of Germany invading Australia in WWI
But the propaganda posters all said it was going to happen
I was almost 4 minutes in before I figured out "Austen" wasn't someone's name. I'm an idiot.
Not too much of a stretch to think it stood for AU Sten or Australian Sten
@@Arbiter099 I know, right?! That's why I felt like a dope! Guess I'm not stretch enough.
Awful sten.
Now you know for if you see someone talking about an Austeyr.
Took me the whole video. Kept thinking 'Austin' sounds much more like an american name, palm met my face quickly after.
The fact that Gun Jesus can pronounce Melbourne correctly is a testament to his power. I honestly can't think of a single time an American youtuber has stopped and corrected in that way. Respect
But Ian did still first mis-pronounce it for the "American" audiences there, but it was at least a super fast correction to proper pronunciation of my home city name; MEL-BURN!
@@SaulKopfenjager You pronounce your home city's name wrong.
@@SaulKopfenjager Yes, I think Ian did deliberately mispronounce the name so people could find it on a map.
@@IncredibleMD How Dare you say such a thing about a fellow Melbournian!
Given the number of Yanks that came to Melbourne during WWII, you would think that more Americans could pronounce it correctly.
“the diggers dismay” sounds like the name for a TF2 weapon.
This could be a skin for the Snipers smg.
Snipers new sub confirmed.
sounds like a new spade for soldier.
Or the Clap.
Evolution of the STEN SMG based gun in simplicity:
Plumbers Competition
The Sten was called the plumbers nightmare. The Austen was built by plumbers suppliers.
As someone that has an Austen Mk 1 I have to agree with everything you said about it with the exception of two points. 1. The length of pull is actually ok...unless you are a hobbit. 2. It is a much better weapon than the Sten. Over engineered...yes. Not as suited to mass production as the authorities had hoped (which goes hand in hand with over engineered)...yes. Totally and unequivocally outclassed in every way by the Owen...yes. But still better than the Sten.
I mean, the sten wasn't supposed to be a good gun. It was supposed to be a gun that you could shove into every grubby hand as quickly as possible. Subtracting from the latter element means your just making a worse 1918.
The only thing you'd need to add onto a Sten gun to improve it, was a proper grip and a front handguard. That's it.
It wasnt particularly reliable due to its magazine and feeding system as well.
@@nutsandgum
Stop using the magazine as a handgrip and the reliability is greatly improved.
The sten gun needed better steel as well.
@@calvingreene90 Bullshit. The magazine is based on the same German design that was also used by the MP-40 and caused the same problems. Only a desperate nation would adopt it and only an idiot would call it reliable.
Carve out a nice piece of wood to seat it in and get some stain and lacquer for it.
When Churchill called for the formation of the commandos in 1940 there was only 40 Thompson subguns in all of Britain.
"Die-cast construction. It's a lost art."
Beast Wars?
Loved that show, there were so many inside jokes and quotable moments. Yessss.
A gazillion match box cars use die casting. It was the forerunner of injection moulded plastics.
There was a lot of MP18’s floating around the place, the 1st AIF stole everything not bolted down 👌
How to improve on the Sten for real this time. Just put on the handgrips from the Austen on a Sten. Good enouf and the troops will thank you. None of the other stuff was really needed.
I *think* one mark of the canadian sten had it (at least the foregrip)
(Edit) only postwar, but stens with pistol and fore grips were fielded by the british in 1944 (Mk.V)
Don't even bother lengthening the receiver, just weld the handgrip to the stock in place of the anotamically impossible to grasp rib thingy
pelao824 didn’t the Mk V have problems?
My dad always said that when they took away his Thompson and gave him a Sten he was less than impressed (especially since he had to wrap the punched metal ‘handgrip thing’ with insulating tape to avoid being cut by it)!
I'd argue that the advantages of the sten being quick and easy to produce aren't so advantageous to a place like Australia. They needed guns yeah, but they also weren't burning through guns due to combat. I'd say the austen was a product of a somewhat proven (and only) design they had to go off of with some improvements and that's all it had to be
"But he had not that supreme gift of the artist, the knowledge of when to stop." (Sherlock Holmes, "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder")
Jonas Oldacre had something in common with a lot of firearms designers.
There is a interesting story in Laurence Hartnett's memoirs. Laurence Hartnett was the Director of Australian Ordnance Production. He visited General Marshall, Chief of Staff of the US Military in Washington during WW2. Laurence Hartnett carried his briefcase into the General's office and took out a Austen SMG to demonstrate Australia's capabilities in manufacturing. Laurence Hartnett remarked that none of the military guarding General Marshall bothered to check his briefcase.
6:38 The relevance of tools for maintainability - remember an Australian weapon was probably going to be used in more remote areas, (jungle, bush or the outback) rather than an urban fighting Sten.
There wasn´t such thing as an "urban fighting Sten"! Remember, Berlin was taken by the Soviets, not by the Brits...
Agreed..the entire maintenance kit should have been hidden inside the weapon
As an Australian, I appreciate the correction of Melbourne :). Love your videos Ian, your attention to detail and history of the featured weapon is amazing.
Well considering it's spelled bourne and not burn and given Americans don't usually interact with australians, it's perfectly understandable that this would happen. Not to mention the obvious dis ingenuity going on here, where you refuse to acknowledge the fact that the "proper" pronuncuation stems from your accent of shortening the "our" syllable in "bourne".
So basically, they only had three smgs, and all of them were effectively stolen. How Australian
nani?
Considering the Australian units in North Africa were nicknamed the "Thirty Thousand Thieves", and would just about routinely break into and ransack their allies' supply depots... yep, very Australian.
@@Goannadria Or the fact that the only surviving German A7V tank is in Australia because some of their soldiers saw it sitting abandoned in No Man's Land and they decided "hey, you see that abandoned tank out there? We wanna steal it."
@@PhoenixOfArcadia Unlike the U.S. that returned home from Japan after WW2 with many borrowed samurai katanas
Two were sent there for "Buggery".
Ian, what you have to understand about the Australian soldier is that he is an avid collector of souvenirs.
The inclusion of a screwdriver into the design was a specific request from experienced frontline diggers. Where in the past the digger would steal anything that wasn't screwed down, he would now face no such limitation to his light-fingered activities.
I hope this helps.
I'd still pronounce it "Aus-Sten".
Weapon design failure : the whole point of the Sten was " do you want a gun that works now or take the chance on a better gun when it may be too late ?"
The Sten didn’t work in Australian trials. Hence the Austen that did.
They didn't think they were improving the gun, they thought they'd found a way to make it more complex to make more money.
Ian, you're a legend mate! You will probably never read this a the video is a few year old but as an Australian lad I appreciate you bringing our weapons history manufacturing up and making vids about it. Keep up the great work!!
"How many SMG's do we have?"
"Three."
"Threeee...?"
"Three."
"Right but three *what*?"
"Just three."
"... Bugga."
Oh my god the fading cut at 5:40 is perfect. The Sten turns into a ghost and disappears.
One of the happiest moments in the past few years was when I got a reply from Ian. He posted a photo of the Austen trigger housing and I was the first comment that properly guessed that it was from this gun :)
The Brits had a saying back in the day... "The more you overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain."
Hmmm... 🤔
So thats were Chief Montgomery Scott got that from
You almost butchered "Melbourne"… But you were quick to get it right! Hats off
I was mid-shudder when he corrected it. So very relieved...
He still didn’t get it right
Mel-bin
Great Video, I'm an Australian and a military enthusiast and I e never even heard of this gun. Thank you Forgotten Weapons
This thing is so strange to me, they completely missed the entire point of the STEN guns existence in the first place.
Well, the Australians probably thought fewer but better smgs was better than worse but more smgs
The Australian Army likes guns that just work. The Sten didn’t.
Thanks for covering this Aussie weapon Ian. As a former member of the Australian Army Reserve (89-91, 92-94) I had heard of the Owen Gun but I had no idea about the Austin.
Incidentally, my first unit was a Regular Sigs Unit with Ares cell, and we had SLRs, F-1s, and 7.62 mm rebarreled Brens as our light support weapon.
Another wonderful presentation, been a military historian for decades, mainly WW2 Commonwealth subjects and your programmes have revealed and explained so much to me. Thanks
1:18 I first thought "Three types of submachine guns? That's not too bad, maybe they can refine one of them like the Lanchester and Sten..."
Then I realized he meant they had exactly THREE submachine guns in the entire country.
"Oi mate, how many of them SMGs do we have at our disposal?"
- "3."
"...as in three hundred, or three thousand?"
- "No. Just 3."
That's either the most hilarious or most terrifying thing an army commander could probably hear.
Manufarcturers: we have an improved STEN!
Australian army: it's the same gun, but more expensive
Manufacturers: OH, wait, you think it was improved *for you* ? 0_o
So, basically, we took a Sten and made it better in every way. Gotcha.
This Aussie thanks you for your service..
Except they made it worse in nearly every way. The corks on a string flotation device was a good idea though if it was fumbled whilst drunk and dropped in a billabong;]
Odd that he only talks about the extra tooling but not why this is "worse" than a Sten nor how it was "unreliable". Seems the Thompson is junk based on his "rules".
From what I understand the Thompson is junk, especially by WW2. Heavy, expensive, not especially controllable, nightmare reloads etc. I know it's an icon but it seems that is at least partly based on cool points.
*Edited to change "unreliable" to "expensive" as that's what I meant to write. As far as I know they were at least relatively reliable.
@@jameshealy4594 How is it "junk" ? I can say the same thing about an M-16.
Because it was very heavy and expensive to manufacture. The M16 had problems early on but they fixed those, and on paper it's one of the best small arms - it's very accurate for a service rifle, it's light, you can carry a lot of ammo, and production techniques were advanced enough 20 years later (and especially now) that cost isn't nearly as much of an issue as it was back in the 20s - 40s for the Thompson. A modern stock standard M16 or AR15 is far cheaper than the Thompson.
Yeah pistol grips and fancy folding stocks are nice and all but they clearly missed the whole point of the Sten. Also I love that those manufacturers in Melbourne and Sydney were basically outdone by some kid in his shed.
Mate of mine served for quite sometime in various parts of the ADF, and introduced me to the term “Ausfuck” where various piece of equipment that are adopted by the ADF are “Australianised” and subsequently end up a worse product. I submit that Austen is the first example of Ausfuck occurring.
3:14 Corrects himself and pronounces Melbourne properly! Well done! Its actually quite impressive.
Well considering it's spelled bourne and not burn and given Americans don't usually interact with australians, it's perfectly understandable that this would happen. Not to mention the obvious dis ingenuity going on here, where you refuse to acknowledge the fact that the "proper" pronuncuation stems from your accent of shortening the "our" syllable in "bourne".
neckbeard
I love that you corrected yourself when you said Melbourne.
Yet another great gun to base a blaster on, thank you again Ian!
10,000 (10K) Austen MK.1's made. About 10 Mk.2's. According to some books, the UK did NOT send a full set of drawings for the Sten to Australia, or 9mm rounds for that matter, much of the information came from captured Italian/German gear from Nth Africa or 'liberated' British material - Original WW2 Aussie 9mm looks like Italian or German rounds for instance. The production engineering for the Austen was from automotive parts suppliers, encouraged by the Minister for Production(?) who had worked as an engineer for GM Australia. The Owen was made by Lysaughts who made industrial piping - different companies, different solutions. Lots of dodgy Political infighting involed in the production of both guns. Wonder if Ian can find one of the 08/15 Maxim conversions to .303 done in Australia as emergency substitutes for Vickers.
Laurence Hartnett was the Director of Australian Ordnance Production in WW2. He was also the head of GM Australia. In his memoirs, he mentioned that Diecasters in Melbourne were anxious to manufacture and design weapons. They had never manufactured and designed weapons before. General Blamey head of land forces in the SW Pacific was completely opposed to the Owen SMG. Hartnett agreed to use Diecasters, as using Diecasters did not take away any capacity from Lysaghts (manufacturer of the Owen SMG) or SAF Lithgow (manufacturer of the SMLE and Vickers MG).
Honestly love your work and it’s only gotten better recently. Keep up the good work Ian
Which came first, the mp-38 or the telescoping toilet paper holder? The resemblance is uncanny!
I'm serious though, it's actually starting to bug me!
Looks like something the British would take over their own Stens, at least before the Mk V came on
Also, does the Owen also take mags from the MP 28 / Lanchester, Sten and The MP40? Or at least can accept their mag well to replace it?
"Yes" does it work equally good with said mags who the hell knows.
Not sure why you think we'd take it over the sten, since it's a worse performing gun.
It actually looks like a sten might have before we threw all the fancy bits away to make it more quickly and cheaply
As far as I'm aware the Owen had its own proprietary mags, there was a protrusion on the rear of the mag which acted as the ejector for the gun.
@@andrewholdaway813 The Austen does have the distinct advantage of being able to be held though.
@@TheDeadfast
Not a huge advantage if it doesn't work though
Z and M force used these until the end of the war. 1st Parachute Battalion were also issued Austens.
Nevermind that the 1st Parachute Battalion never deployed, but they were issued Austens.
The length of pull wasn't too long for us tall Aussies! ( I believe the main spring concept was to make them easier to clean and keep the mud out in the conditions in the jungles of New Guinea and the Pacific isles. My father said that the mud stuck to everything "like sh*t to a blanket"! )
Sounds like the Aussies did as good of a job on the Sten as Homer Simpson did on the Everyman car.
Nice one Ian! Cheers from Australia 👍
Kind of.... the Thompson was being issued (bought from the US) in some significant numbers before both the Owen and Austen were fielded. These rained in service but were slowly withdrawn as the Owen came online. Thompsons bearing Australian FTR (Factory Thorough Repair - an Arsenal Rebuild if you will) marking are well represented in military and official collections here. As the Owen was not the product of "the system" here it remained disliked by the Military Hierarchy and it is what the Austen was pushed through to service as a F-U but flopped....
I know an Australian soldier (LIonel Smith of he 2/14 battalion) who went to serve in the middle east prior to Japan entering the war, picked up a Thompson from a wounded British soldier and brought it back to fight the Japanese in New Guinea in 1942. Decades later he went to the opening of a memorial on the Kokoda track and mentioned how he had lost his haversack with shaving kit and extra magazines near a big rock where he had been firing somewhere nearby. A local lad asked for a few details, disappeared and came back with the pack and the somewhat rusty artefacts still in it. The Thompson was a heavy weapon to carry.
Another member of the Battalion (can't recall his name now),covered his mates while they were withdrawing from an exposed position and held off the Japanese with a Bren gun under one arm and a Thompson under the other. One Japanse got close enough to grasp at his ammunition pouches. He was awarded the DCM. You don't get the VC for fighting withdrawals it seems. Another battalion member Bruce Kingsbury charged a group of Japanese who were about to overrun the headquarters and threaten the position at isurava and scattered them with a Bren gun as he was running at them, but was shot by a sniper when he paused for breath when he had seen them off. He was awarded a posthumous VC.
There is footage from that campaign with other diggers using Thompsons in Damien Parer's Oscar winning documentary Kokoda Front Line.
I just want to see a shooting comparative between a STEN, a AUSTEN and a MP3008 somewhere in the future.
That would be at least 1000 years away
The second-system effect (also known as second-system syndrome) is the tendency of small, elegant, and successful systems, to be succeeded by over-engineered, bloated systems, due to inflated expectations and overconfidence.
Yo this is an interesting concept and I appreciate you bringing it up.
The Sten failed Australian Army trials. Replacement was required.
So glad that he corrected himself on the way to say Melbourne
Thank you for doing some more work on Australian firearms Ian.
Australia: well Germany cant invade us
Japan: no they cant...
Australia: You can’t either...
Later developed into the "Stone Cold" Austen Mk. 3.16. Looking forward to that video.
Nice. Thanks for that
3:13. ooh you almost got me there but you saved it at the last second. top stuff
I owned 5 Austen Mk1 and 11 Owens prior to 1996. The Owens were just light years ahead of the Austen, although the Austen was better than the Sten Mk2 & 3's that I had. Much is hyped about the die casting of the Austen but the only parts what were in fact diecast were the mag housing (not including the front grip frame which was a stamping), the mag collar and the mag loader. The receiver tube was lighter gauge than the Owen and therefore much more likely to damage. The mags were difficult to load by hand and needed the loader for the last 10 rounds at least. The Owen mags were easy with a lighter spring tension. The Austen could not be fired with one hand due to terrible balance, while the Owens with the centre of gravity at the rear grip could easily be fired with one hand in an emergency.
Imagine owning 1 of the 3 SMGs in your country..
Being the government make you own two of it
So you’re saying that when a MP-38 and a Sten love each other very much... that is where Austen’s come from.
From the grease trap behind the SMG abortion clinic.
If you went into military disposal stores here in Australia in the 70s you could buy pieces of Austens for a few bucks. Mainly pistol grips.
3:20 They figured "the sten is a piece of crap" I love how the first 3 and half minutes of this are just the Aussies roasting the Sten lol
The "you're lucky you even get a gun" design of the Sten married with German overcomplexity. Good on ya, Bruce!
Thank god we used the Owen gun more heavily
One of my favorite guns are the sten. And seeing more variants or similar guns are awesome loved the video and i hope to one day own one of those old treasures of history.
For those that missed it or are unaware at 4.30 between the H and the K is the broad arrow. This is shows both government approval and use. It was painted on eg trucks stamped on metal parts e.g. buckles or stenciled on cloth items e.g. ammo pouches.
I’m 4 mins in and just realized it’s the Australian sten... Austen
Just wait until you hear about our standard service rifle.
The Austeyr, Australian Steryr.
Makes one wonder why the Aussies didn't just make their own MP38 clone instead of trying to improve a crap weapon?
Probably there's not enough raw materials to work with.
The MP38 is a relatively expensive sub gun, made from milled steel.
@@jp18449 that isn't the point, yes they work, but they are far from ideal. The French resistance fought in spite of the shitty guns given to them, not because of.
@@UXB1000no, that's not it at all. production of a relatively complicated piece of equpment is really quite difficult, That's why Ian mentioned that the whole technical package was sent for the Sten, the STEN? a gun that was said to be a "Plumber's Nightmare," to the Australians.
As to the "wonderfulness" of the legendary Sten, I've known several dozen WWII veterans that were assigned the use of the Sten gun early in the US's involvement in the war, and none of them had anything complementary to say about it, other than it actually worked. not well, nor accurately, but it worked. As soon as "Grease Guns" were available, the discarded the Stens, and if ammunition was available, so did Brits. Interestingly, the few Aussies I ever spoke with liked their Owens, I think principally due to their confidence in the largely gravity feed.
@@charlesadams1721 gravity feed? I thought they had the mag on top so that they could use the same mag design as everybody else, without worrying about the mags failing due to being faced up. So you reckon they made ground harness clips for em?
I bought an Austen foregrip at Aussie Disposals when I was 11. I still have it.
Aw, Ian corrected the pronunciation of Melbourne for us Aussies. He is a gentleman and a scholar for sure.
'Because the Sten was a piece of crap' don't mince your words, come right out and say it.
3:12 Ian corrects the way he pronounced Melbourne. An American actually fixing the way they pronounce things, rather than just being ignorant towards other countries. This is why we love you Ian. You are rare. You are a good egg.
He's OK.
Who cares. Yall do the same thing about cities and places in the US. It doesn't matter as long as you understand the meaning.
Sheesh, give the other yanks a break. They don't live there, usually focused on something else, so who bloddy cares? Grow up.
I think, perhaps, the idea behind the 'improvements' was rooted in the manufacturers perception of how to best adapt the STEN to the markedly different fighting environments ANZACs were facing in South-East Asia. Looking at the receiver of a STEN and seeing that exposed recoil spring can't possibly inspire confidence in a gun that's going to be used in wet and muddy conditions (such as those faced on the Kokoda track) and perhaps they thought that the enclosed telescoping recoil assembly of the MP-38 would prove more resilient to debris entering through the receiver cut. It's also possible that because there was a lower demand (Australia wasn't fielding as many troops as the UK) and there was less immediacy in their requirement (the distance from Japan to Australia, while not immense, is still markedly greater than that of Germany to the UK) the cost and time to produce were considered less important and they gauged the value of a folding stock and integral take-down and cleaning tools to be worth the offset. I'm not saying any of the changes or improvements were actually of any value, their popularity and short service life are a testimony to them not being so, but perhaps there is a legitimate and thought-out (if not well) reason behind their decisions. Using different magazines I've got no excuse for. I can't think of any reason why they wouldn't copy the STEN, save that perhaps they viewed the witness holes as another potential ingress point for debris and so decided to completely redesign the magazine to get rid of that feature.
Tom Austin I was waiting to hear about how bad it was to shoot or poor the reliability was. If the biggest take away was we took a rubbish smg and made some improvements to it that made it more expensive and time consuming to manufacture then that’s a positive thing if time wasn’t too much of an issue. Not to mention that the manufacturing facilities were probably pumping out victa mowers or something not guns. Well done us I reckon.
You've probably got a point. I think history isnt fair on the Austen. I also believe the Owen torture test also used a sten, and Austen, a thompson and an MP38 for comparison. I might research how the Austen fared, I recall much than the Sten, so must've done something right?
SnoopReddogg love the back shed vibe of the Owen and the diggers were very fond of em that’s enough of a recommendation for me.
Thank you , Ian .
Pretty sure according to Jack Sue’s memoir ‘Blood on Borneo’, these were still in use at least by our infamous Z Special Force through 1945. Some of the changes may make more theoretical sense when it was planned to see a lot of jungle usage?
My grandfather was in Z Special Force and carried an Owen during his service.
nutsandgum It’s a shame the actions of those units remain relatively under-appreciated.
Tropical jungle and rainforest means the cleaning rod and screwdriver makes more sense. Having a gun that's cheap to make doesn't help when you're on extended patrol in the rainy season and there's no way to get a replacement weapon to you when yours rusts solid.
3:07 and on. Nice correction on the pronunciation of "Melbourne" there. Melbournians would be proud.
Edit: No, it's not entirely perfect, but it's a shed load better than his first attempt. "Melb'n" is the best description I could give in case anyone is curious. Some would say "Melbun," but the "u" is hardly pronounced, if at all, so I think "Melb'n" is more accurate.
Dude, it's Melburnian
Another fine example of Australian armchair logistics, typically when Australia's ordinance Corp get hold of new equipment they will engineer the F out of it before distribution. Then after issuing they continue modifications throughout it's service life often to the point that it is nothing like the initial product. Another fine example is the Browning 50 caliber machine gun, it was in service up until 1995 when Browning finally told the Australian government that they could no longer use the Browning name as it no longer resembled the guns standard specifications.
You should do an episode on the Australian development chain, it would be very amusing 👍
The manufacturers here seem a prime example of: "You do what you do best, not what's best to do."
Cheers from down Under gun Jesus.
In fairness to the firearms designers of the Austen and all the comparative complexity of the improvements and the additional features, the threat to Australia was largely several thousand miles away and the Japanese had also enraged a considerably larger nation than Australia.
While the Brits, the designers and producers of the Sten were possibly routinely being bombed and the dreaded implacable "Hun" (early in the war, I believe they were still being called Huns, before the preferred descriptive transitioned to "Gerrie") was literally 35 miles across the Channel.
Additionally, Great Britain has always been a country that restricted the private ownership of firearms of any type, except to the elites and landowners. They never had the widespread sense of an armed citizenry. So the production of an arm, virtually ANY workable arm, was greatly needed for many purposes in the British Isles. Afterall. the British government was producing films showing the Home Guard, the last line of defense being armed with pitchforks against invasion by a armed force that had defeated supposedly the two best armies in the world.
The Australians on other hand were still largely a frontier nations with less regulation on arms to the citizenry. Also, remember this was before Nicole Kidman and Hugh had even been shot at by Japanese soldiers. So, the average designer and or producer or worker, while being aware of the threat, would be able to return home after a day of work or go to the beach, ie live life largely, normally.
So, those extraneous improvements, additions would not be perceived as anything other than appropriate enhancements to a rather crude design.
The Austen bolt is diecast brass - one of the reasons for the separate steel firing pin. The manufacturer didn't have a milling machine able to make the bolt out of steel.
I enjoyed your presentation, thank you.