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The original caption of this photo reads: “Mr Attlee tries the weight and feel of the Sten Sub-machine gun used by the Paratroops.”Īttlee was visiting the 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade during a visit to the 1st Polish Corps at Cupar in Scotland. The earlier MkI had had a front folding grip, but the MkI*, introduced in October 1942, had eliminated this to speed up production. The MkII, introduced in August 1941, did not have a folding front grip as standard. The photograph that sent me down this unexpected research rabbit hole was of Britain’s wartime Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee handling a STEN MkII submachine gun while visiting Polish troops. STEN Gun TFB:īut even before the improved MkV entered service in Spring 1944, ordinary soldiers had been tinkering and photographic evidence shows a plethora of ad hoc, homemade front grips were fabricated and used by soldiers. It wasn’t until the STEN MkV that a front pistol grip was added. Some soldiers held the barrel nut, some held the trigger mechanism housing and some held the magazine itself. The supremely utilitarian STEN didn’t really have a dedicated place to hold the front of the weapon. The STEN gun is undeniably one of the iconic weapons of World War Two but most of its variants were severely lacking in the ergonomics department.
#Sten mk ii barrel nut archive#
A few weeks ago while doing some research in the UK’s Imperial War Museum online archive I came across a couple of intriguing photos that sent me down a rabbit hole.