What is the simplest SMG ever made?
The Sten Gun – Britain‘s Last Ditch Machine Pistol
The simplest submachine gun ever mass produced was undoubtedly Britain‘s Sten gun from the Second World War. Designed explicitly as an easy-to-manufacture weapon that could be churned out quickly and cheaply, the Sten was created as the Allies‘ "last ditch" factory-made SMG. It was engineered from the ground up for fast assembly using simple tools, unskilled labor, and readily available materials – making it the world‘s most basic SMG design ever fielded.
As an avid gamer and firearms enthusiast, I admire the Sten‘s utterly utilitarian approach. When you‘re desperately equipping resistance fighters behind enemy lines or assembling makeshift armories as enemy bombers threaten your industrial centers, you need guns made from common items that even amateur builders can put together. Complex custom machined parts and precise specifications become luxuries! The Sten gun stripped the SMG down to its bare essentials while retaining just enough reliability to spit out lots of pistol-caliber projectiles at high rates of fire – a gamer‘s delight!
Simple Origins from Guerrilla Warfare Experiences
The Sten emerged from Britain‘s darkest weeks when its army was nearly forced from the continent at Dunkirk and Nazi invasion seemed imminent. According to historian Martin Pegler, the gun‘s designer, Major Reginald Shepherd, was inspired by both the cheap simplicity of early improvised weapons used by guerrilla fighters and the need to distribute arms production beyond vulnerable centralized factories. Utilizing his extensive weapons expertise, Shepherd created the ultimate miniature rapid-fire armory that could be made by almost anyone almost anywhere – the Sten.
Built From Stamped Sheet Metal and Basic Welds
Constructed mostly from stamped sheet metal parts requiring minimal welding, the Sten gun was cheaper and quicker to manufacture than any prior SMG design. It consisted of just 7 main steel component pieces – barrel, tubular receiver, firing pin, magazine well, pistol grip assembly, gas piston, and shoulder stock – that could be assembled in under 5 minutes by a semi-skilled laborer at a bench with simple tools. The requisite spot welds numbered 15 at most.
By comparison, the Axis‘s standard-issue MP40 SMG used over 70 high tolerance machined steel parts needing skilled hand-fitting. But the Sten needed no precision – just pieces of basic formed steel spot-welded into the right positions. This made it ideal for decentralized mass production by cottage gunsmiths or resistance forces working off blueprints with improvised tools in wartime.
| Components | Total Welds | Precision Needed | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sten | 7 Main Parts | ~15 spots | Low |
| MP40 | >70 Machined Parts | >140 spots | High |
| M1A1 Thompson | >100 Milled Parts | >250 spots | High |
The Sten‘s simple components could be roughly finished by even unskilled labor and assembled into a working arm so long as basic dimensions were correct. No hand-fitting needed! This rough and ready construction removed manufacturing bottlenecks and enabled extremely rapid production.
Fast and Lightweight – Ideal for Guerrilla Forces
At just over 7lbs fully loaded, the Sten gun remained lightweight and compact thanks to its minimalist stamped body design. Its simple blowback firing mechanism, combined with an open bolt firing mode, made for reliable automatic operation despite loose tolerances between components. The basic tubular layout and side-feeding magazine configured the Sten nicely in the gamer-favorite SMG form factor.
With an impressive rate-of-fire over 500 rounds per minute from its standard 32-round magazine, the Sten laid down heavy poorly-aimed suppressive fire extremely quickly – just as an emergency homebrew SMG should! Its simple blowback firing and fixed firing pin enabled constant slam-firing by keeping a finger depressed on the trigger – no reloading between shots necessary! It‘s no wonder why the "Sten gun" quickly became slang for any quickly homemade guerrilla weapon.
The Allies‘ Ideal Last Resort Arm for "People‘s War"
With German victory looking likely in 1941, the British government planned a "people‘s war" of continued mass resistance by partisan forces even if Britain was occupied. The Sten gun would arm this unrelenting underground campaign. Britain stockpiled over 4 million Stens by late 1943 – and dispersed manufacturing throughout its vast empire. Australian, Canadian, and Indian factories turned out hundreds of thousands more.
Resistance cells across occupied Europe, including in Germany itself, eventually manufactured copies of the simple but brutally effective Sten gun. By 1943, British airdrops had put over 33,000 Stens into the hands of Resistance groups from France to Norway. Any workshop with basic tools could be quickly transformed into an underground Sten gun factory.
Major Reginald Shepherd had achieved his goal. With the Sten, Britain and its allies could distribute weapon production across a decentralized network of shops immune from bombing campaigns, while arming countless partisans with a compact rapid-fire SMG straight off any workbench. Over 5 million total were produced during the war – more than double the number of America‘s famed Thompson or German MP40 SMGs.
Yet this simple tubular Bang-Stick took the least skill to manufacture in vast quantities. No other SMG before or since has matched its stripped-down DIY construction. If ever a zombie apocalypse, alien invasion, or mass civil breakdown threatens, the Sten gun blueprints will surely be dusted off across the world as survivors scavenge workshops to churn out the simplest rapid-fire armory around!
So in the history of warfare and gaming alike, the Sten stands out as the world‘s easiest submachine gun ever mass produced – a model of utilitarian grit and inventiveness rising to meet the Allies‘ darkest hour.
