Comments by "John Burns" (@johnburns4017) on "Forgotten Weapons" channel.

  1. Heckler and Kosch (HK) were owned by BA at the time they worked on the gun.
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  2. The gun was the best in the world for its type at the time. They took the best of all rifles from all nations, adding their own to it. Churchill was back in power in 1951 then immediately dropped it because the US were insisting NATO have a standard cartridge The US never went with it. So the Brits never had the rifle they developed which was ahead of everything else. As he says, the Brits were proven right on the power of the cartridge.
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  3. The Sten Gun. The gun of WW2 that stood out. The gun that won the war. Millions were made very quickly and cheaply. Mainly by girls in a toy factory. Designed and made by Triang Toys in England, by a man who had never seen a machine gun, never mind understand how they worked. It had few parts, using a cheap pipe and bed spring. British ingenuity. By the end of WW2 most British soldiers wanted one as they were effective, light, being easy to carry around. The French, Germans and Chinese copied it. The US was about to produce it en-mass. It could be made in a shed using basic freely available parts. I have seen one in stainless or chrome.
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  4. In the recent joint UK/USA paratroop jumps in Latvia, I believe the US troops were issued with this gun to standardise.
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  5. The Sterling was small, light and simple. Soldiers like that sort if thing.
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  6. Strange. The British paras I met love the gun.
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