Lucky UK forumers

[Peter Laidler]

Incidentally, after we fired a couple of them, we had a load of ammo spare and it's a shame to hand it all in again so we fired it all off. Not for fun of course - , but in the interests of science and research you understand. One of the young girls on the camera team had a few magazines of automatic fire from the waist and told me that she hadn't had such a good banging for several years. I won't repeat my reply.

This production team also did the death of Bonnie and Clyde documentary and fired a BAR while filming. A BAR......, not quite up to Sten standards.......

[Brit plumber]

Well, I've just found this post and its 19.30, I hope its in the second half!

[Thunderbox]

Good spiel by the distinguished gent with the Sten, whoever that was....

I thought the rest of the programme was poorly edited and a bit muddled in its purpose: probably most people on forums like this are already well acquainted with WW2 technological developments, but the mass of Joe TV Viewing Public tend to be entirely ignorant of anything outside of sport and celebrity news.

For example: with the Sten, perhaps they should have shown with it a Lanchester or Thompson - to demonstrate the point about complex, expensive, crafted guns being reduced to the minimalist design brilliance of the Sten.

Likewise with the Mosquito - they could have contrasted with the metal fabrication involved in a conventional aircraft, and they didn't really underline the revolutionary use of laminates, adhesives, mould-formed wood and the split fuselage.

They also went on about Ford influence in Russian production of the (very crude) T-34, whilst strangely missing out a far better example of mass production engineering - the similar numbers of Shermans rolling out of the US car industry.

[peregrinvs]

For example: with the Sten, perhaps they should have shown with it a Lanchester or Thompson - to demonstrate the point about complex, expensive, crafted guns being reduced to the minimalist design brilliance of the Sten.

Not unlike as is demonstrated in this fine DVD then?

Sten Gun and other Sub-Machine Guns
Tommy Atkins Media

I think the distinguished gent may have a cameo or two as well.

Mark

[Alan de Enfield]

Good spiel by the distinguished gent with the Sten, whoever that was....
.

Strange chap !!! (Laidler I think his name was) but he did appear to have a little knowledge on the subject - maybe he'd read one of those books by that famous author - whats his name, - wrote about No32 scopes as well.

[PrinzEugen]

Was reading Julian Thompson's Forgotten Voices of Burma and just before the show read this account:

Captain Dickie Davies, Officer Commanding Carrier Platoon, 2nd Battalion, Royal Norfolk Regiment: "There were other bunkers further down the ridge towards the road. We couldn't throw grenades at them, so you got your bayonet out and made a hole in the top and dropped a grenade through the hole. Four Japanese ran out of one of the bunkers. I pressed the trigger, and nothing bloody well happened - my sten gun jammed. They always jammed, a useless weapon. I threw it at them I was so annoyed."

Lower quality mass production, but no doubt they saved a lot of lives too by having an automatic weapon at close quarters. Cheap and nasty as Mr L said in the show but the type of weapon that wins you wars by putting huge numbers in the hands of your troops. After all, so many accounts from soldiers after the fall of France spoke about how the German soldiers outgunned them with so many sub-machine guns.

Good show I thought - not bad for prime time on a Friday night!

Also enjoyed the section on the Tiger tank: the T34 was an example of mass production of a very successful design - so the Russians chose the right one to make thousands and thousands of. Unfortunately in the case of the similarly (as Thunderbox points out) mass produced Sherman (or Ronson as the Brits called it as it lit first time every time [and Tommy Cooker as the Germans had it]) having more of something which has serious flaws isn't always a good thing.

[Peter Laidler]

The Mk3 Sten gun was Britains first disposable gun. But if you had one that worked with your 10 magazines, then you kept it/them together.

But to be fair, in a ruthless way, to Capt Dickie Davies, I wonder if he tested it before his patrol. After all, the jungle is an unforgiving place and like the desert, anything is liable to jam up there.

We have another saying too, that they omitted to mention in the programme, that I wished thay's kept in. You can have a Thompson gun for £55, a Lanchester for £11 or a Sten gun for £2-7/-. And it doesn't matter which one you have, but you can only kill a man so dead.

And even the much praised Mk5 Sten is only a cheap and cheerful Mk2 under the skin.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed the Sten gun bit of it...........

[PrinzEugen]

We have another saying too, that they omitted to mention in the programme, that I wished thay's kept in. You can have a Thompson gun for £55, a Lanchester for £11 or a Sten gun for £2-7/-. And it doesn't matter which one you have, but you can only kill a man so dead.

Yes - if they'd left that in, it would have perfectly illustrated the point they were presumably trying to make. Maybe they thought mentioning other weapons would be too confusing to a tv mass audience...