Chinese Aid MK2 Long Branch Sten

[Peter Laidler]

Your guess about its proof origins are based on fuzzy logic! The ban on auto firing weapons came about in 1925 or thereabouts. Except for those people approved by the MoD and later the Home Office. And the ban and later bans didn't apply to those people in any case

[Flying10uk]

What sort of people were approved to have full auto weapons, Peter? The chap who carried out the Hungerford massacre in the 1980s used legally owned weapons if memory serves me correctly. I thought this was the incident that caused a total ban?

[Peter Laidler]

People who proved to the Home Office that they have a real and genuine need to possess prohibited firearms could and still can possess them. Manufacturers for a start! Researchers, some collectors. There must be a million more examples. The Hungerford man didn't have an automatic weapon, he had a self loading weapon(s). It was this that put self-loaders into the prohibited (the automatics) category

[stencollector]

all of the Chinese script marked Long Branch Sten MkII will have C^ markings.

Many or most (but not all) of the 1943 & 1945 Long Branch Stens will show Mutual Aid Board markings.

search "stencollector" posts as he is the most knowledgeable individual regarding Canadian Stens.

The Cdn Stens ran from 0L1 to somewhere high in the 12L8000 area. Anything after 11L2500 (approximately) from late 1944 to the end of production in 1945 were all marked with the Chinese script. Not sure if many of those went overseas as a lot of them remained in Canadian service.

Earlier batches for the Chinese were in the 9L and 10L range, but not all of them. Of all the Canadian Sten serials, 10L is the hardest to come by so I suspect the bulk of them went to the Chinese. There may be other batches of Chinese marked magwells, but as they went overseas, I don't see them here in Canada enough to determine their serial ranges. But any magwell that was made for the Chinese contracts had the LongBranch Sten markings on the underside, and the Chinese script on the top of the magazine housing.

I have also seen un-serialized receivers with the Chinese script that were later given a XR serial range. If they were some project, I can't figure out what the variation was. I usually see the XR serials on Chinese LBs, but I have also seen it on one British magwell.