British Paratroopers with a German prisoner three of the men carry the Sten Mark V. Unfortunately, the “Tommy Gun” was soon associated with the gangland violence of the American Prohibition era.īattle of Arnhem, September 1944. 45 caliber weapon in 1921, with improvements made in 1928. In the United States, General John Thompson designed his famous. Interest in this new class of weapon continued in the 1920’s and 30’s. This weapon was issued to specially-trained Sturmtruppen (“assault troops”) who were intended to infiltrate into enemy trenches and cause as much havoc as possible. While several nations experimented with such guns, the first to be successful was Germany, with the Maschinenpistole (MP) 18, chambered for the same ammunition as the 9mm Luger. One of the new concepts was a “trench sweeper”, a light, compact gun capable of automatic fire pistol-caliber ammunition was used to reduce the weight and bulk of the weapon. Towards the end of the First World War, new weapons and tactics were developed in an attempt to break the stalemate of the Western Front’s trench warfare. Ironically, it was almost never created, and only came about in direct response to enemy action. One of the most mass-produced and widely-used firearms of the Second World War was the British Sten Machine Carbine.
This article was originally written for “The Front”, the newsletter of the California Historical Group, and is reprinted here by permission of the editors.
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