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The Mk.III Sten was first produced by the toy manufacturing firm of Lines Brothers, and first appeared in 1943. It was not a direct simplification of the Mk.II, but can be claimed to be more of an attempt to further simplify the Mk.I to production. Like the Mk.I, it had an almost full-length barrel jacket and a fixed magazine housing. Likewise, the Mk.III's barrel was fixed, and could not be removed for cleaning. The full length jacket meant that two holes had to be drilled in the underside to accept the hook of the standard sling, but the holes being underneath limited the options of how to sling the weapon.
A feature specific only to the Mk.III was the addition of a small flange riveted slightly forward of the ejection port, a useful safety feature that prevented the firer's fingers from entering the ejection port, particularly in the dark. It is most likely that more than one little finger was painfully broken or amputated by such a mishap! The raised edge of the magazine housing on the Mks.I-VI helped ensure that the firer was aware of just how close his fingers were to the danger of the reciprocating bolt.
The Mk.III represented the lowest point in the Sten family: the quality was certainly lacking, but for all its poor looks, the Mk.III worked as well as any other mark. The body of the weapon was not a tube as it was in all other types, but a sheet of steel rolled and joined along a welded seam that ran the full length of the body. The seam also provided the crude foresight, which was no more than a raised section ot the seam itself. Looking along the seam of many Mk.III's it is apparent that it is by no means straight, which must have affected the accuracy ot the sight blade itself.
The standard of finish is considerably worse than on other types: large blobs of welding and brazing metal are visible on the various joints, and the attachment of the magazine housing consists of two flaps of steel bent out from the body crudely welded onto the housing. Coupled with the T-stock, which on many weapons did not fit tightly and rattled, greatly affecting accuracy should the weapon need to be fired from the shoulder.
The Mk.III was second only to the Mk.II in terms of numbers made, being manufactured in Canada as well, it seems, for the British Army more than the Canadian Army. The Mk.III marked the end of the simplification of the original design, and from then on, the Sten went down a road towards better quality, being briefly side-tracked by the short-lived Mk.IV.
Stripping the Sten Mk.III
The stripping procedure for the Mk.III is essentially the same as that of the Mk.II,except that the magazine housing cannot be rotated, nor the barrel removed. This simplifies the stripping procedure at the expense of having a weapon that cannot be broken down for convenience of packing or carrying. |
