Most effective gun of WW2 - the Sten Gun (Japan, tanks, years)

[NJGOAT]

Originally Posted by TaxPhd

While the PPSh was a great gun, it's use large scale by the Soviets was made possible by the VAST numbers of infantry that the Soviets had. Massive amounts of infantry armed with a very good subgun, with armor and artillery support, can ruin your day in a hurry.

But in spite of the Soviets success with subgun armed infantry, they too went to an intermediate cartridge firing carbine after the war.

Everyone did in an effort to streamline supply chains. I already gave the reasoning for the M14 and it was the same with the Soviets and the SKS and eventually AK-47. Everyone was looking for a standard jack of all trades weapon. Having one weapon that can do everything is a great economy. The issue basically comes down to combat distances which is the reason for the introduction of a battle rifle armed "marksmen" now in American squads...

<200 meters you are good with a SMG
200-300 meters you are good with a carbine
300-600 meters you need a rifle
>600 meters you need a sniper rifle

The idea with most of the development was to cover the <200 to 600 meter combat distance effectively with a single weapon. Hard to do.

[Dd714]

Originally Posted by John-UK

It is not. The heavy weapons, mortars, etc are the primary tools. His primary "tool" was a shovel. The personal rifle was an "in case" weapon. The only time they were really used was in city fighting and then the small light sub machine guns shined.

Most infantry men I ever spoke to mainly carried things, link ammunition to heavy gun positions, unload trucks, dig trenches, etc. Fighting with a personal rifle was a rare event for most of them. They were useful when taking prisoners.

You are confusing the concept of "combined arms" with small arms tactics. Artillery is useless without infantry to take the ground in an offensive role, tanks are actually at a disadvantage without infantry support. Each weapon - airfare, infantry, artillery has a role in manuevor and mobility, suppression, defense, and offense. We know this, stop trying to deflect your own topic. Your thread title is "the most effective gun of WW2", not the most effective shovel of WW2.

In other words, stop acting like a sh*t salesman with a sample in your mouth.

[West Phx Native]

If you want to break it down
Best SMG:
I would say the Sten or MP-40, To those that say the Sten is not accurate, I have shot one and the sights while fixed, were more than accurate enough
Best battle Rifle:
M-1 Garand, accurate, heavy hitting, reliable
Best Bolt action:
you may find it hard to believe, but I would say the Type 99 Arisaka, chrome lined barrels and the Japanese know steel, it is almost impossible to blow up a Arisaka, I have a K-98 and a SMlE and the Arisaka is easier to maintain and fires a .30 caliber round. I did not include the K-31 since it never saw combat.
Best heavy machine gun,
the M-2 .50 Caliber, still in use today

[John-UK]

Originally Posted by NJGOAT

So, like I said, quanitfy the word effective. Depending on the measure I can agree with your original statement on the effectiveness of the Sten. It was a critical weapon for the Allies no matter what issues it may have had on the battlefield compared to other options. I would draw the line at calling it the "most effective" mainly because the PPSH-41 shared none of the Stens more egregious flaws and was made in larger quantities. It was also equipped in Soviet units throughout the key phases of the war. The Sten, despite its large production did not really come into its own until D-Day. If we want to give credit to a key British infantry weapon before that, it's got to be the venerable SMLE.

Flaws in the Sten were ironed out, the Sterling was the successor, which was used at Arnhem. The Soviet PPSH-41 was heavier and more cumbersome. The design attributes of the Sten are clear to see. It was a milestone weapon that changed the way guns came after. Its effectiveness was that it equipped millions of soldiers very quickly with a gun that did exactly what it was designed to do. It wasn't made to look good, although it did. It wasn't made to look good on parade. It was no masterpiece of engineering using cheap components. The Sten was masterpiece of design. The designers came up with wonderful weapon that more than fulfilled the brief. Resistance fighters even made them in their garden sheds it was so simply designed. Simplicity and elegance in design. As effective as guns costing 20 times as much to make. The Sten was used in the desert and was prized for operating in dust that other guns would not. Even the Germans and French copied it. No other weapon was copied like the Sten. A truly remarkable weapon.

The SMLE was a generation before the Sten and outdated for a general gun in WW2. In some configurations the SMLE was a superb sniper weapon, so more of a niche weapon.

[j_k_k]

You have a gift for maintaining the insupportable in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and making it all seem reasonable because your writing is quite articulate. The only problem is the subject matter. Being articulate and wrong is just a more readable way to err.

Had the Germans copied the Sten in any quantity, the Germans' main SMGs would not have been everything else they had.

If you want to sing 'Rule Britannia,' you'd be better off picking the areas that can be defended. The Merlin engine, for example, without which the P-51 would never have reached its potential. The Spitfire, as an interceptor, needs no more introduction than do the pilots who flew it. We would have been far, far better off had we fit the excellent 17# to the Sherman, as did the British with the Firefly. The Enfield was a very good battle rifle in the bolt-action class, tried and true. You were very early adopters of the armored personnel carrier concept; the Bren carrier was more of one than the halftrack, which was more of a truck with tracks and light armor. Some of your tanks posed serious penetration issues to German guns that faced them. And in so many theatres--air, land and sea--British fighting men acquitted themselves superbly.

You'd do best to defend more defensible ground.

[John-UK]

Originally Posted by j_k_k

If you want to sing 'Rule Britannia,' you'd be better off picking the areas that can be defended. The Merlin engine, for example, without which the P-51 would never have reached its potential.

Ah the Mustang, another British plane. The Merlin was built in the USA by Packard and the engine used in bombers and the US version of the Mustang. The RR version went faster.

The Spitfire, as an interceptor, needs no more introduction than do the pilots who flew it. We would have been far, far better off had we fit the excellent 17# to the Sherman, as did the British with the Firefly. The Enfield was a very good battle rifle in the bolt-action class, tried and true. You were very early adopters of the armored personnel carrier concept; the Bren carrier was more of one than the halftrack, which was more of a truck with tracks and light armor. Some of your tanks posed serious penetration issues to German guns that faced them. And in so many theatres--air, land and sea--British fighting men acquitted themselves superbly.

The Churchill, the most underrated tank of WW2, had armour the thickness of a Tiger. The Comet was equal to the Tiger in firepower and in much of its armour, and as you pointed out the Brits put the 17pdr gun on a Sherman, as an interim before the Comet was introduced, making it equal to a Tiger in many respects and in a one to one on open ground the nibble Firefly would be superior to the Tiger. The "universal tank", the Centurion, was the best tank of WW2 - in service but never fired a shot in anger. The best tank engine of WW2 was the RR meteor. US Sherman tankers felt sick when a Firefly would pass them. The armored personnel carrier concept was pre-war to give a fully motorized army - the first. The Germans used captured Bren Gun carriers when they could and Rommel used a captured Matilda 2 as his command tank. The Canadians were the first to use heavily armoured vehicles as personnel carriers.

You forgot jet engines, fully blank paper designed jet planes, fully armoured aircraft carriers, the Liberty ship (a UK design), super fast wooden planes, the Swordfish plane which operated more like a helicopter (sinking more ships than any other WW2 plane), discarding sabot ammunition that made a 6 pounder gun Churchill the equiv firepower of an 88mm Tiger, proximity fuse, radar, in-plane radar, bouncing bombs, grand-slam bombs, A-Bomb (Used the MAUD committee's approach to the bomb), aircraft carrier made of ice (the U-Boats were defeated by the time they could make one), etc.

The Sten in economical design was right in there with them. The US took it further with the throw-away grease gun. The US liked the simple, easy to mass produce, economic, throw-away design principle of the Sten - the idea was to win battles and wars and extended it to many US war products. The Sten took "Fordism" to another war-time level. German and Soviet weapons were not meant to be thrown away. The grease gun and ultimately the Sten were.

You just don't get it.

[NJGOAT]

Originally Posted by John-UK

Flaws in the Sten were ironed out, the Sterling was the successor, which was used at Arnhem.

The Sterling was improved over the Sten in every way because it was not designed to be cheap. It was designed to be more accurate and reliable then the Sten and meet the General Staff's specifications on addressing the issues with the Sten. Paramount in this change was the crappy and unreliable feed system used in the Sten which was the root of many problems with the gun. The Sterling was not used in large quantities in WW2. In fact, only 120 examples of the Sterling were made during the war for evaluations. If we want to get even more technical, the guns in WW2 weren't "Sterlings" but "Patchetts". The Sterling started life as the "Patchett Mk. II".

It is largely believed to be a myth that British paras carried Sterlings at Arnhem. The myth started because the South Staffordshires (part of the Red Devils) were given 100 of the test examples to put through trials. However, while the unit tested these guns, it is believed that they did NOT take them into Arnhem instead reverting to carrying Stens, primarily the Mk. V, though plenty of II's and III's even even some SMLE's were carried as well. The Germans made very accurate records of what equipment they took off the captured British forces and not a single entry was made regarding a new SMG which would have been a major discovery at the time.

The Soviet PPSH-41 was heavier and more cumbersome.

Yet the "papasha" is still considered the better weapon in almost all objective tests.

The design attributes of the Sten are clear to see. It was a milestone weapon that changed the way guns came after.

Please cite the exact innovations and processes that "changed the way guns came after". I see little real innovation in the Sten other than a concerted effort to make a "good enough" cheap and simple weapon. "Good enough", cheap and simple aren't exactly hallmarks of most post-WW2 infantry weapons. The successor gun of the Sten, the Patchett/Sterling is made to much higher standards sharing none of what you claim are the primary innovations of the Stens design.

In fact, one cannot claim anything as being innovative about the Sten beyond the manufacturing process because the action and operation of the Sten was COPIED from existing weapons, primarily the German MP18/28 which was also the basis for the Lanchester SMG.

Its effectiveness was that it equipped millions of soldiers very quickly with a gun that did exactly what it was designed to do. It wasn't made to look good, although it did. It wasn't made to look good on parade. It was no masterpiece of engineering using cheap components. The Sten was masterpiece of design. The designers came up with wonderful weapon that more than fulfilled the brief. Resistance fighters even made them in their garden sheds it was so simply designed. Simplicity and elegance in design. As effective as guns costing 20 times as much to make.

All of that's great, but still sums back to its greatest attribute being cheap. Any subsequent effort to improve upon the Sten abandoned its greatest attribute in order to achieve greater combat effectiveness. If the Sten was God's gift to the British soldier...why develop the Patchett/Sterling...and then replace the Sten with that new gun when you're sitting on piles of Stens?

The Sten was used in the desert and was prized for operating in dust that other guns would not.

Source. The Sten was used in the desert. It was not a prized weapon there because of how easily the feeding system jammed in the conditions. Available Thompsons were designated as priority for the 1st and 8th Army to fill the role of SMG. The SMLE was the most widely used infantry weapon in the desert by the British.

Even the Germans and French copied it. No other weapon was copied like the Sten. A truly remarkable weapon.

The Germans made two copies. One was an exact replica that they chose to make to equip clandestine/infiltration troops. The other was a "Sten like" weapon that borrowed from the general Sten simplicity concept, but was more like the German MP40 in function. That gun was made in very small quantities as a last ditch weapon for Volkssturm.

The SMLE was a generation before the Sten and outdated for a general gun in WW2. In some configurations the SMLE was a superb sniper weapon, so more of a niche weapon.

Yet the SMLE (using the term 'SMLE' as a catch-all for both Rifle No. 1 and No. 4 and the No. 5 carbine in the Lee-Enfield family) was continued to be refined and updated throughout the war and served as the primary weapon of the British infantryman in all theaters.

[Old Gringo]

It might have been "the most effective gun of WW2" in some role other than combat.

[John-UK]

Originally Posted by Old Gringo

It might have been "the most effective gun of WW2" in some role other than combat.

You really do not know.

[johnp292]

I'm no expert on any of this, although I found the thread interesting until the OP tried to use a still from a 1970s movie to support his position. At that point he lost all credibility and the rest of the debate became moot. How disappointing.