History
In 1944 the British General Staff issued a specification for a new submachine gun. It stated that the weapon should not weigh more than six pounds (2.7 kg), should fire 9×19mm Parabellum calibre ammunition, have a rate of fire of no more than 500 rounds per minute and be sufficiently accurate to allow five single shots to be fired into a one foot square target at 100 yards (91 m).
To meet the new requirement, George William Patchett, the chief designer at the Sterling Armaments Company of Dagenham submitted a sample weapon of new design in early 1944. The army quickly recognised its potential (i.e. significantly increased accuracy and reliability when compared to the Sten) and ordered 120 examples for trials. Towards the end of the Second World War, some of these trial samples were used in combat by airborne troops at Arnhem and elsewhere, where it was known as the Patchett submachine gun. Given that the Patchett/Sterling can use straight Sten submachine gun magazines as well as the curved Sterling design, there were no interoperability problems.
After the war, with large numbers of Sten guns in the inventory there was little interest in replacing them with a superior design. However, in 1947 a competitive trial between the Patchett, an Enfield design, a new BSA design and an experimental Australian design was held, with the Sten for comparison. The trial was inconclusive but was followed by further development and more trials. Eventually the Patchett design won and the decision was made in 1951 for the British Army to adopt it. It started to replace the Sten in 1953 as the Sub-Machine Gun L2A1. Its last non-suppressed variation was the L2A3, but the model changes were minimal throughout its development life.
Sterling submachine guns with minor cosmetic alterations were used in the production of the Star Wars movies as blaster rifle props.
Read more about this topic: Sterling Submachine Gun
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. The past is thus as real as the present.”
—Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971)
“Considered in its entirety, psychoanalysis won’t do. It’s an end product, moreover, like a dinosaur or a zeppelin; no better theory can ever be erected on its ruins, which will remain for ever one of the saddest and strangest of all landmarks in the history of twentieth-century thought.”
—Peter B. Medawar (1915–1987)
“The reverence for the Scriptures is an element of civilization, for thus has the history of the world been preserved, and is preserved.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)