Sterling L2A3

The Sterling was Britain's answer to a 1944 General Staff requirement for a Sten replacement: a submachine gun weighing no more than six pounds, chambered in 9x19mm, with a rate of fire under 500 rounds per minute and accurate enough to place five semi-automatic shots inside a one-foot square at 100 yards. George William Patchett, chief designer at the Sterling Armaments Company of Dagenham, submitted a prototype in early 1944. The army recognised its markedly better accuracy and reliability and ordered 120 for trials; some are rumoured to have been carried in action at Arnhem and by special forces in northern Europe as the Patchett Machine Carbine Mk 1. With Sten guns filling the postwar inventory there was little appetite for a replacement, and a 1947 competitive trial against Enfield, BSA and Australian designs proved inconclusive, but further development secured a decision in 1951. The weapon entered service in 1953 as the L2A1 and reached its definitive form as the L2A3. It remained standard British Army issue until 1994, when the L85A1 displaced it.

The Sterling is built entirely from steel and plastic, with an under-folding stock and a flip rear sight set for 100 or 200 yards. It fires from an open bolt by straight blowback, but with several unusual features. The bolt has helical grooves machined into its surface that scrape dirt and fouling from the inside of the receiver as it cycles, a major contributor to the gun's reliability. Two concentric recoil springs replace the single spring used by most designs, giving consistent function with 9mm loads other than the British 2Z standard. The weapon also employs advanced primer ignition, firing the cartridge while the bolt is still travelling forward so that some of the propellant energy is spent arresting the bolt's momentum; this permits a lighter bolt and therefore a lighter, more controllable gun. Its curved 34-round double-feed magazine, designed by Patchett in 1946 with a roller follower, is regarded as one of the best submachine gun magazines ever produced, and Sterlings will also accept Sten and Lanchester magazines.

Variants include:

• The L34A1 (Mk 5), a suppressed model with a ported barrel surrounded by expansion chambers

• The Mk 7 "Pistol" of 1983, with 10- and 15-round magazines

• The Canadian C1, made from stamped rather than cast metal

• The Indian 1A1 and 2A1, built at the Kanpur ordnance factory from 1963

• The Chilean FAMAE PAF, with a shorter receiver and no barrel shroud

• The American PAWS ZX in 9x19mm and .45 ACP

Over 400,000 Sterlings were manufactured between 1953 and 1988 at Dagenham and at ROF Fazakerley in Liverpool, and the type was adopted by more than forty countries. Suppressed Sterlings were used by Australian and New Zealand SAS units in Vietnam and by both British and Argentine special forces in the Falklands. The gun has a second, unlikely claim to fame: modified Sterlings served as the E-11 blaster props carried by Imperial stormtroopers in the Star Wars films.