Duan Wu estimated that with China's current military technology, it would take at least half a year to mass-produce imitation Sten submachine guns.
After all, with the industrial level of Britain at the time, it took more than a year from the Dunkirk evacuation to the mass production of Sten submachine guns.
The emergence of the Sten submachine gun can be said to be a helpless move by the old British.
In May 1940, the British Expeditionary Force suffered a major defeat on the European battlefield. The British government dispatched a large number of ships to brave the German bombings and withdraw the British troops and some Allied troops from Dunkirk to the mainland.
But after these expeditionary troops returned home, the British government discovered a very serious problem, that is, they came back too hastily, and all the guys in their hands were left on the beach of Dunkirk, France.
And if the Germans catch up with them at this time, the problem will be serious, so Britain will need a batch of high-quality and low-cost weapons to equip its troops at this time.
And when fighting the Germans before, many front-line officers said that the thing in the hands of the Germans seemed to be very easy to use. It had a bullet capacity of 32 rounds, and it could cover a large area in one sweep. It could be used as a machine gun at close range.
In addition, the recoil of 9mm pistol bullets is low, even children can easily control it.
But the most important thing is that the cost of their submachine guns is not high, they are suitable for large-scale equipment, and they are much cheaper than the American Thompson.
So the British began to make their own submachine guns. The design idea was to use 9mm pistol bullets for the bullets and imitate the MP40 magazines for the magazines. Then, they combined the advantages of the Royal Navy's Manchester submachine gun and the MP40 submachine gun for simplification and design. In the end, with the efforts of two designers, Shepperd and Turpin, and the Enfield Arsenal, a generation of "famous gun" - the Sten submachine gun was created.
The Sten submachine gun has a total length of 895 mm and a weight of 2.95 kg. It fires 9×19 mm pistol ammunition and is fed by a 32-round magazine. It has a rate of fire of 550 rounds per minute and an effective range of 200 meters.
Generally speaking, all the statistics of the Sten submachine gun are good. Even if it is copied from the Dragon Boat Festival, it will be enough.
But Duanwu knew this gun very well, and the Sten submachine gun was considered a famous gun in World War II.
Its advantages are low cost, simple structure, and suitable for large-scale production.
But it also has many shortcomings. The first is that this gun is too ugly. When this gun was first designed, it was criticized by many people because of its very crude appearance. People once suspected that this thing was made by some black workshop. from.
Secondly, the structure is simple, very simple. The body of the Sten submachine gun is just a steel pipe, the sleeve is also round, the stock is also round, and the bolt handle is also a small round tube. The spring inside can be seen through the bolt groove, and this simple design is easy to Letting some sand or mud get in and cause it to jam, which is quite fatal on the battlefield.
Then the safety of this gun is very unreliable. The safety of this gun is to pull the bolt to the buttocks and then pin it up. It is a bit similar to some common buckles we have now. But the problem is that the safety comes off as soon as it is scraped, walking or It's common for people to lose sight of themselves during training. Often the gun falls to the ground and all the bullets are wiped out. It is like a double-edged sword, hurting both the enemy and yourself.
Of course, this gun also has its advantages, otherwise the British would not have produced more than three million of them.
The advantage of this gun is that it has a simple structure and a very low cost. The cost is only 7 US dollars, which is one-twentieth of the Thomas submachine gun.
And because the structure is simple, there are only 47 parts in total, and it does not require too many assembly lines. As long as there are a few stamping equipment, mass production is not a problem at all.
During the Dragon Boat Festival, five engineers gave a detailed explanation of the Sten submachine gun to Jin Changxi.
Of course, he ignored the fact that the gun took a year to be produced by the British. He only explained the advantages and disadvantages of the gun to Jin Changxi and the five engineers.
After the engineer and Jin Changxi preliminarily checked the basic data of the firearm, they began to discuss with Duanwu the issue of the Sten submachine gun often jamming.
There are three main aspects of jamming of the Sten submachine gun. The first aspect is that due to the simple structure of the Sten submachine gun, during combat, sand can easily enter the gun body and cause it to jam.
After studying this point with several engineers in Duanwu, we found that it could not be solved at all. Because this is related to the overall structure of the Sten submachine gun.
If this problem cannot be solved, it will not be solved. Otherwise, if we spend a lot of effort to solve the problem of sand intrusion, I am afraid that this submachine gun will not be mass-produced even in a year, let alone half a year.
Moreover, the problem of sand entering can be completely avoided as long as the soldiers pay attention.
The second aspect is that due to the ammunition load of 32 rounds, the spring has insufficient elasticity in the last few rounds of bullets, resulting in jamming.
Some engineers suggested that the elasticity of the springs could be enhanced. But this was rejected by Duanwu. It is also due to the structural problems of the Sten submachine gun itself. If the elasticity of the spring is increased, the first bullet may get stuck in the barrel.
So the solution is to install two dummy bombs in the magazine, reducing the ammunition capacity from 32 rounds to 30 rounds.
The last aspect is that when soldiers shoot, their hands will habitually grasp the magazine as a grip.
However, this will greatly reduce the stability of the gun body.
Because the structure of the Sten submachine gun is too simple, the stability of the gun body itself is not strong. If you hold the magazine and shoot, the bullet will jam 100% as the recoil shakes.
Therefore, Duanwu recommends adding a grip to the front end of the gun body so that soldiers can hold this grip when shooting, which can greatly reduce the risk of jamming.
In addition, the Sten submachine gun also has a fatal flaw, that is, its safety is in name only and it is easy to misfire. During World War II, many soldiers who used this submachine gun scorned it or even threw it away.
For example, in September 1943, a special forces unit consisting of 28 soldiers parachuted to the Cherbourg area in northern France, preparing to carry out infiltration missions under cover of night. As a result, something surprising happened. Perhaps because of the collision of the gun, the Sten submachine gun carried by a soldier suddenly went off during the march. The bullets without eyes directly knocked down three teammates.
It must be said that it is quite embarrassing to be knocked down by one of your own bullets.
When a group of people were busy bandaging the injured soldiers, their actions had been exposed by the gunfire just now. The German troops patrolling nearby heard the sound of gunfire and surrounded them. After a brief exchange of fire between the two sides, the British soldiers, who knew they were outnumbered, had no choice but to surrender.
Later, when the Germans interrogated these "unlucky" British soldiers, they learned of this hilarious accident.
Therefore, the problem of the Sten submachine gun misfiring easily must be solved. Dragon Boat Festival did not want soldiers to die under his own gun before the battle started.
But at this time, several engineers thought for a long time but had no countermeasures.
Because time is too short, logically speaking, even if the design of a submachine gun already has drawings, if you want to completely perfect it, you can't even think about it in less than a few months.
But Duanwu wanted to complete it overnight, which was almost impossible.
However, after taking a short rest, Duanwu came up with an idea. Without changing the main structure of the Siden submachine gun, Duanwu asked engineers to add a twisting charging handle to the Siden submachine gun to completely solve the problem of misfire.
Of course, Duanwu is just making a suggestion, because if you want to upgrade any mature firearm, you will need a lot of experimental data.
Therefore, what Dragon Boat Festival decided was only a prototype, and what was given was only suggestions to assist the engineers of the arsenal to complete this Chinese submachine gun.
In other words, Duanwu is not a professional in making firearms. He could only tell these engineers what he knew, and what these engineers were going to do still needed to be figured out by themselves.
But even so, this was a big impact on the Chinese military industry at the time. Because at that time, weapons manufacturing technology was blocked from China. Therefore, there is a reason why China's military manufacturing industry is so backward.
But with the drawings of Dragon Boat Festival and the detailed explanation of Dragon Boat Festival, these engineers and Jin Changxi also had a sudden enlightenment. Presumably, it was only a matter of time to create China's own submachine gun!
