Miniature Fully Functional Taiwanese Preproduction Sten Gun
Forgotten Weapons
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9m 29s
In the mid 1950s, the Nationalist government on Taiwan was in serious need of small arms, and decided to set up production of the Sten gun. They had the facilities of the 44th Arsenal outside Taipei, which had been relocated there from the mainland in 1948. For some assistance, the government hired a US Army officer as a consultant, and as part of the production setup, they built half a dozen miniature but fully-functional Stens in .32ACP. One of these came home with the US officer, and was registered in the 1968 Amnesty.
The magazine well has the proper symbol of the 44th Arsenal, and the gun has two specific irregularities compared to a standard British Sten. The fire control housing is triangular instead of rounded, and it has no semiauto selector switch. These features carried through to the fully production guns, as one can see on an example in the British Royal Armouries today.
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