World War II gave us some of the most iconic firearms in history, but it also produced some absolute disasters. Weapons that were weird, awkward, or simply put, cursed for one reason or another. Every weapon on this list has something horribly wrong with it, so that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Let’s begin.
Britain entered World War with basically no plan for submachine guns. The British Army used the .303 bolt-action Lee-Enfield rifle, which is an excellent weapon at range that could put out some 15 aimed rounds per minute, but far from ideal for the close-quarters combat that would define much of the war.
Through the 1930s, the Small Arms Committee tested several foreign submachine guns, but adopted none. When war broke out in September 1939, alarmed officers in the British Expeditionary Force hastily arranged purchases of American Thompson submachine guns, but one Thompson cost $200, which in today’s money is about $4,500. Quite a lot when you compare it to other guns on the list and how many of them they needed.
And then came the Dunkirk evacuation catastrophe. In 1940, the Germans pushed the French and British forces all the way back to the coast of France. With the threat of being overrun and captured at any moment, the British managed to evacuate over 330,000 soldiers from Dunkirk. But in the rush to escape, they left behind about 11,000 machine guns, 2,500 artillery pieces, 85,000 vehicles, and tens of thousands of rifles and small arms on the beaches.
Britain now faced the prospect of a German invasion with an army that was literally almost unarmed. And to make matters worse, they didn’t have the resources to build or buy anything remotely close to the numbers they needed. And at this point, even the American Lend-Lease program was a year away.
So, because they needed something immediately and the situation was, well, not exactly prosperous, they started working on a submachine gun. It was much cheaper and easier to produce than a rifle, plus it fires pistol-caliber ammunition, which is also cheaper. They came up with two working prototypes in just 36 days and very quickly the thing was officially approved as the carbine machine Sten Mark I with an initial order for 100,000 guns.
As for the Sten name, it came from the initials of the two guys who created it, Shepherd and Turpin, and EN for the Enfield factory. Although it was later said that EN stood for England, so take that as you will. The Sten’s design was revolutionary. However, it wasn’t the simple open bolt blowback system that was revolutionary, but it’s manufacturing philosophy.
Nearly every component was stamped from sheet steel and welded. Only the barrel and bolt required precision machining. The Mark III version contained just 47 parts and could be assembled in no more than five man hours. Production was dispersed to hundreds of small workshops across Britain.
Toy factories, sewing machine factories, anyone who could make them was employed to build as many as possible and the cost was staggering in its cheapness. A Sten Mark II cost about £2, but then it was simplified even further and the Mark III cost just half a pound, which is about $40 today. So, instead of going to McDonald’s, you could treat yourself to a submachine gun.
Now, as for the choice of caliber, 9 mm was a deliberate strategic decision. And who else had submachine guns in that caliber? You guessed it, the Germans did. The Sten was even compatible with MP 40 magazines, which was a huge thing for operations behind enemy lines. Stens were airdropped into France and came in quite handy for partisans and resistance fighters as the gun was compact, easy to use, and you could kill a German soldier, take his MP 40 and ammo that you could also use with your Sten.
Now, you’re probably wondering why the Sten found itself in the video about the cursed submachine guns of this war. Well, let’s take a look at a few of its colorful nicknames: stench gun, plumber’s nightmare, or Woolworth gun after the cheap department store. For our American audience, it could be translated to something like Walmart gun.
It fired about 500 rounds per minute with an optimistic effective range of 100 m. That’s if you can hit something at that distance with a 9 mm in real combat. The magazine held 32 rounds just like the MP 40, although soldiers usually never loaded it full. The standard practice was 30 rounds max to lower the chances of jamming.
By the way, loading the magazine was really difficult because of the double-stack single-feed design. So, there were many loading tools to help with that. It could theoretically fire in both semi and full auto, although the selector was also unreliable and couldn’t guarantee it would fire just one round or a full burst.
Now, if you held the Sten Mark III by the barrel shroud, your pinky could slip into the ejection port and get bitten by the reciprocating bolt, which is not a fun thing. And it was actually so common that a protective tab was later welded next to it. On the bright side, the Mark III had a clever dirt prevention feature. The magazine housing could be rotated 90° to cover the ejection port when the magazine was removed, letting the weapon lie flat and keeping dirt out during transport.
I honestly wonder why the magazine wasn’t mounted like this the whole time, like the German MP 40, instead of sticking so weirdly from the side. But, it is what it is. So, you’re not shocked that something built so cheaply and quickly wouldn’t be the highest possible quality. And beyond looking cheap, it was also dangerous to everyone around it.
Everyone but the German officer you’re trying to assassinate as a resistance fighter. Oddly specific, you might say. On May 27th, 1942, a Czech operative raised his Sten at point-blank range at a German SS general driving in an open-topped Mercedes. He pulled the trigger, and then nothing happened. The Sten jammed without firing a single round.
The general was then wounded by a grenade thrown by another resistance fighter and died 8 days later. But, this wasn’t the only time the Sten didn’t work when needed the most. And then there were also situations where it did work when it shouldn’t have, like when being dropped accidentally. It’s open bolt design with only a rudimentary notch and cocking handle safety meant that a sharp jolt could free the bolt and cause an accidental discharge.
During one parachute drop, a Sten accidentally discharged and wounded four paratroopers and actually inflicted more casualties than the whole operation did. And there are many such examples where the Sten was dropped and then went off in full auto, spinning on the ground and firing in all directions.
There was a joke about how to clear a room, just [ __ ] the Sten and throw it inside. The magazine was the weapon’s Achilles’ heel. It had a double-column, single-feed design derived from the and it demanded a precise 8° feed angle at the lips, and the slightest dent caused misfires. Holding the magazine while firing, which was an instinctive grip for most soldiers, wore down the magazine catch.
This single flaw probably accounts for more Sten malfunctions than every other issue combined. The Sten evolved through six major variants, with the first four each being cheaper and simpler than the one before, while the Mark V reversed course toward quality, adding a wooden pistol grip and stock, bayonet mount, and better sights.
Then, there was the suppressed Mark II S, which became the most widely used silenced weapon of World War II, employed by SOE and commandos. Total production across all variants reached about 4 million, second only to the Soviet PPSh-41 among World War II submachine guns. Okay, so before you guys from the United States start crucifying me in the comments, let me explain why your beloved grease gun found itself on this list.
The thing is that the Thompson submachine gun was an American icon, but it was a production nightmare. You’ve heard earlier how much it cost, and it was even worse when you look at the man-hours and precise machining needed. When Americans saw what other nations were making at a fraction of the cost and time it took to build a single Thompson, they took inspiration and created their own version of a submachine gun in .
45 ACP caliber using those cheap techniques of spot welding and stamped metal parts. The result was a $21 masterpiece that looks like the thing it got the nickname from, an automotive lubrication tool. Only the bolt and barrel required machining, and the total parts count was 73. Okay, so ready for the cursed part? The M3 was initially classified as disposable.
When it broke, soldiers were meant to discard it and draw a new one. No spare parts were manufactured. And when it turned out that soldiers actually needed to keep them in service, well, good luck repairing anything when something broke. So soldiers cannibalized some grease guns for parts to make others work.
It first saw large-scale combat with the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions on D-Day, and reception was, let’s say, mixed. Early problems were severe. The crank type cocking handle was fragile, and dropping the gun could shear it off, rendering the weapon pretty much useless. Nearly the entire first production lot of about 20,000 guns was rejected due to warped receivers from improper welding.
The magazine release was too easy to bump accidentally, causing magazines to fall out even when the weapon was slung on a shoulder. The 30-round magazine, patterned after the Stens, used the same single feed design and jammed even if a little dirt got in. On top of that, the weapon’s only safety mechanism was a hinged ejection port dust cover that prevented it from firing.
The M3 had no mechanical means of disabling the trigger whatsoever. So inserting a loaded magazine essentially loaded the gun. The M3A1 that was adopted in December 1944 addressed the worst problems. It eliminated the cocking handle and replaced it with a finger hole machined directly into the bolt. The wire stock was redesigned to double as a magazine loading tool, barrel wrench, and cleaning rod, while the metal guard protected the magazine release.
It had a deliberately slow 450 rounds per minute cyclic rate to conserve ammo. To put it in perspective, this was roughly 2/3 that of the Thompson. The straight back recoil eliminated muzzle climb, and skilled shooters could, quote unquote, slap the trigger for single shots despite the weapon being full auto only. Later, a conversion kit was developed to fire 9 mm using Sten magazines.
Intended for resistance fighters in German-occupied territory, total World War production reached about 620,000. And despite being so cheap and fragile-looking, the M3 service life didn’t end in World War II. It served through Korea and Vietnam as the standard weapon for tank crews, with some even carrying them during Desert Storm in 1991.
Not bad for a weapon designed to be thrown away, huh? Now, the Reising M50 was a submachine gun intended for law enforcement and foreign military sales, not American front-line combat. But it would find its way there anyway. It was one of the first closed-bolt submachine guns, which wouldn’t become standard until the 1970s.
And because of that, it delivered exceptional accuracy. It weighed just 6 and 3/4 lb versus the Thompson’s 11, cost roughly $50 at the time, and offered selective fire in .45 ACP at about 550 rounds per minute rate of fire. But the trade-off was complexity. The closed-bolt mechanism required tight tolerances and hand-fitted parts that were not interchangeable between individual guns.
The charging handle sat in a recess underneath the barrel, where it easily collected dirt. Paired with the double-stack, single-feed 20-round magazine that jammed at the slightest provocation, it failed sand, mud, and dust tests, and was rejected by the army, who were already developing the M3. But, the Marine Corps had no such luxury of choice.
Every Thompson rolling off the production line was earmarked for the army or lend-lease. So, the Marine Corps deemed the Reising, {quote} “acceptable when maintained to standards”, and over 4,000 of them were authorized per Marine division. And, this would turn out to be quite the horrible decision. The M55 variant, with a folding wire stock and shortened barrel, was designed specifically for the Marine parachute battalions and tank crews.
And, it was even more hated than the M50, because on top of other pain-in-the-ass features, the wire stock had a tendency to collapse during firing. And, to make things worse, the true full auto rate was reported to be closer to 750 to 850 rounds per minute. At those rates, the 20-round magazine could be emptied in less than 2 seconds. On August 7th, 1942, about 4,000 Marines stormed ashore at Guadalcanal.
Guadalcanal’s equatorial jungle, with its heat, rain, mud, salt spray, and sand, was the worst conceivable environment for the Risings’ tight tolerances. The complex mechanism got filled with sand and seized almost immediately. The brittle firing pin broke easily. Magazines rusted and jammed.
And, this is all without even counting the enemy actively trying to kill you. Parts from one broken gun couldn’t be swapped into another. So, when Marines disassembled their individually hand-fitted Risings all together for group cleaning, and then reassembled them with mismatched parts, they put a bunch of guns out of action at once.
Field stripping was a nightmare, also, because of tiny parts. The Risings’ complex design had many small pins, plungers, springs, and levers, making disassembly and assembly difficult even under normal conditions. It was described by the Marines colorfully as a real .45 caliber hunk of junk or a poor man’s Thompson submachine gun.
It might have been called Thompson from wish.com today. Marines were literally throwing crates of Reising submachine guns into rivers and the ocean and then replacing them through {quote} moonlight requisitioning, which just meant stealing M1 Garands from army units that arrived later. By early 1943, all production contracts were canceled and Reisings were pulled from the Fleet Marine Force.
The bitter irony is that the Reising worked beautifully in clean conditions and it later actually served police departments successfully all the way into the 1990s. Now, this one was cursed actually more by the look than anything else. So, we have to put it on the list. The Owen gun. Evelyn Ernest Owen had no formal engineering training whatsoever.
He experimented with various weapons and his goal was a submachine gun with a high rate of fire that would be simple and reliable. He started working toward that idea already at the age of 16. By 1938, the 23-year-old had completed a functioning automatic weapon built from car parts and whatever else he could find and improvise, ending up with a .
22 long rifle blowback carbine with a thumb trigger. Owen brought this prototype to Victoria Barracks in Sydney. When asked what was in his bag, Owen replied, “It’s a Tommy gun.” The officer snapped back that it was an American gangster’s gun and that the army had no use for those. In September 1940, Owen was on pre- embarkation leave before deploying to the Middle East.
He greased up his prototype, stuffed it in a bag which he left outside his house, and then went to the pub with his mates, completely forgetting about the gun. A neighbor, Vincent Wardell, found it and took it, intending to bring it to the police station. But later that evening, he ran into Ernest’s dad, showed him what he’d found, and the old man explained that it must have been his son who’d carelessly left the thing outside.
Wardell, who worked at a steel works, recognized the design’s simple genius. Owen was actually brought back from the army to work on the gun’s development, and with help from his brother-in-law, his neighbor, and an actual gunsmith, they went through a series of caliber changes from .22 long rifle to .
32 ACP to .45 ACP, and finally to 9 mm, which is the version that was accepted. Australian army senior officers wanted to wait for the British Sten gun and did everything they could to sabotage the Owen’s adoption. But when the prototype was tested against the Thompson, Sten, and German Bergmann MP, something interesting happened.
In the mud and sand test, every weapon failed except for the Owen gun that kept firing just the same. The Owen worked because of four brilliant design features born from a young man’s intuition rather than formal engineering. It’s top-mounted 32-round magazine meant gravity assisted the spring in feeding cartridges downward into the breech.
An internal bulkhead divided the receiver into two sealed chambers, isolating the bolt from the charging handle slot. A bottom ejection port let spent casings and debris fall out by gravity, and the bolt moved on a round piston in a sealed compartment, leaving no exposed sliding surfaces where dirt could accumulate. Rate of fire was 700 rounds per minute, which is higher than most other submachine guns.
But the tradeoffs were that you couldn’t aim straight down the top because the magazine was in the way, so the sights had to be offset to the side, which was a big disadvantage for left-handed shooters. It was also quite heavy at 9.3 lb unloaded, and overall it just looked cursed, which is why it found itself on this list.
But in jungle conditions that are messing up even the best-designed guns, all these downsides were acceptable for a weapon that simply refused to jam no matter what. When the Owen reached Australian troops in New Guinea, the reaction was immediate adoration. The weapon that bureaucrats had fought against for 2 years got the nickname Digger’s Darling, and soldiers thanked the Lysaght team as they believed the Owen had literally saved their lives.
New Zealand soldiers fighting in the Solomons actually swapped their Thompsons for Owens, preferring the Australian weapon’s jungle reliability. Production reached about 45,000 guns at a cost of roughly $25 per unit at the time. Australia actually simultaneously developed the Austen, a local hybrid of the Sten and German MP 40 with a folding stock, but it was eventually withdrawn.
The Owen served through Korea and Vietnam before retirement in 1971, replaced by the F1 submachine gun, which retained its distinctive top-mounted magazine for some weird reason. As for the guy who created it, the story took quite a dark turn. Evelyn Owen received about 10,000 lb in royalties and the sale of patent rights to the Commonwealth of Australia.
He never married, lived alone, and struggled with alcoholism. On April 1st, 1949, Evelyn Ernest Owen died at the age of 33, probably due to the consequences of chronic heavy drinking. What a sad end for such a brilliant mind. Now, this one is cursed for many reasons. The first reason being why it was built in the first place and in what conditions.
By late 1944, Germany’s war industry was disintegrating. Allied strategic bombing had devastated primary armaments factories, and with the focus shifting from MP 40 to STG 44 production, the Germans at one point found themselves with almost nobody producing submachine guns anymore. So, like many of his well-thought-through decisions based on {quote} and {unquote} reality, Hitler established a civilian militia, conscripting anyone aged 16 to 60 to serve as the last line of defense of the collapsing Reich. But, they now needed
about 1.3 million small arms for them that they didn’t have. At first, they wanted to make exact copies of the British Sten Mark II you heard about in the beginning of the video. They made some 10,000 of them, but it turns out that their version somehow cost about 40 times more than the British made original.
So, they began working on something even simpler and cheaper to arm these poor guys to fight the advancing well-equipped Allied armies. I mean, it was even called the primitive weapons program. Considering all that, you should not be shocked when you hear how {quote} “good” the submachine gun they came up with was.
It was called the MP 3008. The weapon was a simple open bolt blowback in 9 mm that could be assembled in about one man hour. Production was completely decentralized, distributed to about 30 subcontractors and 14 final assembly companies, which then resulted in staggering variation. Receivers ranged from seamless drawn tubes to rolled sheet metal with overlapping spot welds.
Stocks varied between Sten-type wire loops, tubular steel frames, crude flat plank wooden butts, and MP 40-style folding stocks. Barrel attachment methods, cocking handle placement, ejection port sizes, and even the number of rifling grooves differed between manufacturers. The Germans placed orders for 1 million of them with accessories and spare parts, demanding 250,000 per month starting immediately, but this never happened.
Somewhere around 3 to 10,000 of them were built before Germany’s surrender in May 1945.
