Wednesday, June 24, 2009

 

Good Looking Women Soldiers



These pretty young Indian soldiers are training with Sten Mark IIIs(Clearly they're Stens, I'm guessing about the version) which were inadequate and nearly obsolete when they were first used early in WWII. So perhaps the Indian Army is not the best equipped in the world. They can still easily take on the Pakistani Army in case hostilities break out for a fourth time, since 1948, but we are rooting now for the Pakistani Army who are taking on, and taking out, we hope, the Taliban and al Qaeda in Waziristan.

Labels:


Comments:
I disagree with your assessment that the Sten was "inadequate". It was light, it was generally reliable with good maintenance, and it was remarkably cheap.

In a heavily resource-constrained UK during WWII, that made it a very reasonable weapon.
 
Difficult to aim well, 9mm parabellum, not popular with the troops. I see your well reasoned points, as usual, but I stand by my assessment. Are you saying, in a fiscal way, that it was better than nothing?
 
It was certainly better than nothing, and nothing was a possible alternative for many of the people who ended up with the Sten; the resource constraints in the UK at the time were significant.

Was it better than the SMLE (another possible choice for many of the people who got the Sten)? I'm pretty sure it was significantly cheaper than the SMLE. But not only that, it was better than the SMLE when volume of fire was more important than long-range accuracy and penetration. (I wouldn't recommend a Sten for a sniper. 8-)

Was it better than a Thompson? Certainly not better quality (though it was lighter), but the US Army largely stopped buying the Thompson in favor of the M3, because the Thompson was heavy and expensive -- exactly the driving reason for the Sten.

Was it better than any of the pistols available? For most military applications, it probably was. And probably cheaper than most, too.

All weapons are tradeoffs; I don't think the set of tradeoffs involved in the Sten was a bad one -- it was no Chauchat.
 
Except for cool looks and a bit of history, I'd take the M3 over the Thompson. Just as accurate, same almost rate of fire and a whole lot cheaper. We agree that the Chauchat was the worst piece of junk ever foisted on our armed forces.
 
The weapon they use is not the Sten but the Sterling submachine gun.
 
Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?