The body of this gun was made from a single riveted tube of sheet metal, welded at the top. In 1943, a toy manufacturer, Line Bros., was commissioned to produce an even simpler model of the Sten that was constructed from minimal components. The silenced Sten was taken into service as the Mk.IIS and was the most widely-used suppressed weapon of the war. A suppressed version of the Mk.II Sten was commissioned for use by Commandos this was developed at Enfield by a Polish engineer, Lt. Workshop-built copies were also produced in large quantities in occupied territories like France, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland. The Allies supplied anti-Nazi resistance networks in Europe with large quantities of Sten guns, and the simplicity of the design was ideal for untrained partisans. However, the extremely cheap cost and basic design of the Mk.II Sten ensured that it saw incredibly widespread use, with over 2,000,000 models being produced in total. It earned a variety of derogatory nicknames, including the "Plumber's Nightmare", due to its unsophisticated appearance and relatively poor reliability. Although the initial response in Britain to the Sten was optimistic, with some officers even anticipating that it could help turn the tide of the war, the feedback from the troops who were issued the gun was less enthusiastic. It saw its first combat use by Canadian troops during the Dieppe Raid on the 19th of August 1942. The Mk.II Sten became the standard service SMG of the British Commonwealth forces during the war. Although the Mk.II Sten was even cruder and less reliable than its already very basic predecessor, it was nonetheless taken into service on account of its inexpensive cost and fast production rate. The new Mk.II was proposed to cut back the production cost significantly by removing the inessential features of the Mk.I. This first iteration was known as the Mk.I and incorporated wooden furniture, a hinged foregrip, and a flash hider these features were deemed to be inessential and in August 1941 a cheaper model, the Mk.II, was demonstrated at Pendine. The Army was quick to approve of the weapon and it was taken into service. In January 1941, the first prototype Stens were ready and were tested at Enfield on the 10th and Hythe on the 21st. This gun was subsequently named the "Sten", after Shepherd, Turpin, and Enfield.
The Army became invested in a design being developed at RSAF Enfield, commissioned by the head of the Small Arms Group, Major Reginald Vernon Shepherd, and designed by draftsman Harold John Turpin. Initially, the Lanchester, a copy of the German MP28 was developed and was adopted by the Navy and Air Force, but was declined by the Army, who desired a cheaper gun. However, after the BEF's retreat from France in 1940, the Army realized that a cost-efficient, domestically-produced SMG was required to match the MP38's production rate. The British Ordnance Board proceeded to order quantities of Thompson guns from the United States. Worried that they would have no equivalent weapon to match the German SMG, the BEF hastily arranged field trials for several submachine guns, quickly settling on the Thompson submachine gun. In late 1939, shortly after the beginning of World War II, the British Expeditionary Force in France became concerned by reports that the Germans were arming their troops with large numbers of inexpensive MP38 submachine guns.
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