Sterling Armaments Company was an arms manufacturer based in Dagenham

Dagenham

Dagenham is a large suburb in East London, forming the eastern part of the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham and located east of Charing Cross. It was historically an agrarian village in the county of Essex and remained mostly undeveloped until 1921 when the London County Council began...

, famous for manufacturing the L2A3 (the 'Sterling submachine gun

Sterling submachine gun

The Sterling submachine gun is a British submachine gun which was in service with the British Army from 1944 until 1994, when it was phased out with the introduction of the L85A1 assault rifle.-History:...

'), AR18 and SAR-87 assault rifles and parts of Jaguar cars. The company went bankrupt in 1988.

During WWII, engineers George Lanchester

George Lanchester

George Herbert Lanchester, was an English engineer. He was one of three brothers who played a leading role in the early development of the UK auto-industry....

 and George William Patchett

George William Patchett

-Career:In his early career he was a motor cycle racer for motorcycle manufacturers such as Brough Superior, McEvoy and the Belgian arms company FN. At Pendine, Wales he won the Welsh TT in 1925 and the Welsh TT sidecar in 1927 on Brough machines....

 oversaw the manufacture of the Lanchester sub-machine gun. Patchett afterwards went on to design the Patchett machine carbine which, after a competitive trial in 1947, was adopted by the British Army in 1953 as the L2A1 Sterling sub-machine gun, replacing the Sten gun. The weapon was later upgraded to the L2A3, the highly successful Sterling Mk IV.

Sources

• The Guns of Dagenham - Collector Grade Publications,Canada (5 Jan 1996), ISBN 0889352046
• Last Enfield - SA80: The Reluctant Rifle, Steve Raw, R.Blake Stevens, ISBN 0889353034
• Military Small Arms of the 20th Century, 4th Edition, by Ian V. Hogg and John Weeks, ISBN 0-910676-28-3,Ca 1981
• AK56 magazine, December 2006