Stocks machine carbine

StocksSMG

This design was patented in August 1942 by Harry Benwell Stocks, a motor engineer. The receiver and barrel seem to have been based on the Lanchester submachine gun, but the feed system was entirely different, with the magazine placed horizontally within the stock and the cartridges elevated up into the chamber by a swinging arm. This was similar in type to the feed systems employed by the Italian Sosso submachine gun, which appeared almost simultaneously, and the later Czech ZB-47 and CZ 246 SMGs which came after the end of the war. The magazine was exceptionally long, with a capacity of 100 rounds, and was inserted through a door in the buttstock. The Stocks submachine gun also had a double trigger group giving automatic fire and single shots.

Although the Stocks design was a novel idea, it does not appear to have been pursued very far; it is not even known whether a prototype was ever built, or whether the gun was entirely conceptual. It may have been proposed to the Ordnance Board circa 1942, as it was referenced by the C.E.A.D. the subsequent year during their trials of the McLachlan submachine gun, another design with an unusual feed mechanism.

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