The Sterling submachine gun is a British

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 submachine gun

Submachine gun

A submachine gun is an automatic carbine, designed to fire pistol cartridges. It combines the automatic fire of a machine gun with the cartridge of a pistol. The submachine gun was invented during World War I , but the apex of its use was during World War II when millions of the weapon type were...

 which was in service with the British Army

British Army

The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...

 from 1944 until 1994, when it was phased out with the introduction of the L85A1

SA80

The SA80 is a British family of 5.56mm small arms. It is a selective fire, gas-operated assault rifle. SA80 prototypes were trialled in 1976 and production was completed in 1994....

 assault rifle.
In 1944 the British General Staff issued a specification for a new submachine gun. It stated that the weapon should not weigh more than six pounds

Pound (mass)

The pound or pound-mass is a unit of mass used in the Imperial, United States customary and other systems of measurement...

 (2.7 kg), should fire 9x19mm Parabellum calibre ammunition, have a rate of fire

Rate of fire

Rate of fire is the frequency at which a specific weapon can fire or launch its projectiles. It is usually measured in rounds per minute , or per second .-Overview:...

 of no more than 500 rounds per minute and be sufficiently accurate to allow five single shots to be fired into a one foot square target at 100 yards (91.44 meters).

To meet the new requirement, George William Patchett, the chief designer at the Sterling Armaments Company

Sterling Armaments Company

Sterling Armaments Company was an arms manufacturer based in Dagenham, famous for manufacturing the L2A3 , AR18 and SAR-87 assault rifles and parts of Jaguar cars. The company went bankrupt in 1988....

 of 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...

 submitted a sample weapon of new design in early 1944.