#Germany

In May of this year, I got the rare opportunity to travel to Heckler & Koch’s headquarters in Ashburn, VA, to take a look at some of the experimental and prototype firearms they have located there in their famous “Grey Room”. It wouldn’t be worth as much for me to just tell you about it and to snap a few foggy cell phone pictures, though, so I brought along Othais of C&Rsenal to help me take high resolution light box photos of these unique and rare firearms.

In the ongoing controversy about the G36 assault rifle, German gunmaker Heckler & Koch have won a major victory against the German federal government, as the Koblenz court where the company’s lawsuit against the government was tried ruled that the company was at no fault for the G36’s design. Reuters reports:

After World War II, the nations of the world retired to lick their wounds and rebuild, but their arms engineers also began thinking about the next war. The war have brought forth a storm of new technologies and inventions, and one of the most significant in the field of small arms was the finally mature assault rifle in the form of the Nazi-developed “Sturmgewehr”, and its intermediate 7.92x33mm Kurzpatrone cartridge. One nation that took notice of this new weapon and its ammunition was the newly reconstituted Czechoslovakia. That nations engineers quickly took to copying and improving the 7.92 Kurz caliber, producing by the early 1950s a short-lived but unique round called the 7.62x45mm Kr.52, or more popularly the 7.62×45 Czech. The 7.62×45’s projectile was a near copy of the Kurzpatrone’s stubby, steel-cored one, but its case was much longer, while being slightly thinner, and having a greater internal volume. This gave the Czech round an additional 250 ft/s muzzle velocity versus the German 7.92×33 when fired from the barrel of the rifle that was designed alongside it, the strange but wonderful vz. 52.

Many would consider this next round to be the first intermediate cartridge ever, and while that isn’t really true, it is one of the most influential rounds of all time, and perhaps the most influential intermediate round ever developed. I am talking of course about the Nazi-era Kurzpatrone 43 Spitzgeschoß mit Eisenkern, or as it is more commonly called, the 7.92×33 Kurz. This round became the model – in one fashion or another – for numerous intermediate rounds developed all around the globe after World War II, including the promising .280 British, and ubiquitous 7.62x39mm Soviet, as well as several others we’ll discuss in later installments.

Heckler and Koch has won a major victory against the German government this week, regarding the sale of G36 assault rifles to Saudi Arabia. In the mid-2000s, Heckler and Koch sold tooling for the G36 to the Saudi government capable of producing 14,000 rifles per year. However, in 2008 the German government prevented the manufacture of rifles in that country without the exclusive production in Germany of five key components, without which the rifles could not be assembled. The company requested to export 28,000 rifle components and replacement parts to Saudi Arabia in 2013, but the government did not respond, resulting in the lawsuit from Heckler and Koch.

My friend Tom invited me over to his friend Dave’s house to show me Dave’s restored 1942 Zündapp KS 750. Dave restores motorcycles and exotic cars for a living and as a hobby. According to Dave, he acquired this back in the 80’s when he was restoring surplus army vehicles for a client. Back then the army vehicles were purchased in bulk lots and were imported. In one of the shipments this motorcycle was included. It came from Poland and was in disrepair. He could tell that the Polish had tried to salvage it. There were bullet holes in the frame, engine, and gas tank possibly from machine gun fire due to the pattern and number of holes. Dave commented that he could tell someone welded up the engine and machined it to get it to work at one point in time. Well the client he was working for did not have any interest in motorcycles and years went by with this taking up space in his workshop. So he gave the client an ultimatum, take it out and pay him for the time and work he did do or leave it. So the client left it to Dave. Thanks to the internet and 30 years later the Zündapp KS 750 has been restored. Dave told me he used this book by Hans-Peter Hommes as a bible for his restoration.

Moving on in the Rainier Arms Country Rifle atlas, it’s time for a large central European country.

On the heels of Heckler & Koch announcing their suit against the German government regarding statements about the company’s G36 assault rifle, comes news that the German court in Koblenz has issued a statement that the German gun manufacturer cannot be blamed for any problems the rifles may have, as the rifles were delivered conforming to government specifications. From Der Spiegel:

The firestorm over the Bundeswehr’s G36 assault rifle has reached a new fever pitch: Heckler & Koch, maker of the embattled rifles has sued the German government in an effort to clear its name of any wrongdoing. The company’s G36 rifles have come under fire in the past few years for having a flaw in their construction that reportedly causes great shifts in the rifle’s point of impact when sustaining temperature or humidity changes. DW.com reports:

At SHOT 2016, Hill & Mac Gunworks unveiled their prototype multi caliber re-imagining of the World War II-era German Sturmgewehr assault rifle. The new semi-automatic rifle, while not an exact replica, captures many of the design elements and the basic aesthetics of the original, making for one of the more interesting intermediate caliber carbine projects of this year.

The Semperio is a new kind of rifle action, from the German company Krieghoff. Essentially the hunting rifle is built on a sort of push system wherein the forward portion of the rifle is pushed forward after firing, to extract, eject, and cock the hammer, then pushed back in to load, chamber, and lock the bolt into place for position of the next round. The bolt itself does not move at all within the rifle, as it stays in place, in the rearward portion. It appears that the bolt has some kind of rotating head like an AR bolt does, and this is what cams and locks in with the chamber. The magazine is removable, and is loaded while the forward portion is pushed out of battery, then concealed within the receiver of the rearward portion while the rifle is in battery. The safety and external hammer are located at the rear of the receiver, just behind the bolt. The company claims that having this type of action allows a hunter to keep their hands in the same position on the rifle, while not losing the cheekweld during a course of fire. It also lends itself well to a good take down rifle once disassembled.

While the base principle of how a bolt-action rifle functions has not changed since its invention, its always fun to see the individual takes that each designer uses when creating a rifle. The rifle served in multiple wars, principally to great acclaim in World War I. While replaced by the Karabiner 98k, which derived much of its design from the Gewehr 1898.

The United States has some of the least restrictive firearms laws in the world, so it’s natural that Americans would assume that almost every other country in the world has draconian firearms laws that prevent almost everyone from getting guns.

This is part 2 of the “Country Rifles” by Rainier Arms and Blown Deadline as shown at the IWA exhibition in Germany 2016.

Some people have some remarkable collections in their basements. This guy had a WWII Panzer tank among an Anti-Aircraft gun, a torpedo and other weaponry.