#HecklerAndKoch

Heckler and Koch has had something of a spotty history with the American .45 ACP caliber. Originally, H&K -typically for a European company – was dismissive of the caliber, and felt they could not make a business case for weapons chambered in it. .45 ACP is after all, only really popular in the US and Southeast Asia. At the same time, H&K had a very close relationship with some US special units and law enforcement agencies that naturally desired weapons in that common caliber. Eventually, the dam broke and in H&K fully embraced the .45 ACP caliber with weapons like the UMP and their ever-changing polymer pistol line. Christopher Bartocci, writing for SADJ, has outlined the H&K .45 ACP pistol evolution:

HKPro.com forum poster Marine0303 posted the notes from an armorer’s course he took on the H&K G36 rifle. It is complete with pictures, and provides a really good essential understanding of the design and its maintenance requirements:

Back in the 1990s, Heckler & Koch USA decided to put together a working reference collection of the company’s products. This collection was put together at their Sterling facility in Virginia (Here are some pictures from the previous facility), but has since been moved to their new facility in Ashburn, VA as of 2007. The name “Gray” (or as H&K had British management, they write it “Grey”) comes from the color of the walls in the room which in both locations were gray. Although the room is mostly used as a working reference and display collection, there is also a full set of tables, chairs, and a TV inside it as it is also used as a conference room (it should be noted that there is a dedicated conference room at the Ashburn facility as well). There is another Gray Room back in Germany (the original H&K pattern room, here’s a link to some good pictures of that) but it is much less publicized and known about. I took all these pictures in 2012. There’s a thread on HKPRO that has some decent pictures of the room but from different angles that I took. Please note that I’m not an H&K expert in the least so I’m doing the best I know of with the captions, so feel free to correct me or add your own commentary about the small arms displayed.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Heckler and Koch were engaged in multiple parallel lines of rifle development, from the hubristically ambitious G11 to the G41, a 5.56mm roller retarded blowback rifle that married NATO standards such as AR-15 magazines and compatibility with NATO ammunition to the existing HK33 rifle.

One thing that never fails to amaze me on this blog is that whenever one of our writers (myself included) or a staff member either posts a review or product announcement from Heckler and Koch, said article generates 60 plus comments in a day and of course the inevitable wiseguy chiming in with “because you suck, and we hate you”. The fact is that nothing could be further from the truth, in fact the HK/American consumer relationship is like a long distance affair between two people that is being supervised by two sets of parents, represented here by the German and American governments (albeit you can substitute the American government with most gun friendly nations).