#PatternRoom

Eric Norman was one of the small arms designers at Special Operations Executive Station IX during the Second World War. The Norm Gun and Welgun were two of his designs that although never reached serial production, are interesting in their own right day, if anything due to their simplicity of mechanics and operation. Essentially both of these submachine guns almost slam fired rounds by way of a protruding pin that allowed the firing pin to push forward from the bolt only when that bolt face was fully pressed up against the chamber.

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.