Chapter 964 Submachine Gun

That day, Yannick notified the heads of weapons companies such as Walter, Mauser, and Heinkel to come to the Royal Shooting Range with their latest developed weapons and firearms.

After a brief exchange of greetings, Yannick picked up one of the new submachine guns with great interest.

This is a truly "classic that has never been surpassed" product, the MP5 submachine gun. In terms of popularity, it is one of the few guns in the history of firearms that can rival the AK47. It has a high rate of fire, low recoil, and higher shooting accuracy to make up for the slightly lower power. This compact weapon is selected by commandos around the world. In addition, multinational armies, security forces, and police forces have chosen it as a standard gun.

It is even a famous character in various shooting games. In the past, when he played shooting games, as long as there was an MP5 in the game, he would definitely choose it to kill the enemy.

It was originally developed and produced by HK (Heckler & Koch GmbH), but the company has not yet been established (established in December 1949), and Yannick did not know where the founder of the company was, so he handed the design of this weapon to Walter, after all, Walter also had the ability.

After World War II in the original time and space, Walter designed a new generation of submachine guns called MPL/MPK submachine guns. These (two) submachine guns were originally good submachine guns, but they suffered a Waterloo in the terrorist incident at the Munich Olympics in 1972, or took the blame.

In 1972, at the 20th Olympic Games held in Munich, Germany, members of the "Black September" terrorist organization stormed the Israeli delegation, killed two Israeli athletes and took nine Israeli athletes hostage, demanding the release of 234 prisoners held by Israel.

West Germany rejected Israel's request to send special forces for rescue and said it was fully capable of properly resolving the matter. But the fact is that West Germany did not have a police force capable of handling emergencies at the time, and the special forces were not good at resolving hostage crises, resulting in a complete failure of the final rescue operation, with all the hostages killed.

World public opinion was in an uproar, accusing the West German police of incompetence and criticizing the West German government for "treating the lives of hostages as a joke", and the reputation of the MPL/MPK submachine guns used by the West German police in the rescue operation (the New York Times, Time Magazine and many news media reported the whole story of the terrorist incident at the time and published photos of West German plainclothes police using MP submachine guns) also plummeted.

In fact, the failure of the rescue operation at the time was not due to the choice of weapons, but due to the wrong decision-making of the commanders and the lack of targeted training of the operators. If the GSGPL/MPK submachine guns of later generations were used, it would not necessarily fail (the Delta Force established in 1979 used 1PL and MPK, which shows that this gun is not useless). What's even more ridiculous is that satellite global television broadcast was launched for the first time during this Olympic Games. Satellite television not only broadcast the grand occasion of the Olympic Games to the world, but also broadcast the hostage hijacking incident to the world for the first time. The situation in the Olympic Village was broadcast to every corner of the world by TV stations, including the apartment where the terrorists were hiding. The terrorists saw the West German police's preparations for infiltration clearly, and the first plan to rescue the hostages by force had to be terminated; it was simply a typical example of a bad teammate.

Then the MP5 took the opportunity to emerge. In the anti-hijacking operation in Mogadishu on October 17, 1977, four terrorists were hit by MP5s, three died immediately, one was seriously injured, and the hostages were rescued. The cabin of the hijacked Boeing 737 passenger plane was small, and the target was mixed between the hostages and the seats. Such an environment is very strict on the size of the gun and the shooting accuracy. This operation has made the MP5's precision and power a strong proof, making the MP5 submachine gun famous overnight, and orders from all over the world have come in like snowflakes, especially the special forces and police of many countries have greatly favored this gun, and regarded the MP5 submachine gun as the first choice for anti-terrorism firearms.

Under the pressure of the MP5, the MPL/MPK submachine guns did not have enough market share to maintain the operation of the production line, and finally stopped production in 1987.

Although Yannick sympathized with the fate of these (two) submachine guns, their luck was really bad, which made people feel unlucky, and they did not plan to develop and produce them.

Watching Yannick loading the magazine of this MP5 submachine gun and preparing to shoot, the heads of several weapons companies nearby couldn't help but think of the embarrassing scene a few years ago when His Highness tested the G43 semi-automatic rifle, and all ten bullets missed the target. Even Walter, who was confident in the performance of his own weapons, couldn't help but secretly wipe the cold sweat, and he was about to have a heart attack due to nervousness.

"..." Everyone looked at each other, not knowing what to do, while Yannick had already raised his gun and pulled the trigger at the target 50 meters away.

Da da da!

Da da da!

Yannick had learned from military forums that the MP5 submachine gun was very suitable for novices. The MP5 has very low recoil for continuous firing, and it is not a problem to shoot with one hand, and there is almost no feeling when the butt is on the shoulder. Now I personally experience it, and it is indeed true; whether it is a single shot or a three-shot burst, the recoil is very low, and the muzzle hardly shakes.

He fired all 30 bullets in the magazine in one breath, and waved his hand to signal the guards in the distance to bring the target paper over.

"Not bad." This time most of the bullets hit the target, and some of them were quite close to the bull's eye. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief and applauded quickly.

The reason why its shooting accuracy is so high is that the MP5 uses a semi-free bolt and roller locking method, while most submachine guns use a free-recoil bolt to reduce parts.

In terms of engineering structure design, the MP5 can be regarded as "too sophisticated". First of all, it has a lot of materials and a large mass (both good and bad); secondly, it uses a ball-delayed locking method, which can be said to be a rifle system installed in a submachine gun. Most firearms in later generations use free-bolt methods among various gas-operated and bolt-recoil methods, and it can be said that diversity is constantly decreasing. The existence of the MP5 as a semi-free bolt (ball-delayed locking method) can be said to be a "strange flower"; however, the excellent stability and accuracy of the MP5 are enough to cover up these shortcomings.

"In the future, this submachine gun will be the standard weapon of special forces and special police." Equipped with this submachine gun, it will not need to be replaced for at least fifty years.

Putting down the MP5 submachine gun in his hand, Yannick turned and looked at everyone. "From today on, except for the 'Scorpion' submachine gun, the production of other submachine guns will be stopped."

World War II was the heyday of submachine guns. All major participating countries were equipped with submachine guns, and the Soviet army even had a whole battalion of soldiers equipped with submachine guns.

However, after World War II, submachine guns were gradually eliminated in the army. Especially after the development of assault rifles, submachine guns have become really embarrassing in the military field. In terms of size, the size of compact assault rifles is not larger than submachine guns. In terms of power, whether it is an intermediate power bullet or a small-caliber rifle bullet, both the initial velocity and kinetic energy are far better than pistol bullets. The only advantage is probably the cost, but modern warfare after World War II is no longer a large-scale war, and there is no need to sacrifice accuracy for cost.

In this way, submachine guns have basically no place in large-scale front-line field troops, and only exist as secondary weapons for machine gunners and snipers or small weapons for special operations.

"In less than two years, the submachine guns in the army will be eliminated. You still have a lot of inventory, right? Then you can only treat them as scrap metal." As the saying goes, "When a gun is fired, it's worth a lot of money." The weapons they produce have been sold to every corner of the world. They have really made a lot of money, and their enthusiasm for production is naturally high.

"Yes, Your Highness." Everyone answered respectfully in unison.

Then Walter pointed to another gun and asked. "Your Highness, will we produce these guns next?"

He was referring to the G3 automatic rifle, which was also designed and developed by HK and can be said to be the father of the MP5 submachine gun. Because the MP5 uses the same roller locking system and semi-free bolt structure as the G3 automatic rifle, it can be regarded as the submachine gun type of the G3.

The American M14 rifle, the Belgian FN FAL rifle, and the German H&K G3 rifle are collectively known as the three heroes of NATO; they are the weapons that best represent NATO in the early Cold War. Later, FAL became the right hand of the free world and was the most widely spread. The G3 rifle was equipped with the armies of about 80 countries, but the development of the M14 was the most unsuccessful. It was equipped with the US Army in 1957 and replaced by the 116. It was only in service for 11 years and was eliminated far before the established life of the rifle.

Today, the German paratroopers and marines are equipped with FAL series firearms, but Yannick is a little undecided whether to let the army equip the FAL series or the G3 series. Because the performance of these two firearms can be said to be "equal", it really made him suffer from choice difficulties.

For example, according to the test of a certain country in later generations, the accuracy of G3 is slightly worse than that of FAL, but the delayed unlocking design makes the recoil of G3 smaller than that of FAL. Although the test results show that G3 is not as accurate as FAL, G3 has a floating barrel, while FAL may be for weight reduction, and the receiver cover structure leads to a decrease in accuracy, so G3 has good accuracy potential.

Interestingly, Germany also equipped FAL. In 1956, the Federal German Armed Forces were rebuilt. Since the German military industry had not recovered at that time, the West German army ordered a batch of FAL rifles and named them G1. They felt good in use, so they wanted to get the production license of the FAL rifle. It is said that the nostalgic Belgians still hated the experience of being invaded by Germany, so they rejected the other party. In the end, West Germany bought the production license of the Spanish Setmai rifle, and it evolved into the G3 rifle. In the middle, there is also the G2 rifle, which is a weapon sent by the Swiss SIG company. The prototype is SIG Sauer's own SG510 rifle. However, this weapon lost to the G3 rifle in the bidding meeting, so it only has a code name, but it has not been actually equipped.

If Belgium allowed West Germany to produce FAL at that time, perhaps FAL would have achieved greater success, but due to the stubbornness of the Belgians, the G3 became FAL's biggest competitor in the international market.

(One chapter today, maybe only one chapter in the next few days)