HK MP5

Origins

Heckler & Koch was founded in Oberndorf after the Second World War by former Mauser engineers, and its first great success was the G3 Rifle, a 7.62mm battle rifle built around the roller-delayed blowback system that Mauser had developed in 1945 and that CETME in Spain had matured. In 1964 the company began scaling that action down to a 9mm submachine gun, first designated the HK54 under its internal numbering. West Germany's federal police and border guard adopted it in 1966 as the Maschinenpistole 5, and the MP5 spent its first decade as a German police gun before the world discovered it.

Design & Construction

The MP5's roller-delayed action is what sets it apart. Most submachine guns are simple blowback weapons firing from an open bolt: the heavy bolt slams forward to chamber and fire each round, which is cheap and reliable but disturbs the aim. The MP5's bolt is locked at the moment of firing by two rollers cammed into recesses in the barrel extension, and it fires from a closed bolt with only the hammer moving — the first shot goes exactly where the sights point. The receiver is stamped steel, the barrel 8.9 inches with a three-lug muzzle for accessories, the sights a rotating diopter drum. The A2 has a fixed polymer stock, the A3 a collapsing one; the MP5SD carries an integral suppressor with a ported barrel that slows standard ammunition to subsonic speed; the MP5K is a stockless, short-barreled version for concealed carry that fits in a briefcase. Trigger groups range from semi-automatic only to the three-round-burst "Navy" group adopted by the US Navy SEALs.

Combat Use

The MP5 became the world's counter-terrorist weapon almost overnight on 5 May 1980, when British SAS troopers stormed the Iranian Embassy in London on live television with MP5s in hand. GSG 9, which had used it at Mogadishu in 1977, the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, the SEALs, Polish GROM and hundreds of police tactical units followed. Its virtues were exactly those a hostage rescue demands: precise semi-automatic fire at close range, controllable bursts, and the 9mm round's limited penetration through walls. It was never a front-line infantry weapon — that is the province of the rifle — but for police and special operations forces it had no equal for thirty years.

Legacy

By the 2000s the MP5's role was being taken by short-barreled 5.56mm carbines, which defeat body armor as no pistol cartridge can, and by the personal defense weapons it inspired, notably HK's own HK MP7. Yet production has never stopped: licensed copies were built in Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, Greece, Mexico and elsewhere, and HK still sells the MP5 to police forces that value its manners over raw power. Semi-automatic versions and the many imported copies make it one of the most collected modern firearms in the United States.