We can also see the counter-recoil system beneath the barrel. The G11 used a counter-recoil buffer mechanism to allow high rates of burst fire. The buffer spring below the barrel is compressed as the recoiling barrel and breech assembly moves.
To ready the weapon to fire a magazine was loaded into the magazine channel on top of the G11, a magazine dust door, which automatically closed when unloaded, was depressed as the magazine was pushed home. The cocking handle on the left side of the butt was then actuated. The operator rotated the handle degrees counter-clockwise until the weapon was cocked essentially like winding a clock. The same process will eject any rounds left in the chamber once the magazine has been removed.
Gas tapped from the barrel cycles the cylinder drive system with gas pushing a piston back to act on a series of gears which rotated the rotary breech from horizontal to vertical to allow a new cartridge to drop into the breech. There was a vent for high pressure gas underneath the butt stock this prevented pressure build up and mitigated some of the thermal build up.
The G11 K1 was tested by the German Army in the late s with adoption planned for the early s. However, the fall of the Berlin Wall in and the collapse of the Soviet Union in meant that West Germany no longer had the huge amount of funds needed to field the G At the same time the ACR program ended inconclusively and the G11 project was finally abandoned.
Regardless of this the G11 is a fascinating footnote in small arms history representing a false start along a technological avenue which, with the Lightweight Small Arms Technologies LSAT program, may still prove fruitful. Matt recently had the opportunity to disassemble a G11 and get a look inside the action. In this special video and accompanying full-length article he explains how the rifle strips and how it works! Check out the video here. If you enjoyed the video and this article please consider supporting our work here.
Length: 75cm The G11 Rifle. HK Factory Brochure, source. Our thanks to the collections that hold these examples of the G Simplicity of the IWK G11 was ensured by the fact it used interchangeable revolving round drum magazines. Such a system, in addition to ease power supply circuit, high stability and provide ammunition to both mechanical stress and overheating when shooting, in fact the rifle was chambered in so much as there were leftover rounds in the magazine.
The price paid for this simplification, is that the weapon was too heavy, and the dimensions of the drum magazines, as well as the three barrels and the impossibility of automatic fire found in assault rifles, the IWK G11 rifle shot either single shots or volleys in three instant shots.
The Heckler and Koch G11 was originally slated to replace the aging G3 rifle. In March , after 14 different prototypes, the G11 later re-designated as the G11 K1 entered trial production. The design was modified further, and in , the G11 K2 carbine was developed and introduced. The rifle was struck from the procurement list in and by had been totally cancelled, in part because it could not be modified to fire the NATO-standard 5.
A variation of the G11 resembling the G11 K1 was entered in the Advanced Combat Rifle program held in the United States of America, along with three other contestants in the s, with the winner of the program replacing the M16A2. However, none of the four contestants were deemed "good enough". The U. There were a total of G11 weapons produced numbered 0 through , all of which being prototypes and testing devices. The cartridges in the magazine are located above the barrel, pointing downward.
Prior to each shot, a cartridge is pushed down from the magazine into the chamber, and then the chamber rotates 90 degrees to align the cartridge with the barrel. After that, the cartridge is fired and the chamber rotates back, ready for the next cartridge. Dud cartridges are ejected from a port in the bottom of the rifle, pushed out of the chamber by the next cartridge. The breech can be manually primed by the rotating handle at the side of the rifle, located beyond the pistol handle.
The priming handle does not move when gun is fired. Another interesting detail is that the barrel, rotating breech, feed module, and magazine are mounted in an internal sub-receiver that can move back and forth inside the fixed main receiver.
The buffer essentially stored the recoil until after the third bullet left the barrel. The recoil was also controlled by a special spring buffer system that allowed the barrel and action of the gun to recoil backwards up to 4 inches inside its stock before the operator felt the recoil.
Once the breech and barrel assembly is removed from the body, the complexity becomes overwhelming. In comparison to the AK rifles, used by Communist forces, the G11 had more than twice the number of parts. Compared to this Soviet simplicity, the G11 was an engineering marvel, but how this incredibly complex design would have fared in combat will forever be a mystery.
At the heart of the G11 is what looks like a clump of disks, cogs, gears, and springs. When firing, the gas from the previous shot pushes a piston, which rotates the breech upwards and allows a round to drop into the chamber, it then rotates back into alignment with the barrel and is ready to be fired. Once the disk is lifted off and a number of levers have been moved, it is possible to lift out the cylinder itself. The chamber inside the cylinder is actually a replaceable part because with such a high rate of fire, the chamber has a service life of just 3, rounds—roughly 70 full magazines worth of ammunition.
It was politics. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in and the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later, West Germany began the process of reunification with the formerly communist East Germany, and the huge cost of this essentially made the adoption of the G11 impossible. Military spending was slashed and without the huge amount of cash needed to manufacture the new, incredibly complex rifle the future of the G11 evaporated along with the enemy it was designed to fight.
At the same time, the U. Today the U.
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