Springfield’s G3: the SAR3 and SAR8 Battlerifles
One of the best-known and loved weapons of the 20th century, used by more than fifty countries, was the German Heckler and Koch designed G3 rifle. This 7.62x51mm NATO battle rifle used a unique action to produce an accurate and utterly reliable gun that proved itself worldwide. As you may or may not know, Springfield Armory imported some of these of their own.
In the late 1950s, the West German Army was looking to equip their force with a new rifle to replace the hodgepodge of WWII-era and Allied-loaned weapons with something more modern. They bought the design of the CETME Modelo B select-fire rifle from Spain (where former German weapons engineers who worked for Mauser and escaped after the war had designed it). Once the new firm of Heckler and Koch revamped the design for the 7.62x51mm NATO round and gave it some tweaks, the Army adopted it as the G3.
The design used a roller-delayed blowback action similar to that found on the WWII German Army’s utterly reliable MG42 machinegun. With a 17.7-inch barrel coupled to this action, the gun was 40-inches overall and weighed 9-pounds. Rugged, cheap to make from a stamped sheet metal receiver, and as dependable as the sunrise, these guns were made overseas in more than a dozen countries under license from HK. One of these nations was Greece, which leads us to…The SAR3
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