Tag Archives: Delta Force

Classic Walther Burp Gun Spotted in the Wild

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The Portuguese Navy’s Marine Corps has deployed a 170-strong reinforced company (about a quarter of the service’s strength) to the Baltics. Dubbed the Força de Fuzileiros Lituânia (FFZ LTU) it is on a roughly three-month mission under the auspices of NATO and is the largest deployment of the Corpo de Fuzileiros since Portugal evacuated its African colonies more than 50 years ago. Notably, it includes two UAV elements.

The Portuguese Marines are also sort of old-school, in many ways being stuck in the 1960s-70s when it comes to small arms, still using HK G3 battle rifles, and Walther MP subguns. They only recently retired the P-1 (P-38) pistol in favor of the Glock 17.

Everyone knows the Walther brand, and for good reason. The company makes great guns that are often extremely innovative. The PP/PPK, P-38, P-99, PPQ, PDP, the OSP, and Olympia – the list goes on. However, Walther only made one production submachine gun: the Maschinenpistole, or MP.

Designed in the late 1950s and entering production around 1963, the MP is a blowback action 9mm select-fire SMG with a tubular receiver that fires from an open bolt. It beat the much better-known Heckler & Koch MP5 to production by a few years and was made in two different variations: the MP Lang (Long), or MPL, and the MP Kurz (Short), or MPK.

The difference in size between the two was negligible. The more full-sized MPL ran a 10.2-inch barrel for an overall length of 29.4 inches with the side-folding wire stock extended, whereas the MPK went about 3.5 inches shorter with a 6.8-inch barrel.

Seen at Walther’s in-house museum in Ulm last year…

Although well-made, the MP never really caught on. Its only European customer, besides some German police units as the MP4 (they made several on-camera appearances during the Munich Olympics in 1972), was the Portuguese Navy as seen above

Overseas, it was bought by a few third-world users and the U.S. Army, picked for use by the elite Delta Force commandos in the 1970s and the secretive Detachment A “stay behind” Special Forces unit in West Berlin.

Whereas the MP5 is a bit of a race car that needs special tools for in-depth maintenance, the MP is made simply of metal stampings. For instance, the barrel on the Walther can be swapped out by a user in the field with no tools. Plus, its 550-round cyclic rate, slower than that of the HK, was closer to that used by the M3 Grease Gun and earlier MP38/40, allowing a more familiar learning curve to those already used to those platforms. Little wonder it was adopted by the early U.S. Tier 1 counter-terror operators when Delta Force was first stood up. (Photos: U.S. Army, National Archives, Springfield Armory National Historic Site)

We recently got to shoot one earlier this year and can see why Delta dug it. 

Behold, the MPK

It is ambi and is set up kind of funny. The safety (Sicher=safe) is to the rear of the grip, full-auto (Dauerfeuer= continuous fire) straight down, and semi-auto (Einzelfeuer=single fire ) with the switch rotated forward toward the magazine well. The HK MP5 has a similar S/E/F marked switch for Sicher-Einzelfeuer-Feuerstoss

H&R is delivering when it comes to throwback ARs

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The reformed Harrington & Richardson Arms, now with a very NoDakSpud flavor, is chugging right along to bring black rifle collectors all the things.

As I covered last year from SHOT ’23, the modern H&R with NoDakSpud founder Mike Wetteland as CEO is back and ready to make some extremely sweet guns that just ooze old-school cool.

Growing from three throwback models last year– a basic M16A1 clone, the H&R 635 9mm, and H&R 723 carbine– the company has in the meantime added a gray or black XM16E1 complete with triangular handguards and 3-prong flash hider with options for either a trap or no-trap stock, an A2 rifle with a 20-inch barrel and round handguards, an A2 pencil profile carbine with a CAR stock, an XM177E2 clone, and an Air Force 604 model with a 1:12 twist barrel– and they are only getting warmed up.

I stopped by the booth at SHOT ’24 last week and spent some quality time with Wetteland where he gave us the rundown on the entire current and planned (possible) future H&R collection.

It includes:

An “Aberdeen Brown” maple wood stock A1 variant, which is man cave-worthy. These will be available within the next month both as complete rifles and furniture sets. There will also be a distressed walnut version.

Reminiscent of the early 1980s DMRs, check out this resto-mod flat top. Wetteland says this is inbound shortly, scope not included, and advised to ignore the RRA mount.

An early 1990s Delta-style JSOC tube gun, Wetteland said this is a throwback to the days before the arrival of the quad rail mafia and was an armorer-level hack that high-speed guys did to allow them to mount lights and lasers. He stressed that, while H&R may not make this as an all-up gun, uppers, and parts are likely to be made to allow home builders and collectors to steal this look.

And this…

More in my column including a 10-minute interview with Mike, over at Guns.com.

Welcome to 1989, Delta CAR edition

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A former Delta Force assaulter walks you through the awesomeness that was his CAR-15 back in the day, to include cardboard, a dive light, and bicycle innertubes.

Before he moved on to becoming the Vickers in Vickers Tactical, Larry Vickers was a career U.S. Army Special Forces guy who served with Delta Force throughout the 1980s. In the above, he shows off a recreation of his personal blaster from the period. The Colt Model 723 was basically a shortened M16A2 carbine that was more developed than the XM177E2 used by Green Berets in the Vietnam era.

His CAR-15 has plenty of things you just don’t see today outside of retro builds to include an upper with a non-detachable carrying handle and a tweaked two-position stock, and that’s just for starters.

As detailed by Vickers, he carried an Underwater Kinetics Super QXL dive light (insert giant sucking sound here as every airsofter and Delta operator fan rushes to search the web for one) that had been wrapped with black innertubes and hose-clamped to the handguard. Other mods include a jungle mag clamp set up with cardboard and 100 mile-an-hour tape and an AimPoint 2000— which the optics company says was discontinued in 1989, the same year Delta Force went into Panama.

“This was a great gun, great optic, a great piece of kit,” said Vickers. “Got me through harm’s way and got me home safely, so I am very partial to this setup.”

Delta force operators in Panama 1989, peak into a PDF cabinet filled with dollah dollah bills. Note the QXL-equipped CAR-15