Hi guys! Thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgottenweapons.com I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at H&K's gray room in Ashburn, Virginia taking a look at some of H&K's submachine guns Now, of course, the submachine gun that H&K is really known for is naturally the MP5 However, for some time, H&K has been trying to come up with a modernized, more economical alternative to the MP5 They made some prototypes that didn't really go anywhere, which we'll cover in a separate video And ultimately what they put out on the market in about 1999, was the UMP, the universal machine pistol, or universal submachine gun And this is a significant departure from the MP5 mechanically Instead of being roller-delayed blowback, this is just a simple... Well, simple blowback submachine gun It does fire from a closed bolt, which is a nice carry over, one of the advantages one of the really nice elements of the MP5 was its closed bolt, hammer fired operation Which meant, if you want to take one precise shot, and especially in a law enforcement context, that's often how a submachine gun is used It's primarily a 9mm semi-automatic carbine, with the option to flip the switch and have full auto if you really need it And in that context, having a closed bolt firing gun is definitely an advantage It makes for, in a practical matter, a much more accurate first or single shot You don't have the bolt slamming forward when you fire that shot So the UMP does maintain that closed bolt hammer fired functionality, which is nice It retains a lot of the handling elements of the MP5 But, instead of having a stamped sheet metal receiver, with a bunch of relatively complex milled parts This is an extremely simple gun with a polymer receiver and a very blocky square bolt that's really much easier and faster and cheaper to produce So, let's pull this apart and take a closer look at the internals There's not a whole lot in the way of receiver markings, just HK UMP On the other side, we have a warning to read your owners manual And then the bolt is marked HK and the caliber, these are made in three different calibers .45 ACP, .40 Smith & Wesson and 9mm Parabellum So, to make sure that you don't mix up the bolts, they are marked The fire control group carries over all the same basic handling from the MP5 There are a number of different fire control groups available from H&K on this This is safe, semi-auto, full auto, you can also get versions that have two round bursts in there Either with or without the full auto, so a bunch of different combinations that can be made there The magazine release is just an ambidextrous paddle on the bottom, Again, carries over from the MP5 As does the charging handle, located here on the top left That cycles the bolt and you can lock it open by lifting the charging handle up again, just like the MP5 The sights do not carry over Instead of the classic H&K diopter sight, this has a two position flip peep You can either have a V notch, or an aperture Front sight is just a hooded trapezoidal post Of course most users are probably going to mount an optic The UMP comes with a piece of Picatinny rail on the top of the receiver there, so you can mount an optic of your choice And the folding stock is also standard. Just push the button, fold it in, and it's going to lock onto this little tab over the ejection port A lot of the elements of this gun come from the G36 rifle We'll go ahead and pull it apart, this is very standard H&K A push pin here, pop that all the way out And then like the G36, you don't actually remove the stock it's fixed to the upper receiver assembly Instead, you fold the stock And then, we can pull the fire control group off like so And then we can just pop this out the back So, it is this back plate on the fire control assembly that holds the mainspring and the bolt in place So spring comes out, captive of course And... the bolt! Now the weight of the UMP isn't all that different from the MP5 And it's largely because of this bolt The UMP loses a lot of weight by having a completely polymer frame and stock and grip assembly but it gains a lot of that weight back with this bolt where the MP5, being a roller delayed blowback, is able to reduce the mass of the bolt quite a lot which it then picks back up by having a metal frame and and receiver, so... This is a hammer fired gun, so, there is a floating firing pin, or rather there would be a floating firing pin This particular gun on display has had its firing pin removed, but the firing pin comes back here, this pin, prevents it from falling out And, it just gets hit by a hammer at the back of the bolt assembly, so This top bit is what the charging handle pushes on, and it's there just to give it mass to delay opening sufficient to be safe I don't know if you can hear that at all, but, you'll notice that there's this welded plug at the back of the bolt The inside of the bolt does actually have a metal powder in it which acts as an anti-bounce mechanism, so that absorbs some of the inertia When the bolt slams forward, instead of bouncing open, that powder absorbs the energy, moves forward, and keeps the bolt closed That's an important aspect for an open bolt well, for a blowback machine gun The fire control group, as well as the entire lower assembly, are basically all polymer There's a little metal insert in the face of the hammer, but other than that, this is all polymer and this is very heavily inspired by the G36 In fact, I bet some of the parts in here are interchangeable with the G36 although don't quote me on that If they're not interchangeable, they're certainly the same basic design And, there's the upper receiver, with all of its parts out The other distinguishing feature between the UMP and the MP5 is rate of fire The UMP was deliberately made to be a relatively slow firing gun in .45 Auto With 230 grain ball ammo, this will run at about 580 rounds per minute which obviously sounds like a lot, but that's relatively slow for a submachinegun It's not quite as slow as the M3 Grease gun, which was more like 450 to maybe 500 but it is definitely slower than the MP5, which is on the order of 750 or maybe 800 rounds a minute, so You can speed up the rate of fire by using lighter weight ammunition, like 185 grain .45 or in 9mm, they're a little bit faster, more like 650 But this still gives you an option if you want an H&K submachine gun for something that has a little bit lower rate of fire On the similar note, the magazines here are 25 rounds for the .40 and the .45 and 30 rounds, for the 9mm Now the UMP was largely targeted at the United States law enforcement market which we can see in the caliber choices Unlike a lot of other submachine guns out there, this is available in .40 Smith & Wesson and .45 ACP Now, the .40 Smith & Wesson isn't all that popular today but in 1999, it absolutely was, that was the law enforcment cartridge du jour Which we can see today in all of the surplus .40 Smith & Wesson pistols being sold by police departments At any rate, what H&K did was design a submachine gun where the receiver can accept magazines that are... Well, where the standard mag well is large enough for a .45 caliber magazine And then they also made .40 and 9 millimeter mags to fit it So the .40 S&W and the .45 ACP cartridges are not particularly popular outside the United States But, that did give the UMP sort of a reason to exist and a reason to be purchased here in the US there aren't a whole lot of other .45 caliber modern submachine gun options out there I know there are some, I know people are at this very moment furiously writing them in the comments below But that was one of the things H&K was trying to use as a specific rationale to support the UMP So, in fact, you can notice here It's our .45 caliber mag, it's a 9 millimeter magazine That's 25 rounds, this is 30 And it fits right into the same magazine well So, you can actually swap these guns over by changing the barrel the bolt and the magazines The same frame works in all three calibers, which really goes to show that that was a deliberate intention of the gun from the very beginning Anyway, I'm wandering off a bit here These have proven to be... somewhat popular? They've made some sales in the United States, mostly in .40 and .45 Sales overseas in Europe involve a lot more 9 millimeter, it's a more popular cartridge over there, and the pricing, the various law enforcement pricing schemes between the UMP... and the MP5 probably have something to do with that as well But it's uh... It really is a testament to the MP5 that, you know, it's... it's a really hard gun to dislodge from the market, even by H&K themselves It is in fact the only roller-locked gun at H&K still manufactures today because it continues to be a very popular weapon So anyway, that has been your introduction to the H&K UMP Hopefully you enjoyed the video, I'd like to thank H&K for giving me access to their gray room to bring guns like this to you guys Thanks for watching
What if he’s on here?
Mein Gott! Yes!!