Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the
Rock Island Auction Company taking a look at
this HK 41. Now this is not an HK G41.
That's a substantially different rifle.
There's a video about that linked at the end of this one.
This is an HK 41, and if you know ... HK's
naming system, you'll ... think about that and you'll go,
"You know what, ... first digit 4, that indicates a paramilitary rifle.
And there weren't very many of those, so what the heck is that?"
This is actually the original semi-automatic version of the G3,
... intended for private sale to German army reservists.
The idea was it wasn't legal for a private citizen or an army reservist
to own a select fire rifle, but they could own a semi-automatic rifle.
And so with the idea of ... allowing people to train for their military service on their own,
HK introduced the civilian-legal version of the G3 standard infantry rifle.
So in this case 4, paramilitary, makes perfect sense, it's for the reserves.
And then of course the 1 at the end indicates that it's in 7.62x51mm.
So, these were manufactured from 1966 until 1977 or so.
And there are actually two different versions of them because
there are a couple of different things that happened to these rifles.
So, the first thing is that they started selling them to German reservists.
And then they got the idea,
"Well, we've got some interest from the United States, sell some over there."
And so the very first batch that came over basically duplicated
the standard G3, just with a semi-automatic fire control group.
So in fact let me come up closer onto this,
let me show you exactly what I'm going to describe here.
Now a proper G3 has two pins here to hold on the buttstock,
and it also has a pin here to hold the fire control group in place.
And the first batch of HK 41s that were made in Germany
had that style, ... they had a "push pin lower" it's called.
And they had a paddle magazine release here instead of this button.
And the reason for that is that they only had to be semi-automatic
to the requirements of German law,
which meant basically a semi-automatic fire control group.
By the way those are "S" and "E" marked for Einzelfeuer.
However the Gun Control Act passed in 1968 in the United States,
and that changed some of the requirements.
It ... made US law more stringent about what could be considered convertible into a machine gun.
And it required the design of the HK 41 to be changed a bit to comply.
So the pin here was removed, it was replaced with an extra block of metal.
The paddle magazine release became a button release.
And this became impossible to easily interchange with a full-auto fire control group.
A few of the full-auto elements of the bolt carrier
were also removed, just as a redundant sort of thing.
So the majority of the HK 41s that came into the United States are of this pattern.
Now you can see here that this is a 1974 import, so it's the later style of import.
It is marked HK 41.
Now what happened to HK at this point was ... in 1973 German laws changed.
And it became much more difficult, if not impossible,
for a typical Bundeswehr reservist to own a rifle like this.
So they basically just stopped making the HK 41 in 1977.
They had a few years of production, they brought some into the US, as you can see here,
but ultimately what they did was redesign this rifle to be the HK 91.
That designation, the 9, indicating a semi-automatic rifle instead of paramilitary.
They ... continued to use these ... modifications basically to meet new US law.
And that became the standard export semi-automatic civilian version of the G3.
And the HK 41 simply disappeared.
So there's not much else that changed on the [HK 41] compared to the regular G3.
There are a couple of things.
The finish is a black paint finish, which we have a pretty nice example of here.
When these were originally sold in Germany, they didn't use the standard 20 round magazines.
Again in order to comply with German semi-automatic law,
they only used a proprietary 5 round magazine.
The ones imported into the US however, were able to use the standard magazines.
So I have gone ahead and put a 5 round mag into this one.
I should point out, in Rock Island's catalogue this rifle does not include the magazine.
However, it does include a very old vintage Aimpoint optic on a claw mount.
So if you look this up in their catalogue you'll find this on it.
I took it off because it's not quite relevant to the HK 41 specifically,
which is the subject of our video today.
Also to meet German law there were two changes made at the front of the rifle.
The end cap here was changed so that the HK 41 cannot accept a bayonet.
This was relevant I guess to German law because bayonets are important.
And the muzzle device was replaced with one that couldn't accept rifle grenades.
However, the owner of this particular rifle has taken that off
and gone back to the standard G3 pattern muzzle device.
So, this isn't the correct muzzle device.
In fact you can see that the finish on this is not the black paint finish of the rifle.
Unfortunately I don't have the correct HK 41 style device to show you.
But in a nutshell, the changes required under German law
were to demilitarise, so to speak, the rifle.
So no bayonet, no grenades, no full-size magazines, and semi-automatic only.
The requirements in the United States were similar, but not quite the same.
... The US had this issue with interchangeability
of the ... trigger group, but didn't care about magazines.
And, by the way, if we look at the other side of the receiver here,
we can see the markings: Made in Germany, exclusively for SACO of Arlington, Virginia.
This is because there was no HK USA in 1974 when this was imported.
HK USA was founded in 1975, so you will not find these rifles marked this way after 1974.
The best numbers that I have been able to find were that about 1,350 of these
were actually manufactured in the several different versions put together.
And about 400 of those imported into the US, so not all that many.
As you might suspect, they command something of a premium on the collector's market.
However, it's a premium specifically for people who are dedicated H&K collectors,
because, while this is a really cool element of early HK history,
specifically marketing to the Bundeswehr reserve,
as a practical matter, as a shootable gun,
it's really no different than any of the other semi-automatic G3s, like the HK 91,
or all of the clones that have come out in the decades since.
So a cool rifle, something good to know about,
it may or may not be the thing that you are looking for yourself.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
If you would like to find out more about the Rock Island Auction Company,
you can take a look in the description text below,
you'll find a link to their YouTube channel, as well as a link to their Instagram page.
Thanks for watching.