Has anybody ever been lucky enough to hold or even see one of the 176 Walther WA 2000's?
Once more we need to agree to disagree
http://www.snipercentral.com/wa2000.htm
I do belive the guys on Snipercentral a bit more than somebody calling this rifle a dog.... and when looking at the test target I would gladly call this rifle my "dog"
You can believe what you like, but it won't change the facts.
There is more to an effective sniper rifle than a neat-looking 100-meter factory target. The average Savage 110 out of the box will do as well or better than that on paper targets at 1/10th the cost. The performance of the military Remington 700-based (M40?) or M21 sniper (M14) rifles in the field during the same period for 1/5th the cost is in a different universe. The WA 2000 was poorly conceived-- under-designed and over-engineered. It was clumsy, impossible to properly maintain in the field, and unreliable.
The fact is that customers who thought the WA2000 looked "cool" and was a great collector's item were the only reason why Walther was able to sell not even 200 of them before its then-president, Hans Fahr (a grandson of Carl Walther) reluctantly conceded that it was an unmitigated disaster, and threw in the towel. Walther had already spent a fortune on this misbegotten monstrosity, which it could ill afford, and had nothing to show for it.
That the WA 2000 was a dog is an opinion derived not from some book or the postings of internet commandos, but from personal experience and testing more than 20 years ago. Somewhere in my files I still have the original test report and evaluation that was forwarded to Walther after the first samples were sent to the USA. It is not very complimentary. The U.S. Secret Service also borrowed one for testing; their report was more terse: No thanks.
The gun was said to have been designed by one Otto Repa, though this is unconfirmed. Afterward, nobody at Walther would admit to having anything to do with the project. When questioned, they made protestations reminiscent of post-WWII disavowals that "I was never a member of the Party", or "Of course we never used slave labor at the factory." Shortly after the WA2000 debacle, Repa left (or was dismissed from) Walther and went on to design scope mounts, for which his talents were undoubtedly better suited. In my view, any designer who concocts a semi-automatic rifle that requires the removal of 12 or 16 sets (I don't recall the exact number) of bolts, nuts and lock washers just to dismantle the gas system for cleaning, or in which the barrel comes loose every four or five shots, should be in a different line of work.
At Interarms the WA2000 became informally known as the "Festunggewehr", and crude cartoons appeared showing it installed in a concrete bunker on the Atlantic Wall. The remaining (fortunately small) inventory was sold off in "as-is" condition with no guarantee that they worked. Once it became known that no more would be imported, the demand predictably increased. It drew collectors like bears to honey, but it would be a mistake to imagine that that was a ringing endorsement of the gun's excellence. Those who extoll the gun today have an understandable need to justify their considerable investment, but I will repeat that bench-rest accuracy is not the same thing as sniper rifle performance. Carlos Hathcock's rifle was not particularly accurate, but it was able to maintain a serviceable level of accuracy under the harshest conditions.
Actually the best part of the WA2000 were the wood stocks, which probably were made for Walther by Nill (all the usual Nill earmarks are there, and the Walther factory had no woodworking capacity of its own). The bipod, on the other hand, became something of a joke between Interarms and Walther. When shown a Bren bipod --which is still today the Gold Standard of bipods--Herr Fahr said that would be too expensive. This, mind you, for a gun that ex-factory was already five times the cost of its nearest (and more effective) competitor. Actually, the WA2000's bipod was ahead of its time: it would have been entirely appropriate on an Umarex CO2 rifle, but that would be in years yet to come.
M