Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we're going to take a look
at a really interesting French submachine gun.
This is the MAT 49, and it's a pretty iconic machine gun of,
well, pretty much, ... every war France has fought since World War Two.
These saw extensive use in Algeria, in Indochina,
and in all of the other hosts of small
conflicts that the French have been involved in.
Now this was developed after World War Two.
Of course before World War Two the French had the MAS 38
submachine gun, which was an excellent gun that was
kind of handicapped by the cartridge that it used.
The MAS 38 used the 7.65 French Long cartridge,
which is kind of in this grey zone between .32 and .380.
Not necessarily a bad cartridge, but considered underpowered
and it definitely wasn't standardised in the way that 9mm Parabellum was. So
after World War Two the French military had some pretty large supplies of a variety of different submachine guns.
They had MP40s that they'd taken from the Germans, they had a bunch of Lend-Lease
war aid guns from the United States, they had Thompsons, they had Grease Guns.
And they decided that, while they had a lot of guns available, they wanted to standardise on something,
and for a couple of reasons they wanted it to be French made.
So of course one of those was simple national pride.
If the military is going to be equipped with something new, it ought to be something made in France.
And as a secondary consideration they also wanted to give some of the French arsenals some business,
just to keep them going economically, make sure that the workers stayed employed.
You didn't want to lose your experienced workforce in the arsenals.
So they set up a trials program, and in 1948 four different arsenals or companies submitted guns.
So all three of the major French arsenals, Tulle, Châtellerault and Saint-Étienne,
and then the Hotchkiss company also submitted a gun to the trials.
There were extensive trials done. In fact some of these 1948 pattern guns actually did see field service on small scales.
The Hotchkiss contender, by the way, was the Hotchkiss Universal which, because Hotchkiss was a private company,
after it failed to win the French military contract they did actually continued to try
and promote the gun commercially, which the ... French arsenals did not do.
At any rate, the gun from Tulle ended up winning the trials
and was adopted as the MAT (Manufacture d'Armes de Tulle) 49 in 1949.
Pretty much immediately went into production and would stay in production until 1979.
So the gun itself, it's in 9mm Parabellum and in many ways it's like a
product improved Grease Gun. It really does take a lot of cues from the Grease Gun.
So let's take a closer look at this, and I'll show you how it comes apart and a few of the weird features that it has.
So the lineage here to the Grease Gun is really kind of visibly evident.
This is a heavy gauge basically stamped sheet metal weapon.
In particular the lower assembly here is all stamped, the top is square instead of round like a Grease Gun,
but you can clearly see the lineage of the stock.
It's interesting to note that where the Grease Gun stock actually has a loading tool, the French didn't put that in,
which seems a little bit curious, but.
Got a heavy gauge barrel shroud on the front.
One of the distinctive elements of this is that it has a folding magazine well.
So for transport or storage or for safety's sake potentially you can flip this up.
We have really markings only on the top.
These were initially produced at the Tulle Arsenal, although that did change later on to Saint-Étienne.
But this is one of the earlier guns made at Tulle.
So we have the whole arsenal up there, Model 1949 and a serial number.
That serial number is repeated on the back of this assembly, this is actually the lower assembly,
and so there're only two main parts of the weapon and the serial number is located on both of them.
The controls are quite straightforward. There is a button here, which locks the stock.
So push that button in and then you can extend the stock.
You have two different positions there, and then push it again and you can retract the stock.
In order to fold the magazine well up there's a big latch back here. So push that and the mag well folds.
Once it's in position, there is actually a little catch right here that locks onto the barrel,
like so and that locks it in the upward position. In order to release the magazine well
you don't have to do anything with the lever back here, all you have to do is push that button in
and drop the mag well down.
The magazine release is located on the bottom of the mag well, push that in, and the magazine comes out.
The magazine is also heavily influenced by the Grease Gun and in progressive line by the Sten gun.
You can see this reinforced upper assembly, very reminiscent of a standard Grease Gun mag.
These are pretty easily identifiable by the stop catches here on the bottom.
This is a 32 round magazine and, like the Sten and the Grease Gun, it is a double stack, single feed magazine.
So this is a bit difficult to load without a tool,
which makes it a little bit odd again that they didn't include the tool on
the buttstock like the Grease Gun did. They did also make a 20 round magazine
which is... basically it's the same length, but it's got some detent ribs in the body.
And the idea, if I understand correctly, I don't have one to actually look at, but I believe that was a
dedicated single stack magazine. So that, in theory, it was a little less susceptible to
sand getting into the mag body because there wasn't this double stack configuration that you had to deal with.
So really the standard magazine that was used however was 32 rounds right here. 32 rounds of course comes because
ammunition was packaged in 8 round increments to account for eight round magazine capacities in
pistols, both old captured German pistols and the French MAC 50 pistol.
Going back to the controls for a moment, we have a dust cover here
that snaps in place on the side of the gun. That automatically opens when you rack the bolt.
The charging handle is on this side. It is non- reciprocating, but it is also not spring-loaded.
So when you charge the bolt, you then push the charging handle back forward.
Continuing a grand tradition from French semi-auto rifles there is no manual safety on the MAT 49.
All it has is a grip safety, and we'll take a look at this inside,
but what's kind of interesting is the grip safety actually doesn't stop the trigger from moving.
What I have done right now is sort of jammed the gun by pulling the trigger without having
the grip safety engaged. So in order to fix that I just pull the bolt back and re-cock it.
What this grip safety does is lock the bolt either in the forward or the rearward position.
So in order to take a closer look at that, we actually need to take the gun apart.
Oh, one last thing to look at are the sights.
The rear sight is an aperture. It's 100 [metres] or flip it up for 200 yards or, I'm sorry, 200 metres.
Something I have noticed with a lot of French,
well specifically French submachine guns, the Hotchkiss Universal, this and the MAS 38 all
is that the sights are actually remarkably low on the gun.
This is the easiest of them to use so far in my experience,
but you kind of have to cram your face down on these things more than you might expect.
The front sight is a nice wide post protected with an integral hood. Pretty simple, pretty basic there.
The front sling attachment on this is kind of a unique thing.
It is just this round pin that's run through the front sight block there. It can pivot from side to side.
And the sling itself just has a very simple clip hook on it
and attaches like so.
Nothing complicated there, just an interesting system that I haven't seen elsewhere.
And then on the back end of the gun the sling just clips over this bar on the stock,
like so.
Now to take this thing apart we're going to start by dropping the bolt to relieve spring tension,
so I'm just going to hold on to that,
depress the grip safety, depress the trigger, let the bolt forward.
Then I have to fold the magazine well part way up, and there is a button right here.
Hook your thumb behind in the trigger guard, push this button in,
and you unlock the upper and lower halves of the gun.
And then just pull the top assembly off.
There's the bottom assembly. We can then pull out the recoil spring,
The bolt slides out the back, and the charging handle comes out.
And that's it.
As you can really see from this, well, field stripping process,
the thing that the MAT 49 is really particularly best known for is simple sheer durability.
This is a beast of a gun. It's really pretty much a soldier proof gun.
It's heavy, this thing weighs in at about 8 pounds empty, 3.6 kilograms, and 9.4 pounds loaded, 4.7 kilos.
So especially compared to the earlier MAS 38 it's a much heavier gun, but it just always works.
And that's primarily what led soldiers to really appreciate this thing. It may not be super comfortable,
you know, it's got a wire frame stock. That isn't like a wood stock,
not as nice to use. This does have some issues in cold weather,
the stock's gonna be cold on your face in cold weather.
The hand guards can be really quite cold to handle in arctic conditions if you don't have gloves on.
And at the same time this barrel shroud, while helpful, doesn't prevent the thing from getting pretty darn hot
if you're doing a lot of shooting. This whole thing would get really quite toasty hot out in the desert,
which is one place where the French used them quite a lot.
So there are a lot of details about this gun that you could complain about,
but overall the fact that it just always worked really endeared it to French soldiers,
and honestly to everyone else who managed to capture them.
I should mention the Vietnamese had a habit of capturing these and converting them to 7.62 Tokarev
and used them in reasonably substantial numbers in that format.
So the main operating bits here are of course the bolt. The bolt rides on a single recoil spring guide rod like so.
This doesn't have any specific points in the receiver that it physically locks into,
but it does hold itself in contact with the front of the receiver, up here. The back of this section is open.
You can see the point there where the back of the recoil spring guide sits.
Right like so, and this guide helps ... reduce wear in the receiver itself
because the bolt's not really running on the receiver, it's running on this guide rod.
With the MAT 49 the French took really an extra step in addressing some safety issues
that a lot of other submachine guns didn't bother with.
And maybe a step that wasn't necessary, but it's pretty interesting regardless.
You'll notice that the bolt face protrudes substantially forward like, what, 20mm, a good half an inch or more
from the face of the bolt body itself.
It's a little bit difficult to give you a really good view here, but if we look at the back
end of the barrel, you can see that the barrel is also recessed inside the back of the receiver.
It means that when the bolt is actually firing, before the bolt's fully seated like so,
the cartridge is fully enclosed in this extension in the trunnion.
And so the reason for this is if there is an out of battery detonation.
If the cartridge detonates early when it's being chambered. For example if it hits some sort of small
obstruction or something in the chamber, and stops. Well the bolt has a fixed firing pin on it, and so as soon
as the bolt has enough force against the primer of the cartridge it will fire.
Well if it fires, normally you'd have it blow gas and debris out the side of the ejection port which can be hazardous.
With the MAT 49 that's actually contained within the trunnion. And there are two holes here like you can see they go clear through.
Those holes on either side of the upper receiver lead into that area in the chamber,
and those are vent holes. So if there is an out of battery detonation, it will vent out these two holes.
It will not damage the gun, it will presumably not damage the shooter, and it will safely contain the event.
That's pretty cool, that's something that you don't really see in any other submachine guns.
And very interestingly, that very serious approach to safety really isn't duplicated down in the fire control group.
So we have a grip safety and a trigger, and you'll notice that the safety doesn't do anything with the trigger.
I can pull the trigger (which is a very simple trigger, it's full-auto only,
there is no semi-auto option on the MAT 49), pull the trigger, sear drops, gun fires.
The safety is this tab. When you depress the safety the tab goes down.
And all that's doing is holding the bolt in place, so when the bolt is rearward
that tab hits the face of the bolt like that, prevents it from going forward.
That's why - you saw when when I had the bolt back and I pulled the trigger without dropping the safety,
the bolt actually dropped from its sear engagement slot, here, and kind of jammed up onto the safety tab here.
When you depress the grip safety, that's out of the way, the bolt can freely travel forward.
And then when the bolt is in the forward position and the grip safety is released, that prevents the bolt from coming back.
So this really does all the work that you would need of a safety on a submachine gun.
It does mean you don't want to carry this thing around cocked and with the grip safety depressed unless you're actually ready to fire.
But in general it's a pretty practical system.
Reassembly is just as simple as disassembly. We'll start with the bolt handle, put that in push it forward,
drop the bolt in, push it forward, put the recoil spring in,
push it forward. And then we're ... gonna pull the magazine well down slightly,
drop that in right there, depress it against its spring, drop the button,
pull the stock out,
depress the grip safety, and the gun's ready to go.
Note that here when I don't have the grip safety depressed, I can't open the bolt.
This is of course an open bolt gun, I should have mentioned that earlier.
And, of course, the dust cover pops open automatically
when you fire.
There was also a second version of this gun made, the MAT 49/54,
specifically for the Gendarmerie, the police, the Metropolitan Police in France.
Their version actually had a wooden stock because they didn't care about having it compact for paratroopers or vehicle crews.
It also had a longer barrel because, again, they didn't care about keeping it compact for paratroopers and vehicle crews.
As a gun for policemen on the beat, those two factors both made the guns easier to shoot,
practically speaking made them more accurate and more comfortable to shoot as well with the wooden stock.
So those are out there as well, ... neither of them is really particularly common in the US.
Production of these ended in 1979 with about 700,000 of them made, really quite a large number,
because in 1979 the French adopted the FAMAS. And the idea behind the FAMAS was that it was a bullpup assault rifle,
and it was intended to replace both the standard combat rifle, the MAS 49/56 and the submachine gun.
The theory was, and this was kind of the universal theory with bullpup rifles,
is that it had the power and barrel length of a rifle and could thus do that job.
But it was also a very compact style of design and could take over the job of the submachine gun.
Now, that doesn't really turn out to have been the case,
and for that reason there aren't a lot of countries that are adopting new bullpup rifles now.
But that was the idea, and that's what ultimately put the MAT 49 out of production,
it's been replaced by the FAMAS. Now you might think that with
700,000 of them made they'd be fairly ubiquitous and easy to find.
That's definitely not the case. As with many French military weapons,
the French government never really had any incentive or desire to sell these on the open market.
So they didn't really do any marketing to try and sell them to other major military powers.
They were used by a bunch of countries, mostly small countries that had connections to France
from the colonial days, so you'll see them in a lot of African countries in particular.
But they were never sold in large numbers, the way, say, the Americans sold Thompsons and exported Grease Guns.
A lot of American and a lot of obviously Soviet bloc guns really got around.
French stuff? Never really got around. And when the French were done using it
they either gave it as military aid to one of these other smaller countries, or they just outright destroyed it.
So as a result MAT 49s are really pretty uncommon guns to run across in the United States.
Really the only batch of them, the only group of MAT 49s we have, are those that came back as war trophies from Vietnam.
So in order for that to have happened the gun had to be taken there by a French soldier,
captured by the Vietnamese, and then recaptured from the Vietnamese by the Americans
and then brought home. That's pretty much the story for all of the MAT 49s in the US.
Anyway, a big thank you to the owner of this gun for letting us take a look at it today.
Hopefully you enjoyed the video, stay tuned for another cool Forgotten Weapon tomorrow.
Thanks for watching.