Hi guys, thanks for tuning in another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we're taking a look at a
light-barrelled Israeli FAL. This is actually a pretty scarce
version of the FAL in the United States. For a couple factors,
for one thing, only a very small number of these were imported as semi-auto rifles
before the 1989 import ban cut them off in the US.
There weren't all that many of them actually ordered
and produced in the first place. Certainly compared
to some of the major European countries production and purchase of FAL rifles.
What's kind of interesting Israel produced, or used, both the light-barrel infantry rifle and also
the heavy-barrel light automatic rifle version of the FAL.
And between the two actually the heavy-barrelled ones are substantially more common in the United States,
because those parts kits came in to the United States and have been built up into complete rifles
by a number of different people. Now that's what this gun actually is, this is one that DSA has
produced just recently, using a new manufactured barrel and receiver of their own,
and then a whole set of original Israeli parts.
They were able to get a batch of these parts kits into the US, which is really cool ... for a couple of reasons.
So, first off, the Israelis were one of the very first countries to actually adopt and actually use the FAL.
The very first country was Canada, and I have a video coming on some of the very early Canadian rifles, but
the Israelis adopted this before most of NATO did. In 1955 this was adopted by Israel.
This is also within just a very short time of the 7.62 NATO cartridge actually being adopted,
or being formalised and finalised by NATO.
And the Israelis had these things in 7.62 NATO before much of NATO had them. So Germany, for example,
would not adopt this as the G1 rifle until the early 1960s, you know, several years after the Israelis had them.
And this is interesting to me both from a historical perspective, but also from a mechanical perspective.
As more and more countries adopted the FAL, its features would shift and change,
and so the Israeli gun is actually a very interesting example of a really quite early
production style of FAL. Now that's been combined with a number of Israeli modifications.
So the way this worked is the first rifles that Israel used, they purchased straight out from FN.
And then over time they started manufacturing their own parts.
Israel never would produce a complete FAL rifle of its own, it would always use
receivers imported from FN in Belgium, but virtually every other part eventually the Israelis would produce.
And so this rifle is kind of a hybrid of some Israeli and some FN.
It is notable for having a bare muzzle, we'll talk about that in a moment.
That would change over time, the Israelis would, as they continued to purchase and build rifles,
they would start to adopt some of the changes that were being made by FN for the rest of the world market.
At any rate, aside from just the mechanical
production features, ... Israel was one of the first countries to actually use the FAL.
... The FAL has this colloquial name of "The Right Arm of the Free World", because so many NATO countries
adopted it. However, a lot of them didn't put it into much use. There never was, you know a big
land battle World War Three where the AK faced off against the FAL, you know, with Russian tanks coming
through the Fulda Gap. Instead much of the use of the FAL in combat was in small-scale brush wars.
Of course the fight over the Falklands Islands, the Malvinas,
is a great example of actually both sides using the FAL.
But Israel was actually using these within a year of formally adopting them.
They had them in the Suez Crisis, and then they would be the standard Israeli frontline infantry rifle
for the Six-Day War in 1967. And they would continue in service all the way through the 1973 Yom Kippur War,
where they were again the standard frontline infantry weapon.
So let me go ahead and show you what makes this a little bit unique among other FALs,
and then we'll talk about what ended up happening to the FAL in Israel.
This example is one of the rifles that's been built by DSA and that they've just released onto the market.
And one of the really cool things that they did on these is they put their legally required markings here,
their manufacturer name and serial number, on the inside of the magazine well.
What that means is that they can go ahead and engrave whatever they want here on the upper receiver
on the outside, where the original factory markings would have been.
Now on a FAL in the United States, it's this upper receiver component
that is the legal firearm part of the gun. Which means because these rifles were originally select-fire,
they're considered machine guns, and the upper receivers had to be destroyed as part of the import process.
So DSA made their own upper receivers, and then they just copied exactly the original Israeli markings.
So if we take a look at that up close, what that actually translates to is:
Self-loading rifle FN 7.62. Remember that Hebrew is read right to left. So self-loading rifle FN 7.62,
and then the bottom line basically says Model 1A. There are a couple different models.
In particular the heavy-barrelled light automatic rifle version, or light machine gun version,
will have a different line below here, with a different model number, or model designation.
And then, of course, there is the IDF logo.
There are a couple different versions of that depending on the early or late style of the rifles.
The Israeli fire selector is also a little bit different than the standard. It is full-auto here, safe there,
and semi-automatic here, Now, you can see there's a tab there that actually prevents you from pushing
the selector switch over to full-auto.
Of course, this, as a modern semi-auto production rifle, does not have the internal parts
required for full-auto fire. You can't just grind that off and then have a full-auto rifle.
But what the Israelis discovered in service is, while these guns were originally issued as select fire rifles,
fully automatic fire from a FAL from the shoulder is a completely worthless waste of ammunition.
And so they put together this different, basically revised, selector switch that didn't allow the rifle to go into full-auto.
And, yes, I know there are going to be people in the comments who are going to scoff and say,
"Well, I would have just cut that off." Well, no, you wouldn't have if you were in the Israeli military
and your sergeant caught you doing that. So this was a part added by the Israelis.
It's interesting to note that this sort of modification was not uncommon with countries that issued the FAL.
Great Britain, for example, their L1A1 rifles, they quickly got rid of the full-auto capability.
When the Brits went into the Falklands, the British FALs were in fact semi-auto only rifles as well.
The rear sight is an aperture with adjustments out to 600 metres.
So the basic there is 2, we have 3, 4, 5 and 600, and it slides up this angled block,
so as you slide it forward it raises up and this is the early tall style of sight.
As I said at the beginning this is indicative of very early FN production style.
Now not every bit of it is, this is a later style of stock that has a metal cap on it.
And this is because the Israelis would go back and retrofit ... some of the features of these guns.
But the sights are all of the early tall style.
And in fact, the Israelis developed their own gas block here, that has these very hefty
protective sort of hexagonal protective wings. That's a distinctly Israeli element.
You'll notice there are Israeli markings on a bunch of these parts because these are all ex-IDF rifle parts.
Anyway, some of the Israeli rifles will have a sort of a lighter, smoother
front sight protector with lightening holes in it. That's the FN style.
Probably the most distinctive part of the whole rifle is this front handguard with
basically half wood and half sheet metal.
When Israel started buying these guns, the very first ones had a full-length wooden handguard,
basically on the same pattern as the American T48 trials FAL. That was a very early FN standard.
Well, those hand guards were actually a little bit fragile up front. The wood
up here was thinner than the wood back here, and the Israelis would start producing their own
hand-guards with a metal section up front, and a hefty wood piece back here.
Note that interestingly, kind of ... actually like the FG 42, there is a piece of corrugated sheet steel
that has been pressed into the front and back of the hand guards,
that helps protect them from cracking, strengthens up the wood there.
Another early FAL element is the folding carry handle. That was popular at first with a lot of countries,
and then generally was discarded over time, but the Israelis had them on all of their guns.
And one other distinctively Israeli modification is that these rifles actually have a
forward assist capable charging handle. So,
as with all FALs, the bolt handle here is non-reciprocating. So
let's see, let me go ahead and lock the bolt open.
So, once the bolt's locked open this slide's free, we can lock it back into place there.
However, if the bolt comes partway forward, and you want to force it the rest of the way forward,
all you have to do is push the charging handle in
and ... the plug here will engage with a hole in the bolt carrier.
You can see the element that
pushes the bolt forward. When I push the handle in, it pushes into the receiver right there,
and that is going to interface right back here and allow you to push the bolt forward with the bolt handle.
That's a feature that you will not find on standard FN FALs.
Those of you who are familiar with FAL development will know that this is not an early takedown lever.
Originally... Well, let me just show you this, to break the upper and lower apart,
you push this lever up, which allows the two to separate. There's a catch right there,
goes backward, it locks into the upper receiver here.
On the early, the very original FALs,
this was actually a vertical lever back here that you would push backward and it would pull that lug back.
The problem was they found that on recoil, especially recoil from firing rifle grenades,
that would actually bounce backwards and it could let the gun open up when it wasn't supposed to.
Well if you put the lever down here and and have it operate by pushing it upward,
recoil is not going to have any impact on that, and so this was a superior design.
Now the early Israeli rifles did have vertical takedown levers.
Those were replaced over time on probably most of them in service in the IDF.
Now this is what you would call a metric pattern FAL. That's kind of a blanket term that's used to
differentiate between FN production and British Commonwealth production. If you're not a
FAL devotee, the main upshot of that is that this uses metric style of magazines.
The inch pattern, the British Commonwealth magazines, have a much larger front locking lug that's milled.
When you see them both they're quite easy to distinguish.
As of the time of this filming the metric mags are actually the easier ones to obtain,
so that's kind of nice. They are are 20 rounds, of course, they're 7.62 NATO. These are Israeli marked.
Let's see, there it is, Israeli property stamp there.
And they are, of course, a ... nose in, rock back style magazine.
Now the last thing I want to talk about here is the muzzle and the bayonet lug.
Again, early pattern FAL, it has a bare muzzle. It's not threaded, does not take a muzzle device.
That would change over time.
Around the early 1960s FN would develop ... what's generally called a combination
muzzle device, which allows the rifle to fire rifle grenades, it also acts as a muzzle brake,
a compensator, and it's, eh, it's about yay long and about an inch in diameter.
The Israelis would start to use those later on, and some of their barrels would be retrofitted.
So you'll see some, including some that DSA is selling,
that have this barrel (with this weird bayonet lug that we'll get to in a moment),
that has been threaded and has a combination FN muzzle device on it.
Eventually by the end when they were making new barrels, or buying new barrels,
they stopped bothering to put on the bayonet lug, and so you'll find the late ones that have just a smooth barrel
with a combination muzzle device on it. Now, this bayonet lug fits the early style, early pattern of FN
bayonet. Which is really kind of cool in that it functions as a flash hider.
The blade itself is the bottom of three prongs and then there are two prongs on the top of the bayonet.
So our retaining lug is back here. You pull it down and you can then see the catch right there.
But it does one thing more than that.
Now one of the problems of mounting a bayonet on a rifle is that it will change your point of impact.
FN made an attempt at preventing that by allowing this bayonet to actually move on the rifle under recoil.
So the way the catch is set up, the whole bayonet can actually cycle forward
about a quarter of an inch when you fire. And the idea is that
... inertia will hold the bayonet forward, the rifle will recoil, and by the time
the harmonics have had a chance to really make any impact, ... the bullet will have already left the muzzle
and it won't change your point of impact.
Now when I went out shooting it didn't quite do that. ... Well here, you look for yourself.
The bayonets always fall off of rifles when I shoot them.
It's possible I just didn't have this attached firmly enough, or I just historically have a
bad track record of bayonets falling off rifles when I'm attempting to shoot them.
So taking the bayonet off simply requires pulling down on this lug and then it'll come off.
But ... this is a cool bayonet style with these two flash hider prongs. They would eventually give this up.
This is a Type 1 FN bayonet. By the time they went to the combination muzzle device,
of course, then this bayonet no longer fits,
and so they had a different style of bayonet that was much simplified and much cheaper.
Over the long term the FAL really wasn't that great of a match for the IDF.
It was certainly an excellent option when it was adopted in the mid '50s,
but by the mid '70s problems have started to come to light with it.
So it's a relatively long and heavy rifle and that would of course be an issue for guys who are in vehicles,
helicopters, jeeps, armoured fighting vehicles. It's an awkward gun to use in close confines.
A lot of people talk about the FAL having reliability problems in
... conditions with loose and blowing sand. And while there's some truth to that,
I think more of the issue was simply one of maintenance, and a lot of the IDF wasn't that great on
weapons maintenance. The IDF was really this sort of widespread
civilian militia sort of military, universal conscription.
And the FAL is a rifle that's honestly a little better
set up for a professional long term military style of force.
So you have elements like the adjustable gas system,
which has a myriad of adjustment options to it,
and that's great if you want to tune it in to your specific ammo and get it, you know, minimise the recoil.
You can tinker with it so it's got just enough gas to cycle reliably, but not any more than that
so the recoil is minimised as much as possible.
That's a great thing, until you issue a bunch of these rifles out to people who aren't that concerned.
And maybe they're not spending a long time with the rifle in the military, they're gonna hand it back.
And ... people tweak with that gas system and then you have problems,
and then you have to go back and retune the gas systems.
What the Israelis found was that their rifles didn't work that well with mediocre maintenance.
And there were other rifles out there, like the AKs that they were capturing from all of their Arab neighbours
that they were fighting. Those AKs did a lot better with minimal maintenance.
There is no adjustable gas system on an AK. You can't mess it up. It's just over-gassed from the factory,
it is what it is, and ... it's got enough gas that it will work under pretty much any conditions.
And that was a characteristic that the Israelis liked, and that is in large part what
led them to develop the Galil rifle from the Kalashnikovs that they were capturing from their neighbours.
So, for that reason you'll see the FAL... it actually remains in service in Israel into the '80s or so,
but it would be overtaken and replaced by the Galil.
If you want to get one of these yourselves, of course DSA has just released them
in two different configurations. They have ..., I think they're calling them the Enlisted version
and the Officer's version, which has nothing to do with actual use in the IDF.
They have one, which is this one, this is what they call the Enlisted version,
because it is basically a parts kit in as-they-received-it condition.
So the finish is scuffed up, it's just like it came out of the IDF, which I think is really cool.
I am going to be taking this out and shooting it extensively and I don't really want
... a brand new super nice finish that I am inevitably just going to scratch up.
So they've got that version and this has the early pattern of barrel and bayonet lug.
They then also have ... what they call their Officers pattern, which is basically the same type of gun
but it has been refinished, it has been DuraCoated, it has nicer furniture on it,
and those actually have the FN style combination muzzle device.
As I said earlier, there was a progression of these, of actually three different patterns of muzzle
on the Israeli guns. With this being the first, and then the combination device being the late version,
and an intermediate transitional type where they actually had both.
They would have added a combo device, but why bother to take off the bayonet lug?
So both of those are out there as of the time of this filming.
DSA is charging 1,400 dollars for this version and
$1,500 for the refinished, slightly nicer looking, version.
You can check them out at DSArms.com. And hopefully if you get one you'll enjoy it.
It's a pretty cool example of a ... really pretty scarce and interesting historical battle rifle.
Thanks for watching.