Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we're here at RIA
taking a look at an FN Model D or FN-D.
The "D" stands for "Démontable", or removable, detachable,
because this version of the BAR has a quick-detach barrel.
Which is something that was kind of visibly lacking
on other earlier versions of the BAR,
especially the ones that were used by the US military.
So the BAR has this kind of interesting history where
it was originally developed as an automatic rifle, not as a light machine gun.
The idea of an automatic rifle being basically something that's going to be fired
during assault, fired from the hip walking towards the enemy. It could be fired from the shoulder.
But ... when the BAR was developed by John Browning
the concept of a light machine gun was really still in its infancy,
and it would not be until after the end of World War One that people would really start to understand
how best to use a light machine gun.
And really the heyday of the light machine gun would not come until World War Two.
Now the BAR is fundamentally an excellent mechanical system. it's simple, it's reliable.
It's perhaps a little bit heavy, but maybe not compared to some of its contemporaries.
The problem with the BAR in US service was that it continued to kind of hold on to this design
as ... an automatic rifle, while in Europe it didn't.
So the deal was right after World War One Colt is interested, of course, in selling BARs.
Colt is the company that owns the rights to Browning's patents that were the BAR.
And Colt licenced the patent to FN in Europe, and the conditions were that FN could only sell them in Europe,
they'd pay Colt a royalty for every gun sold,
and they wouldn't sell any other machine guns except for Colt machine guns.
So basically Colt was expanding a monopoly on the BAR into European territories by way of FN.
FN actually took almost 10 years before they got their own production up and running.
And until then, until the late 1920s, all of the "FN" BARs
were actually Colt production guns that were imported by FN and then resold.
It wouldn't be until the contract with Poland for the wz.1928 that FN would finally have a reason
to actually build a production line to make BARs.
Now, during that time FN started working on some improvements to the gun.
And once they got their production line up and running for the Polish contract, which that was like 10,000 guns,
it ... covered the expenses of setting up a production line. Before that FN was making rifles,
and they were making various other things like vehicles, motorcycles, cars.
They didn't want to invest in this production line until they actually had a client that made it worthwhile.
So once the Poles buy the gun, then FN has the money to invest in the production tooling.
And so they put together their own version. The Poles, of course, have their specifics of,
"We want this for the handguard, we want these kind of sights, we want this calibre." And such and such.
For general commercial markets FN comes up with the Model 30,
which is basically the equivalent of Colt's Model of 1925.
It has some modernised features, like a pistol grip here, that the US military never would adopt.
And FN puts these into production in a couple of different calibres.
They offer them in 7.65 Mauser (7.65x53), which is the standard Belgian Army cartridge and the Belgian Army adopts it.
They also offer them in 8mm, they sell some to China and to Ethiopia in 8mm Mauser.
And after just a couple of years they come up with a few more improvements.
Specifically this development project is run by Dieudonné Saive,
whose name I always mispronounce, I apologise.
He was basically John Browning's protégé at FN. He was the guy who designed the FN FAL,
he was the guy ... largely behind the FN-49. He was the guy behind finalising the Browning Hi Power.
Brilliant gun designer and very much underappreciated.
At any rate, he continued working on the BAR. And in 1932 he had a number of improvements to it
that got released as a package called the FN Model D, which is what we have here.
So let me show you what all of those various improvements were,
and what makes this the best of the BARs.
Alright, a couple of quick markings to start us off.
This particular gun has a giant "AL" on it, that indicates that this was property of the Luxembourg Army.
This is an example in .30-06 calibre.
We have FN's marks here on the side of the receiver.
This is a set of Belgian standard proof marks. Fabrique Nationale D'Armes de Guerre, Herstal, Belgique.
This is the specific serial number for the Luxembourg contract, this is the 259th gun made for them.
Unfortunately, I don't have a good number on how many exactly Luxembourg ordered.
Nor do I have good numbers on the other contracts that FN got for these, unfortunately.
As far as mechanics, I think we should start with the detachable barrel system
because, of course, that's what the gun's actually named for.
So we have a little spring-loaded catch here, on the right side of the handguard.
There is a ratcheting system in the barrel locking attachment,
and so as long as this is in, the barrel can't unlock itself.
To take the barrel out you push this in, and then you just crank the carry handle upwards,
and then it comes right out of the gun.
If you look inside the receiver here, you'll see a set of interrupted locking lugs right there,
and there's a matching set on this side.
Now the handle serves two purposes. You use it to actually lock and unlock the barrel.
But you can also use it to carry the gun. And so it's important that you be able to have
the carry handle sticking vertically up, so you can carry the gun without it actually unlocking the barrel.
And so the way they do that is the handle itself is spring loaded.
And what I can do is pull it up and then kind of bypass the barrel locking setup.
It's easier if I show you that in the gun.
So you can see the lugs are vertical. When that goes in, ... when I pull the handle down
I am rotating those lugs, and you can hear the ratchet right there.
I crank it down all the way.
Now I can take the handle, pull it out, and then I can rotate the handle upwards.
So the handle's still holding onto the barrel, but it's no longer attempting to tighten or loosen the barrel itself.
So in this position I can carry the gun.
If I want to get rid of this, like get this out of my line of sight,
I can lift it up again and lock it down into the side position there.
Alright, some other features here. The bipod is way better than the US 1918A2 bipod.
This has a little bit of pivot to it, it has a little bit of rotation to it.
If I squeeze the legs together I can put it up in the stowage position right there.
It is strong but still relatively light.
We have an adjustable gas system here, gas regulator.
These guns do have threaded muzzles, some of them were sold with flash hiders, some without.
This one without. You could also of course use that to put a blank firing adapter on.
Now the original BAR had its magazine release button right here in the front of the trigger guard.
FN changed that, and came up with instead a latch on the bottom of this assembly.
So you pull that back, and it allows the magazine to drop out.
This is a standard .30-06 FN-D magazine. You can identify these by the X stamping in them.
Both the ... 7mm and 8mm Mauser mags and the .30-06 mags have this same style of stamping.
The .30-06 mags are just slightly longer. So it takes some practice to distinguish between the two.
This is in effect ... the same magazine as the American military BAR used, it's a 20 round box magazine.
Sorry, the worn paint on this one makes it a little difficult to show you the markings.
The fire control group has safe, slow and fast.
So safe obviously is safe.
And then these had a clever rate reduction system that I'll show you in just a moment,
where you get about 350 rounds a minute in the slow position, and about 600 rounds a minute in the fast position.
There was no specific semi-auto position. However, it would be easy enough to fire deliberate single shots in slow mode.
We have a dust cover on here. What did we all learn from World War One, boys and girls?
Yes! You want dust covers on everything. So, kind of a cool multi-pivot point
sort of dust cover for the ejection port there.
And then there is also another dust cover on the bottom to cover the magazine well.
The sights are basically Mauser-style sights.
This is a barleycorn front sight, a pretty darn big one actually.
And then a tangent rear sight graduated out to 1,500 metres. So we have a V notch at the back there.
Now arguably one of the best improvements that FN made to the BAR was to redesign the back end of the receiver.
On the other versions of the gun you have to do some really obnoxious stuff to try and get components,
the bolt assembly, out of the gun straight out the bottom.
FN changed this so that the guts of the gun can come straight out the back, and that's a huge improvement.
Now to do that I actually have to remove the pistol grip first.
This is a very simple field stripping procedure, but we do have to do the pistol grip first.
So we have one pin right here.
And if I rotate that down, I can pull that out.
And then the whole fire control group comes off. I'll show you this in just a moment.
Once that is done, I have one more pin here, and this one's captive.
That pulls out to there, and then the buttstock just pivots down,
and
presto, I can take out the op rod and bolt assembly.
If I want to take this all apart, it's just a few more pins.
Pull that one out, and we can take out
... this is the spring guide rod. The main spring is enclosed within the buttstock.
We have our striker piece there.
Then the firing pin can come out.
If you're not familiar with the mechanical operation of the BAR, of course we have a gas piston,
which is connected to a bolt carrier here.
And we have a tilting bolt style of design.
So this is going to sit in roughly this position.
When the thing is cycling backwards, this straightens out.
We have a ... guide here that's going to push on the recoil spring that is in the buttstock.
That plunger has the recoil spring behind it. This does a nice job of protecting the recoil spring,
it can remain pre-tensioned, it doesn't go flying out, it doesn't get dirt in it, that's a nice system there.
When this goes completely into battery,
this surface of the bolt lifts up into the receiver, like this.
You'll notice when this happens, our firing pin, with its little shark fin right there,
gets pushed into the back of
this block. That is going to push the firing pin forward,
where it will protrude out the bolt face and fire the gun.
... The BAR fires from an open bolt, and it's only from an open bolt.
This hump in the top of the receiver houses the locking shoulder where this surface mates up.
So that's how the thing actually cycles.
We can see that in operation here as I pull the charging handle back.
You can see that this locking shoulder is going to drop
out of the receiver there. And the whole thing is going to cycle backwards.
When it goes into battery it's going to chamber the cartridge,
the ... locking shoulder is going to lift up into its recess in the receiver.
And then you can see the little shark fin of the firing pin right there,
that is going to get pushed forward and fire.
And that's it, that's the whole thing field stripped.
It is very quick and easy, a huge improvement over trying to pull this stuff out the bottom of the receiver,
and lining up pins, and holding spring clips open.
And that was really one of the worst parts of the BAR design was it was not very efficient to disassemble,
and the FN Model D completely fixes that.
Now our fire control group has some neat stuff that has been added to it.
If we lift this little keeper spring up, and rotate this bit off.
Oooh, gears! It's always cool when you have gears in a gun.
And there's a little rocker assembly down here. And what happens is in the slow fire mode
this springs up, and ... in order for the bolt to go forward it has to push this down.
Well, as this goes down, this rocker is intermittently locking and unlocking this gear wheel.
So when the rocker is pushed either forward or back, the wheel can't turn.
And ... basically this rocker has to bounce back and forth,
to allow this wheel to rotate, before this lever can come down.
And it's only when the lever's all the way down that ... the whole op rod and bolt assembly can slam forward and fire.
So ... as it's firing, between every shot, the gun's doing this in slow mode.
In fast mode, it doesn't. Fast mode it's locked down and it just has to move a little bit.
So really quite a clever system.
It's based on simple mechanics, and it just works really quite well.
Much better than, say, a hydraulic buffer system.
It's also, of course, pretty handy to have the entire fire control group as a self-contained unit.
If anything goes wrong with this a unit armourer can just pull it out,
swap over a new one, and then take this back to a repair facility to fix it later.
You don't have a lot of loose components, you're not trying to diagnose weird stuff in the field.
Just throw on a spare fire control group, and then the gun's back up and running,
and you can deal with this at your leisure.
The FN-D was initially introduced in 1932 and it started getting some small takers, buyers here and there.
World War Two of course would put a hiatus on production.
The Germans occupied Belgium and occupied the FN factory complex.
The German military opted not to continue production of the FN-D during World War Two.
Probably because they didn't have a huge stockpile of parts already on hand,
this wasn't a standardised German weapon.
But there were a lot of guns that they could have produced and opted not to.
They would use those factory resources for other things instead.
... However, after World War Two production starts back up,
and FN starts expanding into some territories that it hadn't really been in before the war.
So they would start looking much more into South America,
as well as, well, kind of every small army in Europe.
A lot of countries were looking to do some more modern rearming after World War Two,
and this remained a relatively modern, efficient, and high quality machine gun even after World War Two.
So, you'll end up seeing these purchased by a wide variety of countries.
Finland actually bought some, Colombia bought a bunch of them,
the Netherlands bought FN-Ds, of course Luxembourg has them.
They would end up being available in three different calibres:
7mm Mauser, which is something that would particularly appeal to the South American market,
8mm Mauser, and .30-06.
There are incidentally two separate versions of these, the .30-06 receiver is slightly longer
than the 7mm and 8mm Mauser receivers.
7 and 8 Mauser are the same gun, .30-06 is a slightly longer cartridge,
and so they made the receiver slightly longer, but mechanically otherwise it's identical.
There would be one final iteration, and that would be the FN-DA1, which was introduced in 7.62 NATO calibre,
once that calibre became a thing in the 1950s.
And that basically involved a spacer block on the trigger group, and it was set up to use FN FAL magazines.
FN's making this rifle in 7.62 NATO, it makes sense to offer a companion light machine gun.
The FN-D is still a perfectly fine, modern, good ... light machine gun, so why not chamber it for 7.62 NATO?
Use the same magazines as your rifle and, hey presto, that's a pretty cool gun.
Some of these were made from scratch, some of them were simply converted from pre-existing FN-Ds.
Israel, for example, had 8mm FN-Ds as they had also had 8mm Mauser rifles purchased from FN.
They would convert those to 7.62 NATO.
That's probably the biggest source of them in the US, are surplused Israeli guns.
But ultimately production didn't end until 1967, which is almost 10 years after the introduction of the FN MAG.
This is one of the longer lasting magazine-fed light machine guns.
And really I think its service life exemplifies just how good of a gun the BAR was mechanically,
for all of the flaws that the US military versions had, and I think they're pretty substantial.
I think the 1918A2 in US military service during World War Two is
perhaps the worst iteration of the BAR that you could have.
It was still a ground breaking gun in World War One. And the developments that Colt did commercially and that FN did,
really made the gun live up to all of its potential in a way that it didn't in the US military.
But virtually a 50 year period of manufacture, which is really quite remarkable for a military arm like this.
So started in 1918, ran until 1967, like we're really close to 50 years right there. So.
Hopefully you guys have enjoyed this look at the best of the BARs.
Thanks for watching
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