[ MAS 49 in .45 ACP ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the IRCGN,
the central ballistics lab of the French Gendarmerie,
taking a look at some of the really cool experimental
French guns in their reference collection.
And what we have today is an iterative development from the MAS Model of 1948.
This is a MAS Model of 1949, but more oddly in .45 ACP.
Now this whole developmental program, which existed across all three of the major French arsenals,
MAT, MAS and MAC, Tulle, Saint-Étienne and Châtellerault,
this was a [project] in the post-World War Two years to develop a new submachine gun
in 9mm Parabellum to replace the MAS 38, which was in 7.65 French.
The French during World War Two realised that their 7.65 cartridge was ... basically obsolete,
they wanted to kind of get onto the general European standard of 9mm Parabellum.
It was in fact a more powerful, better cartridge.
And so as soon as they were able to, they started
a program to replace the MAS with a new submachine gun.
Now all three of the French arsenals proposed designs.
And MAS came up with a series of lever-delayed blowback submachine guns, which are really cool.
This is what they ultimately came to, this is the MAS Model of 1948.
We recently did a video about this gun which I will link at the end here.
You should definitely check it out if you haven't seen it,
because this is a really cool, neat, mechanically interesting submachine gun.
But when I'm looking around in the collection here at the Gendarmerie,
in addition to a bunch of different examples of variations of that 9mm MAS 48,
they had this one in .45 and marked Model of 1949.
So let's go ahead and take a closer look at it.
Let's start with a quick glance at the markings, they are all very helpfully marked on these guns.
So it's a MAS Model of 1949, calibre 11.43, that is the metric designation of .45 ACP.
And this is serial number 3, so definitely a very limited production run.
Now the MAS Model of 1948 that this gun is really a continuing development of,
those ... guns were built in a variety of different configurations.
And we see a number of the elements from them on here.
So this has a collapsing wire stock.
Most of the 48s that I've had a chance to look at had ... side-folding wooden stocks,
but wire stocks were absolutely something that was experimented with.
It of course has the folding magazine well, very common to French submachine guns at this time.
You collapse the stock, fold the magazine well, and this gives you a very compact submachine gun.
I can press the button here, fold the magazine well down to use.
And note that this has finger grooves, and a very long magazine well that doubles as a front grip.
You would see this feature being used in the MAT 49,
and we also saw it in one of our MAS 48s that we took a look at in that previous video.
The magazine release button is right here at the bottom.
The magazine is ... a unique magazine for these guns as far as I can tell.
Interesting that they have basically copied the floor plate system from the MP 40 magazine,
which makes sense because ... all of the earlier development by MAS used modified MP 40 magazines.
So if they're going to like scale up their magazine, that fits.
So ... double-stack single-feed.
There is no manual safety [switch] on the gun ...
because folding the magazine up essentially is your safety mechanism.
When you do that there's no way for a round to get into the chamber,
and the gun can be carried without any problem at all with ammunition in it, but no risk of firing.
We then also have a double trigger system. And that's something that they did experiment with
a bit on other guns in the MAS 48 development series.
But your front trigger is semi-auto, and you can hear the disconnector
clicking there, and the rear trigger is full-auto.
Some of the French guns have full-auto in the front, some have full-auto in the back,
it kind of varies from program to program.
Now on the Model 1948s the takedown system is pretty cool.
The grip assembly ... also acts as the rear retention,
so all I have to do is push in this little button and I can pull out the rear grip frame.
What they did on the .45 ACP version is I think really cool and clever.
You can see this is the end cap, and it's got a big rivet on either side.
Well the way this one works is we extend the stock.
This is the fully extended position, you can see how the stock is locked in these front holders.
Then I push the button and I pull it just a little further back.
That's as far back as the stock can extend, it's now free of these front retention tubes.
And now,
and I can pull out the rear trigger frame of this guy.
Note that this is made by MAS, they have clearly taken a lot of inspiration
from the MAS 38 which had a very similar style of grip frame
that comes out self-contained with the fire control parts, all that.
Now unfortunately the .45 calibre gun is missing its bolt and bolt carrier and main spring.
So I can't actually show you those.
However, I would encourage you to go back and watch my MAS 48 video,
but if you don't want to ... here's the quick and dirty version.
We have a captive recoil spring in the top.
And then we have a bolt and bolt carrier that are locked together, and this is a delaying lever.
So when it fires the bolt is back like this.
This two-part lever locks into the top of the receiver,
and before it can cycle backward it has to pull this.
This lever essentially pushes the top mass backwards like so,
giving it enough delay time to have pressure drop and for it to open safely.
So this is obviously all the same mechanics.
Unfortunately, we just don't have this part or the spring for the .45 ACP version.
Normally if I had a gun like this one that was missing major internal parts,
and ... I didn't know anything really about, I would skip it until I could learn something more.
In this case I'm not sure when I might be able to get access to any records,
if they still exist, from this trials program.
And we do know the basic trials program that this gun came from,
because the mechanism is clearly the same as the MAS 48s.
What is really curious to me is the fact that they built one (or several) in .45 ACP,
because there's not really any indication that the French seriously considered adopting .45 ACP.
That said, by the end of World War Two they did have a bunch of Thompsons.
They'd had them pre-war, they got more as US military assistance.
And so perhaps ... some of these either used as a control element in testing,
or maybe there was a small element that was interested in trying to maybe actually adopt .45 ACP.
Ultimately of course they didn't, they adopted the MAT 49 in 9mm and never looked back from it.
But very cool to get a chance to take a look at a truly weird oddball submachine gun like this one.
So a big thanks to the French Gendarmerie for giving me access to it.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.