Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgottenweapons.com I'm Ian McCollum
And today we are taking a look at a really pretty cool scarce
Luxemburg semi-auto sniper FM 49
So the FN 49 of course was the rifle that FN produced developed and produced just after World War two
This would eventually actually fairly quickly
Transition into the FAL rifle, but there were a number of countries that were looking to upgrade their bolt-action rifles into semi-autos
right after World War two and
For various reasons opted not to buy the surplus that was out there
a lot of these countries ended up just taking us surplus m1 garand, but
Among others Luxembourg decided to buy new rifles from FN. So they went with the FN 49
Fixed 10 round magazine stripper clip fed these rifles were available in a variety of cartridges the Luxembourg
Military opted for .30-06 so that's what these two are in
And in total they would buy about 6,000 of these rifles in fact
6200 and three of them to be very specific
Not counting a hundred for the Shanda Marine
The first order was in 1950. They ordered 4,000 standard rifles
the second order was in 1952 when they ordered two thousand more rifles of the
AFN instead of the SAF and variety. So the the second order was all for select fire rifles
that was something that FN added into this design and
In that 1952 order
they also ordered 203 semi-auto rifles set up as snipers now as
They came from FN
They were equipped with cheek rests and optics mounts
This guy but not actually scopes the Luxembourg military went ahead and ordered it scoped separately from a Belgian company
however called OIP. They were
There were two different versions of scopes that were used. We have both here. We have an early pattern and a late pattern and
This would be Belgium's sniper rifle until the adoption of the FN FAL now
Well, I tell you what
Let's go ahead and take a look at the details of these things up close and I'll tell you about the history of the scope
mounts on the FN49
Because they weren't made by FN they were made by a guy in Boise, Idaho
There's really not a whole lot that distinguishes these snipers mechanically or feature-wise
from standard production rifles aside, of course from the scope and mount
These will all have an AL nice fancy marking on the top of the receiver for Luxemburg
The rifle muzzles were left bare. They don't have flash hiders or compensators or anything like that. They do have this black paint finish
they are serialized both on the receiver here and the bolt and
the cover and the stock all here the serial numbers for the Luxemburg order started at 1,000
So their first 1000 through 5000 are their first batch of semi-auto rifles
5001 through 6999 or through 7000 are their select fire rifles
and then 7001 through 7203 are their scoped rifles
So if you find one with a scope set up the serial number needs to be over seven thousand for it to be correct?
and proper
FN did set these up with a cheek riser
Because the line of sight on the scope is actually rather high in order to clear the iron sights
So this brings the shooters line of sight up. These are
Symmetrical so they actually give you a little bit of offset to the side which you don't really need. This is a center mounted scope
However, either left or right-handed shooters can use them with equal comfort
they're held on by two nice blue slot end screws there that was done by FN at the factory and
Then they have these echo scope mounts. So
The mount itself the bracket down here was actually done by FN
These are permanently installed on the receivers. The top mount is
detachable and this was done by a company called
Well, the the mount is called an echo mount and it was made by a guy named Herkner out of as I said
Boise, Idaho
So Herkner was born in 1909 in Cleveland and out of high school
He actually went to work for Warner and Swayze because his father was a shop superintendent there by 1936
He kind of oversaw the whole Pacific or the whole New England region for Warner and Swayze
Installing their machine tools for clients
During World War two
He went to work for an aircraft company and then after World War two he decided to set up his own shop his own business
did that initially in Denver and then move to Boise and
One of the things he came up with was in
1945 a patent for this really cool type of detachable scope mount and it's really quite clever
So we have two thumb screws here. And if I loosen these up
That one's pretty tight. There we go. If I loosen these up
This scope comes right off, but it's got this really cool set of
round interlocking surfaces there and this thing is
Mechanically great it comes back to zero extremely
well, so well that this was a you know, a commercial product that Herkner was offering here in the US for sale and
Kind of out of nowhere. He got a request from FN to quote production of 1,500 of these things
Which is far more than he had ever made before.
Thought that was pretty cool ended up selling 1,500 to FN
got a number of follow up orders bringing the total to
2700 of these scope mounts that he sold
To FN and FN clearly thought it was good enough that rather than bother to come up with their own design
They just went ahead and bought these commercially from some guy in Boise
Now, like I said FN made this mounting rail because this is pretty unique and specific to the FN 49
Certainly, not anything like what Herkner had been making.
the one difference between his commercial product and his military version for FN was just the size of
The little thumb screws here. So as he had been making them commercially they had these rather small thumb screws which are perfectly adequate
FN wanted them bigger presumably so they'd be easier to use with gloves and and just well a little bit more idiot-proof
So the military version has these large thumb screws the commercial version has these smaller ones.
There are two different scopes that you'll find on these rifles. They're both made by the Belgian company a Belgian company called
OIP and they're very similar, but there is an early pattern which is this guy with these rather distinctive
Adjustment knobs and this one which is the later pattern with the larger adjustment knobs
Now we have a kind of a two part thing here to discuss first off
This is the pattern of scope that the Luxembourg military used
However, when Luxembourg surplus these rifles are got rid of them, they didn't sell the scopes with them. They actually kept these scopes and
adapted them to use on their FN FAL rifles did a little bit of
recalibrating on the bullet drop compensator to go from
.30-06 to 7.62 NATO
But kept these around so when you find scopes on the Luxembourg rifles, they are almost always
Belgian scopes and both of these are Belgian military scopes. So the Belgians use both the first and second pattern when Luxembourg placed their order
Production at OIP had already changed to this later pattern so this is what you'll find on those.
If we take a close-up look You'll see the the Sun Visor on this is Mark ABL
that's Belgian Army number 1387 they made for the Belgians they made about 800 early pattern ones and about
1200 late pattern ones on
the Luxembourg versions instead of ABL these will just be marked AL
Just like the receivers on the rifles with a separate set of serial numbers that will run from 1 up to 203.
Here are the rest of the markings sorry a little hard to see what the light reflecting there. It's a 1951 production scope they have
basically the model number serial number there and the company name say
(Speaks French), which is French for sniper scope
telescope
and then it looks like they have repeated the markings in German or in uh . . .
yeah In German I believe and then the OIP logo there
These have a bullet drop compensator that's going to go from point-blank out to
800 meters and
Then also have adjustments for windage
The early pattern scopes are basically the same the ABL marking has worn off the Sun Visor on this one, obviously
much lower serial number this is one of the early ones so
458
it has the same BDC (Ballistic Drop Compensator) out to
800
There's the 800 marking
Also, windage adjustments, but they improve
the larger adjustment knobs were an improvement and by the time Luxembourg were getting these like I said they had the late pattern.
Both of these have just a standard German post type of reticle
So on these guys the scope mount is going to be the original Luxembourg mount
You can see
that's a little hard to see these are permanently pinned in place and non removable
and then a scope and it's mounting block
generally when you find these are going to be Belgian, now it's easy enough to confirm that with the ABL mark versus AL
If you have a Luxembourg rifle and you want to get a Luxembourg scope they are out there.
It's gonna be tricky to find but I have seen a couple in private hands so I would suspect that
When Luxembourg started getting rid of the FAL's some of those scopes sneaked off
They'll probably be calibrated for 762 nato, unless you manage to find one that somehow snuck out of the Luxembourg military before being recalibrated
But the iron sights are still usable underneath of this optic but it is a very quick detach
Repeatable zero sort of thing. You'll note. There's this nice oval cut out so that you can still get access to the the lever here
Yeah, it's really quite a nice effective scope mounting system
one last thing I should point out while I have you here is
Scope mount or a scope case for these so of course, what do you do when you take the scope off?
I mean the whole point is to prevent the scope from getting damaged when you're gallivanting about with the rifle, so
Naturally, you have some sort of protective hardcase
To put the scope in like this
Open that up
And we've got some nicely made
wooden mounting blocks in there and
This goes ahead and slides in
Slides right in
like so and
Then there would have been a couple of tools here. I expect one of these two would have held a lens cleaning brush
There's probably an adjustment tool that would have snapped into that and you can see we have a little rubber
Pad there so we can clamp this down
And
There you go that hooks onto your belt gives you a place to carry the scope protected
So these are of course very scarce rifles in the United States today. My understanding is only ninety three of them survived
The rest being scrapped by the Luxembourg military not sure exactly how many of those came into the US versus being
sold elsewhere in Europe as we discussed
They didn't come into the US with their original scopes, but when you find them with scopes like this
They're generally found with Belgian scopes of the exact same model that Luxembourg used. So they're pretty close on there
Anyway, hopefully you guys have found this interesting. They're really cool scarce
I mean who doesn't like semi-auto sniper rifles?
so a big thanks to the
Private collector who offered to let me do some filming on these two and bring them to you guys. Thanks for watching