Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the National Firearms Centre,
part of the British Royal Armouries in Leeds.
And we are taking a look at a couple of quintessentially British rifles.
These are an X8E1 and an X8E2.
And these are the very first batch of FALs, or SLRs that the British government purchased for troop trials.
So in ... December of 1953 the British government formally accepted ... a recommendation that it should
go ahead and adopt the FAL, the F.A.L., in .30 calibre. In the T65 cartridge as designed by the United States.
T65 being the developmental title, this would become designated 7.62x51mm NATO, the 7.62 NATO cartridge.
So, having decided finally to go ahead and adopt this rifle and calibre once and for all,
the British went ahead and placed an order for 5,000 of them from Belgium, from FN, the manufacturers,
in February of 1954. They ordered 4,000 of these guys with iron sights, and 1,000 of these guys with optical sights.
Now when I say optical sights, it is technically an optical sight,
it's what they called a Unit sight. It is a 1x power non-magnifying optic. It's underneath this metal shield.
It's this little tiny, baby, not more than 3 eighths of an inch in diameter, not more that 7 or 8mm in diameter, scope,.
with a little pointer coming down from the top and the pointer is zeroed at ... 200 yards for the British,
and then there are two additional graduation lines for 400 and 600 yards.
So, in my mind this was a bit ahead of its time. In fact this was the same optic that the British had been testing on the EM-2 bullpup.
And just the idea of having an optical sight on every standard rifle was a pretty advanced concept in 1954.
So, they're to be lauded for that. Now ultimately they decided not to adopt this, they went with the iron sighted version instead.
But at least they were giving it a serious look.
Now there are a couple of other interesting features to these that are a bit different
than the standard FAL that would be adopted as the L1A1 (by the way in 1957).
So, let's take a closer look at the unique features of these very early X8 pattern FAL rifles.
Well, we'll start with the X8E1 because it is ... numerologically first.
It is of course marked X8E1, Br for Britain, there on the side.
And then we've got the actual manufacturer mark here on the right side,
Fabrique Nationale D'Armes De Guerre, Herstal, Belgium.
In general, this rifle pattern is going to be extremely similar, it's going to have ... all the main features
that the L1A1 would be adopted with. There's only a few little deviations from the standard pattern.
One of them of course is fairly obvious up here at the top,
and that is this top cover that is cut short with a stripper clip guide.
The idea here is that the British military was concerned about the viability of detachable magazines in combat,
they were worried that ... basically that any time advantage you got in reloading a complete magazine
instead of using stripper clips you would lose again when you ran out of loaded magazines.
And then you had to go back and manually reload your mags by hand.
... You would lose all the time there that you had gained by being able to switch magazines.
So, ... in fact they seriously looked at having just a fixed 20 round magazine for a while,
that was filled by stripper clips on the idea that you'd avoid that problem and you'd also save the weight of like 8 empty magazines.
Ultimately they did of course go with a detachable mag, but on the early rifles they have a stripper clip guide up here.
So this was intended for sort of a horse- shoe shaped clip. It held 5 rounds.
And it ... went in here in the back and then it also hooked over these two pegs on the front,
and the cartridge tips would sit in between those to line up nicely.
Of course, once you've locked the bolt open you then have access to reload the magazine.
They have done this the correct way in that the stripper clip guide is on the top cover, and not connected to the bolt.
So you are much less likely to have trouble with the bolt slamming closed when you pull the first stripper clip out.
Although I can't say that I have actually experimented with loading one of these with stripper clips myself.
The carry handle here, which some countries decided to use and some countries decided not to,
the carry handle would survive on the adopted L1A1, still in wood for while, it was ultimately changed to plastic.
But on the early L1A1 they added some serrations in here to give it a little bit more grip,
instead of just plain smooth [wood] like on this version.
The charging handle ... was one of the other places that saw definite change between the X8 and the L1A1.
And that's because with the order for the X8 rifles the British told FN that they wanted a ... positive closure for the bolt.
Basically they wanted a forward assist on it.
And so at the time the existing .30 calibre FAL was basically the American pattern of rifle
put together for an American trials order, and that's basically what the British got
with this forward assist sort of kludged onto it.
So you can actually use this to push the bolt forwards. That's a bit hard to
demonstrate without having an actual stoppage or sluggish bolt to work with.
But ultimately what the British found in their field trials testing with these guns
is that the forward assist was less effective at clearing malfunctions than simply
yanking the charging handle all the way back and releasing it.
and so on the L1A1 they would get rid of that forward assist feature.
And then we can look at a few other little things. The shape of the selector switch would vary.
Note that this one does actually have a full-auto setting which the L1A1 would be adopted without.
The bolt hold open and magazine release are the same.
Note that these have a "metric" style of magazine to them, with a little small front catch.
The British would increase the size of that magazine catch to make the magazine retention little bit better.
And that would become recognised as the "inch pattern" magazine.
Of course, what the British would ultimately do is licence the FAL for domestic production in the UK.
And when they did that they had to basically adapt the whole technical package
to inch measurements and British machining standards,
instead of using the patterns that the Belgians had.
Take a look at the front sight here. It has this kind of funky little sheet metal hood on top there.
Adjustable gas regulator.
We have a bit of a bayonet lug there and a bare muzzle.
Now the other pattern is the X8E2, British also. This is the version with an optical sight.
So it has its own unique top cover that has this base added to it, moulded into it.
And on this one you can see that the top cover goes all the way to the front of the receiver,
there is not an opening for stripper clips.
That was done deliberately. They liked the stripper clip idea, but they realised that cutting the top cover back to here
and not having a solid interface with the front of the receiver
... it wouldn't fit repeatably enough, sturdily enough, to maintain zero on an optical sight.
So this is still a little bit wobbly, but probably just good enough.
And ultimately the British would find, especially in sand testing, that they liked ... being able to shrink down the size
of the ejection port, instead of having the entire front of the action open to the elements.
We have the same forward assist on the X8E2.
The rear sight, the standard aperture rear sight, has been milled off of this gun.
... because it would interfere with your ability to use the optical sight.
Instead, a little fixed emergency backup iron sight aperture there has been fixed under the rear mount of the optical sight.
Because that emergency sight is offset to the left, the front sight has also been offset to the left.
So this is adjustable for elevation. So you do have some backup sights there.
Same gas adjustment.
Same muzzle.
And you can see here what would become the standard pattern for the receiver cover.
A couple of interesting things about the adoption process with these.
The British ... did testing on the FAL that no other countries did. Everyone did some testing on it.
But the British were pretty much the only people to actually test it in a desert environment,
because the US wasn't really particularly interested in desert environments in the early '50s,
the Belgians don't have a desert.
But the British Empire had a bunch of Middle Eastern and African territorial connections
where they were concerned that they might have to fight, and with good reason,
you would see conflict in ... Suez, for example, fairly quickly after this was going on.
And this also, by the way, ties into the Israeli experience using the FAL in the Middle Eastern desert.
So the British went to do some sand testing on these guns.
And basically what they did is set up a box with a big blower, and they would blow sand on the gun for, I believe, 30 seconds.
And then they would fire the rifle, full magazine in the gun, starts with a round chambered, bolt closed.
After it had run for about 30 seconds they would then start firing, I believe it was one shot every 3 seconds,
until either the magazine was empty or the gun stopped working.
And they recorded, the report that I saw, they recorded 17 attempts at this, and of those
about ... one third of them succeeded and fired the whole magazine.
The rest all failed, and almost all of the ones that failed, failed after one shot fired.
Meaning that that 30 seconds of sand was enough to gum up the action such that
the first round would fire because it was already chambered, but the rifle would not cycle even a single round
after being that heavily exposed to sand.
So the British remediated this by making a number of changes to the design,
tweaks to make it a little bit more resistant to sand infiltration.
And this was all work that was done by a guy named Kent-Lemon, last name Kent hyphen Lemon.
I can't remember his first name off-hand. [Colonel Noel Kent-Lemon]
At any rate, he had been one of the lead guys on the EM-2 design team,
and of course when that rifle was abandoned in favour of the FAL
he would continue to do his job and turned his attention to the FAL instead.
So, ... it was those sand tests and Kent-Lemon's work that lead to those sand cuts that you will see on the side of the bolt carrier,
as well as kind of a scallop cut on the underside of the bolt to give some clearance for dirt to fall out.
And some relief cuts inside the lower of the receiver to work kind of in tandem with the sand cuts on the bolt carrier.
So that development actually did substantially improve the rifle's performance in sand testing,
and it would go on the be adopted by the UK as part of the L1A1.
It's interesting to see where that sort of thing comes from.
So, ultimately in March of 1957 the final version of this rifle would be adopted as the L1A1,
and it would go on to serve in British military service for a couple decades before ultimately being replaced by the L85 rifle.
And by the way, if you are interested in the L85, I have an extensive playlist of videos on the entire development process of the L85.
So I'll have those linked at the end here, definitely check them out if you are interested.
And we also did a previous video on the very first FAL that the British got, the original Fusil Automatique Léger.
The very first light automatic rifle, so that'll also be linked at the end here, check that one out too.
A thank you to all of my patrons whose direct financial support makes it possible for me to
travel to places like the UK to bring you guys guns like this.
And of course a big thanks to the Royal Armouries for giving me access to their fantastic collection,
where I can pull out rifles like this and bring them to you guys.
They have a whole bunch more in this period, in this developmental era with the FAL from British testing.
So, the collection is not open to the general public, but it is available by appointment to researchers,
people writing books, or doing research in other media. So if you are interested
in getting in to do some study in the Armouries collection here
you can contact them through their website, which is linked in the description text below.
Thanks for watching.