Hi guys!
Thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum.
And today we're going to continue our look at,
French semi-automatic infantry rifles with the MAS 49.
Now yesterday we took a look at the MAS 44.
And if you haven't seen that video.
It's probably not a bad idea to go back and watch it first,
because this is the genesis...
WELL, that is the genesis of where this came from.
And of course,
we're also filming this in conjunction with the Kickstarter pre-order release of my book on this subject.
Chassepot to FAMAS French military rifles 1866 to 2016
So if you're interested in the subject,
take a look at the description text below and you can get a copy of that book,
ordered right now over on Kickstarter.
Anyway to pick up our story on the MAS 49 here,
basically what happened was the MAS 44 was being used in combat in Indochina
and they were starting to discover,
not necessarily functional problems with the guns,
but shortcomings of them.
And so in particular,
they had gotten a cite...
The French had gotten this idea that they wanted the MAS 44 / 49,
to kind of be a universal service rifle.
In some ways,
mirroring what the Germans did with the G43.
And sort of mirroring this concept that the US would have with the M14.
But the idea was they wanted it to be a standard infantry rifle,
for one thing and then they also wanted it to be
able to launch rifle grenades.
Rifle grenades have been a long-standing part of French small arms doctrine.
And the MAS 44 had no way to launch rifle grenades.
And then they also wanted it to be capable of being used as a
designated marksman rifle.
Or actually they wanted it to be a sniper rifle.
And so they wanted to wait him out to scope on it.
And the MAS 44 similarly had no functionality for optics either so.
There was a short production run called the MAS 44 A,
where they tried out some ideas of how to integrate these features,
and that led directly to the MAS 49.
which you'll see has a scope here and you can't see it from that side,
but there's a grenade launching apparatus on the muzzle on this side.
Production would start on these in 1951 and they would actually make a total of 80,000 of them.
So not an insubstantial number and way more than they made of the MAS 44s.
These would be used in Algeria and Indochina,
particularly, Indochina.
Where they were kind of a nice complement to the submachine guns,
and M1 carbines that were also in,
wide-scale used by the French forces there.
So let's go ahead and take a closer look at this and I'll show you exactly what they changed.
How they added that scope and a few other details.
The markings here are a little bit hard to read because of the matte parkerized finish.
But what we have is,
MAS Model 1949,
and unlike the 44 they have now added the caliber as a marking.
So caliber 7.5
and the serial number
these they have transitioned from a script font to just a block font.
And these also will all be in the f-series so they started a new serial number block,
for the MAS 49 series.
In addition if the rifle still has its original stock on it,
it will have an acceptance stamp called a roundel there.
And that will tell you the,
specific month of
acceptance when this particular
individual rifle was
taken into military inventory.
And in this case, that is June of 1952.
If we look at the muzzle end here.
We can see the grenade launching hardware.
So this is two parts.
We have a range adjustment dial here.
And we also have a grenade sight.
So I can pop this sight up,
45 degrees and then I have a little notch here for a front sight.
And a pair of them back here,
that act as a rear sight
What you would do is set the butt of the rifle on the ground and hold it basically at eye level,
kneel behind it hold at eye level and you sight down these
to, to aim the grenade that gives you your windage and then your range is set by this scroll wheel so
as I thread this,
through it's going to extend or retract this.
So you slide the grenade over the muzzle of the rifle. And then this tells you your range in decametres.
So add a zero and that's how many meters you're going to be firing.
The farther out on the muzzle
you set the grenade.
The less time it spends on the barrel,
and the less energy that it gets when you fire.
These are propelled by blank cartridges.
So, maximum range on this is 260 meters,
and then it can go all the way down to,
80 meters.
And remember that's always fired at a 45-degree angle based on this sight.
It's worth noting that,
where the MAS 36 and the MAS 44 had gotten rid of this early milled style of nose cap and front sight protector,
and gone to a stamped version,
they went back to milled on the MAS 49.
And that's because with the hardware inside here for the grenade launcher,
they couldn't make this as a stamped part anyway.
So they already had a lot of tooling in place to make,
this component from the pre-war MAS 36s,
and so they went ahead and used that.
The same hardware here would also be used, basically the identical hardware,
on the LG 48, which was one of the early
grenade launching MAS 36 variants.
The magazine remains identical.
This wouldn't change through the entire development or the entire lifespan of this rifle family.
So still the exact same ten round magazine.
And then we come to the scope.
This is an A.P.X.L.8.0.6 scope, which is a bit of a mouthful there.
It is a 3.85 power
magnified optic and it's basically..
it was heavily inspired by the German Z.F.4.
so has kind of a unique
attachment system, let me go ahead and pull this off.
The mount is also heavily inspired by the Z.F.4,
and this one's on there really tight, basically
you have a locking lever that compresses these two together and
what they did was add a dovetail to the side of the receiver here.
I've got the bolt out of this one,
but where the MAS 44 just had this smooth scalloped cut in the receiver.
You can see that they have added a dovetail,
To the MAS 49 for optics mounting.
They also changed up the style of the locking block...
well locking piece here on the side.
So it's held in place by two screws now
and serves as the stopping point for the optic
instead of just being an oval
block on the 44
So this dovetail would allow them
have a rifle that was in concept much like the G43 had been.
Every rifle had an optics rail on it and
if you wanted to turn a rifle into a marksman rifle.
All you had to do was simply take one of the scopes, slide it on and
presto you now have a sniper's rifle.
I should point out here as well...
Since we're talking about sighting.
One of the other issues
that they decided they didn't like what the MAS 44 was this concept of
non adjustable zero.
Where you actually had to change out the rear sight leaf to change it zero.
They decided that wasn't really so much of an advantage.
Like the logistical advantage was more of a hassle and simply letting guys
Zero rifles so the MAS 49 is both windage and elevation
Adjustable with these little click screws and then of course, you still have a BDC built into it.
By sliding this and allowing the rear notch
aperture to go up
The scope itself here is, is pretty simple and basically a knock off of the Z.F.4 as I mentioned.
Its reticle is a simple German post.
Sorry. It's a little fuzzy there on camera, but you just have a central pointer. There we go
Yeah, there you go. A standard German post style of reticle.
The elevation knob is a BDC allowing adjustments in 50 meter increments out to
800 and then the windage is a covered protected cap
And this is I believe also still four centimetres at 100 meter clicks
So a fairly coarse adjustment set of adjustments
for the the scope zero
Instead of traditional rings.
This has an attachment method again not unlike the Z.F.4 and the G43.
Where you have this pair of
basically sheet metal straps
that wrap around the scope and this mounting cradle.
And tighten down on top.
So here's our A.P.X.L.8.0.6 designation and insignia.
O.P.L is the company that manufactured this particular scope.
There were a couple companies that made them.
And then I believe the scopes were not actually serialized to the guns.
Because they did not issue a scope with every rifle.
For the record this is the early pattern of,
Scope mount that well looks like that.
They would transition this to a version that actually pulls the scope a little bit forward.
To provide a little more appropriate eye relief on the scope.
So you can see the difference right there, but this would come later.
This assembly of the MAS 49 is identical to the 44
I'm going to pull it apart just to show you a couple of the different little build changes that were made.
Really in fact,
the only difference on the internals
is that the 44 had a somewhat lighter and spring-loaded firing pin.
Where the MAS 49 they got rid of the spring and they made the firing pin
larger in diameter and heavier.
And the idea was
to make it more reliable less likely to have light strikes.
Now French military ammunition surplus military ammunition is
pretty well known for having very hard primers
and you can kind of see why they did that or you know that developed
synchronously with this heavy firing pin
So if you're shooting one of these rifles be very aware that it's not uncommon to have doubles.
If you have put a loaded mag in and just drop the bolt,
there is a reasonable chance the gun will fire, when the bolt slams shut.
Simply because the firing pin will have enough inertia to,
detonate a primer when it comes to a...
when the bolt comes to a stop.
So this is an issue because of the lighter, of the primers in commercial ammunition are lighter than those in
Surplus military French ammunition.
So there are a couple of solutions.
There are commercial operations out there that make titanium firing pins,
which can be the same physical size.
But will be lighter and that will solve the problem.
There are also companies out there that make basically a version of this firing pin for the MAS 49 and 49 56
That includes a spring and those are drop-in compatible parts.
You don't have to do any modification to the rifle.
You just drop in a spring-loaded firing pin.
And that the problem of doubling or firing when the bolt goes home will disappear
So that's a highly recommended modification or addition to make.
If you get one of these rifles and you do want to shoot it.
All right one last element that I want to touch on here is the sale of MAS 49 rifles to Syria
This is interesting in that it's one of very few examples of the French state Arsenal's actually
selling rifles in bulk on export.
So in 1953 Syria purchased 6,000 MAS 49 rifles
They generally are marked exactly like French rifles.
They are serial numbers, they're not a continuous serial number block.
They fall between 32,000 and 40,000, still in the F block.
And you can just barely see it here, but they even have the standard French roundel.
This one's July of 1953
In fact, the only way to distinguish them from actual French military rifles is by the bayonet.
So the French had gotten rid of the bayonet on their MAS 49s
But when Syria ordered the guns
The Syrians wanted that bayonet so the French went ahead and reinstalled
bayonets on the Syrian contract guns.
This is the exact same bayonet that the MAS 36 and the MAS 40 used and
That's, that's the only difference between the French and the Syrian patterned guns.
Well, I suppose that's the only direct difference as a result of that
The hand guards the stock and hand guards on the Syrian guns are slightly larger in order to fit this
You know the bayonet tube inside.
And so the hand guards are not interchangeable between the two guns.
Just a real interesting,
version here and something that the French did not do very often.
You would think that these would be relatively easy to find considering that
It's not that hard to find a MAS 44 and there are way more of these made
however
what's interesting is very few of these were ever surplused by the French military and finding a
French military one like this.
Is actually even harder than finding a MAS 44 in the United States.
It's kind of this weird quirk of what got imported and what didn't get imported.
So, most of what you see here in the United States are
Syrian MAS 49s that are easily distinguished because they have a bayonet.
Once you know to look for that.
Because we got importation rifles that were surplus from Syria
That's where these came from.
These rifles the the French version never went to Syria.
So they didn't end up coming here to the United States.
So, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
And enjoyed getting hopefully you learned something.
About a new,
a different pattern of French semi-auto rifle.
But is, I think vastly underappreciated in this realm of Cold War
battle rifle
sorts of firearms
these are extremely rugged durable and dependable guns and
they just don't get a whole lot of respect because I think a lot of people aren't all that familiar with them and
Well, and they're not in 762 nato
So anyway, I digress.
Hopefully you enjoyed the video.
If you're interested in the subject or in small arms development in general.
Definitely head over to Kickstarter and check out my new book Chassepot to FAMAS.
We have details of the
MAS 49 there as well as the 44 that came before and the 49 56 that would come after.
As well as every other
Fielded French made military rifle for about a hundred and fifty years
So it's a it's an awesome book
gorgeous photography
tons of information
and I think you'll definitely like it.
Thanks for watching!