Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are taking a look at the
final, perfected, version of the MAS semi-automatic rifle.
This is the MAS 49-56, and this would be the standard
infantry rifle for the French military from 1956
all the way until 1979 with the adoption of the FAMAS.
Now as we've been doing for the last couple of weeks,
this is being published in conjunction with the Kickstarter pre-sale launch of my book on this subject,
which is "Chassepot to FAMAS, French Military Rifles, 1866 to 2016".
If you're interested in French rifles, or small arms development in general, definitely check that out,
order yourself a copy today. There's lots of cool Kickstarter only bonuses and discounts available.
So check the description text for a link over there. And without further ado,
further commercialisation, let's go ahead and dig into this particular rifle.
Now, this of course was developed from the MAS 49, which was developed from the MAS 44,
which was developed from the MAS 40, which was originally conceptualised by the French military
all the way back in 1921 right after the end of the First World War.
So this rifle is a long time coming and a long time in development, and I point that out because
successful rifles are often the ones that have had several decades of iteration to really work out all of the problems,
and all the manufacturing quirks, and figure out exactly how to get the rifle really working right.
And this is an example of a rifle that went through that whole process, although I think it's a pretty underrated one today.
So, the main difference, well, there are two main differences between this and the Model 49.
And well, they're all kind of from here forward. So they shortened the barrel,
they realised that the MAS 49 had really a longer barrel than it needed.
This is modern combat, like we've got guys in helicopters and vehicles, and a shorter rifle really helps,
and that extra barrel length doesn't actually contribute all that much of importance in terms of ballistics.
So, cut the barrel down, and while we're at it we'll cut the stock down too because really
do you need a hand guard way out here? We're not grabbing the rifle out there.
We can save some weight by cutting that off as well, and so they did that.
Around this time period (and this is the early to mid-1950s) that they were developing this...
In fact, the MAS 49 didn't actually go into production until 1951, and it was only in production for a few years.
They had prototypes of this available or finished in 1954, and they adopted it in May of 1956.
So around this time they're also changing the style of rifle grenade that they used,
from this small diameter one that was used on the MAS 36 LG48 grenade launchers and the MAS 49s,
to a NATO standard 22mm ... internal diameter grenade. So they have to change up the
grenade launching hardware on the rifles to accommodate that new grenade. And this is how they did it.
So we'll take a closer look at the hardware out here, but when they made that change
they also went ahead and implemented a gas cutoff into the rifle. One of the shortcomings
of the MAS 49 was that, while it was set up to launch rifle grenades, it didn't have a cutoff.
Which means when you fired a rifle grenade the bolt came slamming back in the action
a lot faster than it was really designed to, and they realised after a short period that,
you know, this was gonna have negative effects on the rifles over time.
And so, in fact, some of the manuals for the MAS 49 will actually specifically warn you against
using them to launch rifle grenades. And on some of the rifles they actually removed the grenade launching hardware entirely.
So by adding a gas cutoff what they're doing is preventing the launching of a rifle grenade
from actually cycling the action, and that saves a tremendous amount of wear and tear on the gun itself.
So that was probably the most significant mechanical change in the MAS 49-56.
The MAS 49-56 continues this intention from the MAS 49 of being a universal sort of infantry rifle,
wherein it can be equipped with a scope for use as a sniper or designated marksman's rifle,
as well as being able to be used as a grenadier's rifle or as just a rifle.
So we have the common pattern, the later pattern, of scope mount here,
which is kind of pushed forward to give you a little bit more eye relief on the scope.
This is the same standard APX L806 telescope (that APX, by the way, stands for Ateliers de Puteaux
or Puteaux workshops, Puteaux starting with a P and ending with an X in French).
Scopes were manufactured by three different companies and all serialised. It's a 3.85 power scope,
and it is basically a ... functional copy of the German ZF4.
Go ahead and pull this off for the moment, just pop that lever and then this slides off.
It does retain zero when you do that, which is pretty cool.
The development of the rear sight on these rifles is kind of funny because it sort of bounces back and forth.
The original MAS 44 had no adjustment whatsoever, if you wanted to change the zero you changed the
... whole rear leaf to have a leaf with a different location aperture in it. Then with the MAS 49
they went quite a ways in the other direction and they added screw adjustments for windage and elevation.
And then when they came back to the MAS 49-56 they decided that that was a little more adjustment
than they really needed, and it was extra complexity and fragility in the sight that they didn't want
and so they reduced it to just a windage elevation.
So your elevation is adjusted simply through your BDC here for a range from 200 out to 1200 metres,
and then you do have a screw adjustable windage there.
These still have the same 10 round magazine of every other rifle in this family,
and it still has this external clip which, if you didn't watch the video on the MAS 44,
you wouldn't know that this comes from an original design of the rifle ... having a
fixed magazine and five round stripper clip feed.
In fact something that I haven't mentioned that I should is that all of these rifles can be fed by stripper clips.
So when the magazine is empty the bolt does lock open, and you have a stripper clip guide built into the bolt face there.
So you can load a pair of five round stripper clips - hence the thumb relief right here for stripping rounds into the magazine.
Moving up to the front end of the rifle, of course the stock has been cut down as I mentioned.
The gas port was actually moved forward a couple inches from where it was located on the MAS 49.
That increased the dwell time and made the gun a little bit more reliable.
And then they also added a bunch of this hardware, so let's take a look at how that works.
This is your rear sight for using rifle grenades, and you line this up with the tip of the grenade to aim it.
And you'll notice that you can't lift this up to use it as long as this is down, which is convenient,
because that is the gas cutoff. So when this is lifted up the
... gas is cut off and the rifle now operates as a single shot, manually operated gun.
That means that when you fire a rifle grenade you're not putting all this force on the operating system.
So once the gas is cut off, then you can lift up the rear sight.
And that can go into one of two different positions: either there, or all the way elevated like that.
Which position you use depends on whether you're going to be firing direct-fire,
typically anti-tank grenades, or indirect-fire, typically anti-personnel grenades.
So for some of your grenades you will choose which one of these notches,
typically one of these three, 50, 75 or 100 [metres].
Or if you're firing indirect-fire, what you would do
is use this adjustable ring to determine the range of the grenade.
So the position of this ring determines how far
the grenade actually sits on the barrel which determines how long it's being propelled by the charge
... in the barrel from the blank cartridge when you fire. And so what we have here are range
designations from 90 metres all the way out here, all the way back to
... 190 metres all the way at the rear. And that's what this movable adjustable ring is for.
I'm sure some of you noticed this thing on the butt-stock of the rifle.
This is an added recoil pad and there are actually two different thicknesses of this that were made,
and this is specifically for firing direct-fire rifle grenades.
However, it does do double duty as an extension to the length of pull of the rifle.
So I can slide this off (there we go), this is just solid rubber,
well, honeycomb in there to give it some squishiness. They're ... marked MAS 1962.
This is the long one, there is also a shorter one.
And this rifle has a pretty darn short length of pull, and that was done deliberately,
in part to strengthen the stock for the firing of rifle grenades. They did the same thing with the MAS 36 bolt-action rifles.
But one of the consequences of this, while it works OK for the aperture sights
(which by the way are pretty darn good aperture sights),
you have very little eye relief for using a scope. And that's part of the reason that they had to
tweak the scope mount to kick the scope forward, as you can see here.
But it also means that it really helps if you can extend the length of pull by
throwing an extra recoil pad onto the butt of the rifle.
So this is for grenades and also makes it a lot more comfortable to use with that optical sight.
Take a quick look at the markings here, pretty much the same pattern as on previous models.
It's MAS Model 1949-56, calibre is 7.5.
And it's a little hard to see, but we have a square here that's marked with a two-digit year.
And this indicates that the rifle was refurbished by one of the French depots, that's 80 I believe.
... Whenever a rifle went through that depot servicing it would be stamped.
This is why a lot of these rifles are in brand-new shape basically, is they were arsenal refurbished,
then put into storage, and then sold as surplus to the United States.
So some won't have this, although it's relatively uncommon to find them without being refurbed.
Some will have two, or potentially even three refurb stamps.
If you have a rifle that was, you know, used extensively in training it may have needed refurbishing several times.
The serial number on here, it is going to be printed vertically on the front of the receiver.
On earlier models they printed them down here, but for the 49-56 it's right there.
They actually started these in the G prefix block. So normally a Saint-Étienne rifle would start in F,
but they decided that since they had started the MAS 49 in the F block they would move to the G block for the 49-56.
So they made a bunch, you'll find G and H prefix serial numbers.
And they did also mark that serial number on the back of the receiver top cover there.
As far as the mechanical internals go, while the parts aren't strictly interchangeable,
nothing has changed fundamentally from the very beginning, from the MAS 44s.
So direct gas impingement, ... tilting bolt.
If you're interested in exactly what the internals look like, go ahead and take a look at my MAS 44 video,
I pulled one all the way apart there to show you all of that.
Production of these rifles began in 1957. There would be a total of 175,000 or 180,000 of them made,
and they would serve as France's standard infantry rifle all the way up until the adoption of the FAMAS in 1979.
And, of course, they would serve in a second echelon use for many years after that as well
while the FAMAS rifle was being built up in quantity and distributed to army units.
So when they were declared fully obsolete, a lot of them were surplused and a lot of them were actually
sold into the United States, and so it's actually far easier to get them here in the US today
than it is to find them anywhere else in the world, which is unfortunate for you guys in France,
it's theoretically your rifle, but they're all over here and it's really a pretty cool situation for us in the United States
However, there is one element as a result of this that I want to touch on, because
... compared to any other Cold War-era battle rifle, you know, primarily .30 calibre infantry rifle,
these things are a fantastic bargain. They go for a fraction of the cost of, say, a FAL or a G3.
If you think about the scarcity and the collectability of FALs and G3s that are actually authentic
military production rifles, not rebuilds on parts kits with civilian receivers,
those things are incredibly expensive compared to something like this.
Now in large part that's because these rifles were always only semi-automatic,
which means we don't have any sort of machine gun issues to deal with legally with them,
but it's also because they're just kind of generally under-appreciated rifles here in the US.
Now like I was saying because of this there is a safety issue that I want to cover,
I mentioned this on the MAS 49 video, but I want to do it here as well because it's important.
And that is slam fires and the firing pin in the 49-56.
French military ammunition was made with primers that are a lot harder than some of our
..., well particularly the Prvi Partizan PPU
commercially available 7.5 French ammunition that we can get here today.
And with the softer primers in that commercial ammunition these do absolutely have a tendency to slam fire.
... When you close the bolt on a loaded magazine,
the firing pin will pick up a bunch of energy as it moves forward and, every once in a while,
it'll have enough energy that it'll pop forward, hit the primer, and fire a round when the bolt closes.
That's because these rifles were designed without a firing pin spring. With the French ammunition
the primers were hard enough that they didn't need it. And this was literally a non-issue for the French military,
they got to choose what ammunition they supplied. But it is an issue for us here in the United States commercially today.
So there are a couple of solutions for this. There are companies out there that make titanium firing pins,
those can have the exact same outer profile as a steel firing pin,
but weigh less, and weigh enough less that they won't have this problem.
There ... is also a company out there that makes a spring-loaded firing pin
that is just a drop-in replacement in a 49-56. Doesn't require any modification of the rifle,
you can swap back to the original firing pin if you ever want to for authenticity's sake.
I highly recommend getting either one of those if you actually want to go out and regularly shoot a MAS 49-56,
because otherwise you do run the risk of double fires and slam fires and that is absolutely a potential safety issue.
So be aware of that, and as long as you are, these are a remarkably
handy, light rugged and dependable Cold War infantry battle rifle.
So hopefully you guys enjoyed the video and you learned something today.
This is of course being filmed in conjunction, as I mentioned at the beginning,
with the pre-sale of my own book on French military rifles. You can see a picture of the cover right there,
and if you take a look down in the description, you'll find a link over to Kickstarter
where you can browse through the several different options we have. We have a standard book,
we have a signed book (woooo cool), and we have a limited-production collector's version of the book
in a really awesome clamshell cover with gold and extravagant details and it's super cool looking.
So head over there check out all of those different options,
see if one of those books is something that you think you'd like to have to
go along with your 49-56, or any other French rifle you have or would like to have.
And, thanks for watching.