[ Rhodesian FAL ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today
with Larry Vickers.
And we're going to take a look at a pretty darn cool FAL.
So Larry, why don't you just tell us, what is this thing?
- This is a genuine Rhodesian FAL.
Now what that means is, in this particular case,
this was an FAL that was a South African contract, Belgian made, FN FAL,
that was sanitised, and then sent to the Rhodesians.
- So this happened at a time when Rhodesia was under international arms sanctions
because of ... the apartheid government.
The only country that was willing to help arm Rhodesia
in violation of international sanctions was South Africa.
- Yeah, because they looked at it and said,
"You know what? There but by the grace of God goes I."
Which of course is exactly what happened later on.
Once Rhodesia fell then it all came down on South Africa.
So they were like, "You know, we need to support these people."
There's a lot of politics involved too as well.
- Yeah, and ... if they're going to support Rhodesia militarily,
they need to do it in a way that's at least sort of deniable.
- Correct. - So they made a couple of specific ... grind marks and marking removals to these rifles.
- Yeah. - Now, let's take a close look at that in a minute.
- Got it. - But the other distinguishing features to this thing are the fact
that it's covered in this horrifically ugly baby poop camo colour.
- Correct. - And that's a Rhodesian thing, isn't it?
- Absolutely. They used what camo paint was available.
Generally a flavour of blue and green. And then when combined together it had a baby poop effect.
You know, interestingly, ... this kind of happened later on in the Bush War.
So you see a lot of guys carrying FALs in pictures that are not camouflaged at all.
It was kind of something that happened later on.
They also did it with Portuguese-manufactured G3s.
So you'll see some G3s that will also have baby poop.
- OK. My understanding is they did this at the same time they
stopped wearing super-short shorts,
because the bad guys could see their legs coming from a mile away.
So anyway, what we have here is a South African FAL.
And there are a couple of distinctive elements of that, we've got a grenade launcher on the front.
And we've got this weird muzzle device, what is that thing?
- That's called a Halbek Device, and it was
a clip-on muzzle brake that the Rhodesians came up with.
You slide it on, you can index it, and then you pivot this lever and then clip it onto the barrel.
You can index it where it provides you basically muzzle brake effectiveness
... for a right-handed shooter, or you angle it slightly for a left-handed shooter.
- So kind of the same idea as the slant brakes on AKs.
- More or less, yes. - If you're left-handed, and firing in full-auto
the gun's going to tend to travel in this direction. - Correct.
- So you angle the brake that way to counteract it. - Correct.
- And of course the original brakes on these things, the brakes that FN made,
had ports on all sides, and they were designed for firing rifle grenades. - Yep, correct.
- You tell me, I guess Rhodesia wasn't that interested in rifle grenades?
- No, believe it or not, they were. - OK.
- So you'll see even some guns ... various FALs, different contracts and whatnot,
that did not have flash suppressors at all,
they would then put flash suppressors on them once they got them, yeah.
They would do a number of modifications to the gun to kind of integrate it into their service.
One is the electro-pencil "RA" markings, Rhodesian Army,
that you saw on the other side, that's one piece.
Another thing they would do with these, apparently one of their soldiers
got a piece of brass deflected off of a carrying handle ... and lost an eye.
- Oh, jeez that's bad. - So they ended up chopping the carrying handles off.
- OK, interesting. - That was one of the things they did.
So there's a few tell-tale signs of an FAL, or a kit, that was used in Rhodesia.
Those are the things you're looking for.
- OK, let's go ahead and take a closer look at those bits. - Sure.
- So like the first thing that really jumps out at you about this FAL is
this giant hole cut in the side of it. What is that?
- Well, there's a South African crest there, put there by ... FN.
And then what they did ... to sanitise it is they drilled or milled a large hole there,
and you can see the last remnants here on the side.
If you look this crest up on the internet you will see what the crest looks like,
and there's the tell-tale signs of the edges of it right there.
- OK. Now this was a gun that South Africa bought from Belgium, from FN.
South Africa also built its own FALs under licence. - Correct.
- And those didn't have the crest, did they? - No they did not, that is absolutely correct.
The other thing is one of the ways you spot them with the markings on the other side,
and whatnot, they don't have the ... Fabrique Nationale markings over here.
But another one is the lightening cuts on the South African made FALs are distinct.
They are a little bit different radius in this area,
also they are a different radius in this lightening cut area.
And if you know what you're looking for, you can spot them.
They also made, interestingly enough Ian, they made sanitised versions
that the only thing they had was serial numbers, that was it.
- Oh, interesting. - And I've seen some in person.
The only thing they had was a serial number, they had no manufacturer's markings,
they didn't have to do any kind of sterilisation in order to send them north.
So those were manufactured. But yeah, this is a Belgian-made FAL,
which was prior to the South Africans making them under licence.
- OK. And I think we should point out that the furniture on this is Rhodesian,
the gun is Rhodesian, but they were originally from different guns.
Which is why all your receiver here isn't painted, but the rest of the gun is.
- Correct, yeah. ... This gun was sourced, it was all black.
And then I sourced the baby ... poop camo pieces essentially to give it authenticity,
and more or less as a tribute to where the gun came from.
- Sure. Now one of the other distinctive things here
is of course this electro-pencil serial numbering.
- Yeah, you see the RA 1298 is here, it's also here. - Let me zoom in on that. -Alright.
- OK. - RA 1298 is there on the bolt carrier, it's also there.
And it's also over here on the lower hull.
- Boy, that one's really light, yeah. - Very light. They were done by hand in this case.
But I've seen them before where they were ... very neat and uniform.
So they were clearly done on ... some kind of pantograph or something
to give it a more uniform appearance, I've seen that.
Generally you see them where they are electro-pencil marked.
This particular one does not have a matching bolt, the RA number is from a different gun.
It is very, very common with Rhodesian FALs,
because of the embargo they had to repurpose, reuse, fix.
They had to reinvigorate everything they had, so they didn't throw anything away.
So when you see Rhodesian FALs, I mean, you're going to see everything under the sun
because they had to implement what they had, they were not going to get replacements. - That makes sense.
So there was one bit of defacing, sanitising, on the opposite side as well, right? Yeah, right there.
- There's actually two bits. The most obvious one is here.
This was an MU marking, a large "U" with an "M" inside of it
which was essentially the South African military proof mark, for lack of a better term,
showing that it was military ordnance accepted by the South Africans.
And then also down here was the same thing, there was an MU mark down here.
- OK. - It was eliminated. This one's clearly obvious.
Now understand something, this initially had a vertical take down lever.
Earlier FALs, this takedown lever was designed up here, and it was vertical in nature.
- Right. - Over time the design was modified,
and they came down with a horizontal takedown lever.
So any time you see an FAL that, say, has a serial number on the lower down here,
or in this case it had a marking here. And this same serial number,
11771, is underneath this takedown lever. - OK.
- Then that tells you it was a gun that originally had a vertical takedown lever.
That went away for a couple of reasons.
One is it had a tendency when they fired rifle grenades, as you can imagine because of the recoil,
to hinge open and essentially unhinge the upper and lower. - That's definitely a problem.
The other issue is that the way this thing is designed,
the upper and lower fits into kind of a tapered situation, tongue and groove setup.
And what will happen over time ... the lever is designed to move further forward
to keep the upper and lower tight. Well it would eventually bottom out against this recoil plate.
- OK. - So now when they flip it down here, now they have room for the lever to come down further.
And if you notice the pistol grip here has been scalloped,
that's to clear a lever on a different gun that came down further as the gun was worn and whatnot.
- OK. - You ... weren't running up against the recoil plate which bottoms you out.
And you didn't have any recourse in terms of eliminating upper and lower play. - OK, that makes sense.
- Now another interesting thing Ian here, you see the "R"? - Uh-huh.
- This was initially for repetition, it was initially a semi-automatic selector. - Oh, OK.
- Which has been modified for full-auto. - OK.
- So yeah. ... There was a ... little bit of a beak on these, they ground the beak off.
And they also modified it so that it can come around and act for fully automatic.
- Huh, well that's cool. - Modified, yeah.
- Yeah, they really did just use everything they could get their hands on. - Absolutely.
- So we talked a bit earlier [about] how they clipped the carry handle off.
That's where it would have been, right there. - Yep.
- So that's a distinctive Rhodesian thing. - Yep.
- So Larry, can you tell me about the grenade launcher sight,
I've seen these before but never really had much experience with them.
- They are actually pretty ingenious. When you flip them up, right, you can spin them around.
You've got to press the plunger and you can spin them around,
and it'll shut off the gas and also act as a grenade launcher sight.
(Let me get there, you hold it ... pivot it up like this.)
There we go. I was going the wrong way, my apologies.
- OK, that's cool. So yeah, it flips around 180 degrees.
- And it'll shut off the gas, and then now you have this for the ability to launch rifle grenades.
- OK. - So it's actually pretty ingenious.
- And typically the way those things work, I assume it's the same here,
is you line up the tip of the grenade in one of these
rear notches, so that the grenade is the front sight.
- It's interesting, there's certain countries you really saw this widely used,
South Africa, in Rhodesia very widely used.
So it's very, very common to see Rhodesian FALs
with grenade launcher flip-up gas-plug sights. Very, very common.
- Well, rifle grenades really make a great low-cost sort of light artillery option
or anti-tank option for countries that don't have heavy infrastructure.
I know the French also made extensive use of rifle grenades for about 100 years,
they really liked those things.
- Yeah, interestingly never really caught on in the US.
In my time in the military you only fired them a few times.
I remember one time a guy firing one with his Colt CAR-15,
and he collapsed the buttstock and put the weapon against the ground,
and he fired it, and it cracked the buttstock.
Oh yeah, as you can imagine that ... plastic CAR-15 buttstock
taking that rifle grenade shock against the ground, it cracked it like a big dog.
- Damn. Well ... let's see, actually there's two other things here.
One is I noticed there's no front sling swivel on this guy.
- Yeah, real common. I don't know that I have ever seen a picture of a Rhodesian soldier
using a sling, they generally did not use the slings at all.
- Interesting. - They'd take off the sling swivels to prevent rattle.
Now this particular one, the buttstock still has the sling swivel, but up front it's long gone.
- The rear one's not really noisy in the way the front one can be. - Correct.
- And then of course ... the really cool thing here is this very unique muzzle device,
- Yep, the Halbek device. - Yeah.
So obviously you've got the three holes there that
line up with the holes in the original muzzle brake.
So that's a standard FN muzzle brake. - Yep, correct, absolutely.
And they came up with this, you see that little detent right there, that ball that's soldered on.
This particular weapon I fired not too long ago, that's why it's a little dirty.
And you see the way it is set up, where it lines up with the holes,
and you also have the little deflector plates. - Yeah.
- And you slide it on and index it where you want
and then close it up, and you can index off the holes.
Once you close it up like that, now you can pivot this clip around and slide it on.
And it keeps it from sliding forward because of this little piece here that's welded on.
- OK, neat. - And you can set it up, like I said, for a right or left-handed shooter.
- Yeah, those two vents are going to take what would be ... the left and right side holes,
and deflect them upward.
- Now, like a lot of this stuff, this is a cool item and whatnot, and you see pictures of it.
I don't know that I've really seen pictures of anybody in the field using it.
It's one of those things that could have been developed, but honestly just didn't see much use.
- OK, you've shot one you said, ... this one.
- Yeah, I've shot this one just recently for a video, and ... it was pretty controllable.
- OK, it did seem to make a difference? - Yeah, I do believe it did. - Oh that's cool, nice.
Alright, anything else unique on there we ought to take a look at?
- No. Just overall a neat gun. You're talking about a gun that saw tremendous amount of combat.
... The FAL of the Cold War era
saw more combat in Rhodesia than any other place in the world by far.
And generally held in very high regard by the soldiers that used it.
It's kind of one of the symbols of the Rhodesian Bush War, the FAL in general.
So by and large it's a gun that's kind of legendary for its use in that particular conflict.
- Well, really cool to take a look at a genuine Rhodesian FAL.
Rhodesia of course is kind of a special area of interest for a lot of people,
It's ... a lesser known war, it's one of the African bush wars.
And of course it is one of the classic recent wars of communists against anti-communists.
- Absolutely, and unfortunately we had the liberal western governments at the time,
both in the United States and England, that essentially threw the Rhodesians under the bus,
and basically appeased the communists.
And we see where that's all ended up, it's pretty sad. Really the Rhodesian war is a sad war.
- They went from a government that was not good for a lot of people
to a government under Mugabe that was not good for anybody.
- Everybody, yeah, exactly. - And it's interesting that Mugabe, ... when we're filming this,
Mugabe has just recently been kicked out of power, it'll be interesting to see what happens.
Hopefully, Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, can improve itself. I don't know that things look good.
- Well yeah, I mean it's hard to get any worse. - Yeah, exactly.
So, thank you very much for taking your time to walk us through this awesome FAL. - You're welcome.
We'll see you guys again next time on Forgotten Weapons.
Thanks for watching.