hi guys thanks for tuning in to another
video on Forgotten weapons comm I'm Ian
McCallum and today we're taking a look
at a French model of 1950 automatic
pistol in French nomenclature this is
typically called a PA 1950 or be still
ultimate ich automatic pistol in
American nomenclature it's typically
called a Mac 1950 because most of the
ones here in the US have Mack written
big on the side of the slide that is the
manufacture d'Armes de shuttle Aero the
shallow hetero arms factory where most
of the ones in the US were actually made
so same gun they were actually
manufactured both by the chatelherault
Arsenal and the Sun and TN Arsenal shop
LOL first son NPN afterwards
but we'll get into that in a minute the
when this pistol was first developed it
was the years just following World War
two and in 1946 the French military put
out a request for a standard service
automatic pistol to replace what was
currently in French service now at that
point what was currently in French
service was kind of like everything the
French had not had a very stable
political system between World Wars 1
and 2 and so there hadn't been a lot of
effective progress at improving French
small-arms between the wars and of
course France was occupied during the
vast majority of World War two didn't
have a whole lot of you know
chance to improve their small arms
during that period of course and so by
1946 the French military was using this
conglomeration of guns from World War
one so they had star automatic pistols
Ruby automatic pistols 1892 pattern
revolvers and then they were using they
also had various American lend-lease
sort of war assistance guns so they had
Colt 1911's and then they also had guns
that were manufactured under well
manufactured German guns either captured
or manufactured under French control in
the aftermath of world war ii they had
Lugar's they had p38 they had mauser
HSCs
and of course they had the new automatic
test bolts that France had developed
just prior to World War two the model of
1935
and s pistols so not counting Nambu that
may have been in service in French
Indochina that's nine different guns
using five different cartridges that's a
mess and it really made sense that by
the late 1940s the French were ready to
just get rid of all that and be able to
simplify to one standard model pistol
and that's what the model of 1950 was so
the requirements went out in 1946 there
were trials but they were kind of all a
foregone conclusion as as far as anyone
can tell while there was a trial in 1950
and it included four different guns two
pistols from Simon TN one pistol from
SACM which was a company that had done
the model 1935 a a commercial enterprise
and then also there was a Sig model of
SP 40 7/8 that's the commercial version
of what would become the Sig 210 service
pistol and that gun wasn't actually
supplied by Sig it was purchased
commercially by the French for this
trial however going into the trial
everyone really knew that the Sun Indian
pistol was the one being adopted the
trial was there just kind of out of
curiosity just to see how the other guns
compared as it turned out the sig pistol
was kind of the best one of the trial
but wasn't going to be adopted because
they weren't going to adopt it the sig
p210 is a magnificent reliable accurate
very nice gun the 1950 model pistols
that were in that trial actually had
some problems with durability they
developed cracks and broken parts and so
despite being the the foregone
conclusion of the trials they did have
to go back and modify the design after
the trials to fix those issues which
they did by 1951 they had an improved
model they went through an endurance
test of 8,500 rounds without any
problems it was deemed probably
magnifique good for adoption and adopted
production began in 1953 at the Sun in
TN Arsenal I'm sorry the shuttle ro
Arsenal where they produce them in
batches of 10,000
with serial number prefix so they
started with a zero zero zero one and
went through a ninety nine ninety nine
and then went to B 1 through B nine nine
nine nine etcetera they got into the W
series they made a total of two hundred
and twenty one thousand nine hundred of
those guns between 1953 and 1963 and in
the early 60s the shuttle era arsenal
was actually shot down so production
transferred over to the Sun and TN
Arsenal which was still running Sun and
TN made another hundred and twenty
thousand of those of these pistols
although their serial number system was
slightly different they did batches of a
hundred thousand and so they only had
two serial number prefixes the first
batch were SH and then the second batch
were F G one through 99999 so in total
340 1900 of these guns were manufactured
that sounds like a lot but they are
actually quite scarce in the United
States and actually pretty scarce around
the rest of the world as well because
they were never really sold by the
French to anyone they're never exported
in any significant number they weren't
sold commercially the the French
Arsenal's are government-run Arsenal's
and they don't have the profit motive or
really the governmental permission to go
just selling guns commercially to people
outside of France so these were adopted
as a standard French service pistol for
all service branches the army the Air
Force the Navy even slightly outside the
military the National Police the John
Dahmer II were issued these guns and
they were also sent apparently in fairly
small numbers to a few African African
countries that had French colonial ties
but not very many there's a decent
chance that a lot of the ones that came
into the United States actually came
through some of those countries it
sounds like there was actually a very
small number imported into the u.s. in
the early 1960s and I'm not sure exactly
what the circumstances of that
importation work but beyond that the
ones that are here in the US are us vet
bring backs from Vietnam because these
did see service in French Indochina I
believe they were also supplied by the
French to true
in Cambodia and Vietnam in Laos and
other French connected countries and
there's from there they could have found
their way into the Vietnam War which
then got them brought back here by
American servicemen so they're hard to
find here production ended in 1978 these
are still in service with French
military units although typically
frontline combat troops are getting more
modern guns like beretta 92s
the bread in 92 was adopted after this
many decades after this but though the
bread in 92 is also in French frontline
service mat seems seems more action than
these do anymore these are getting kind
of old and they're kind of obsolete
pistols at this point so mechanically
what we have here is basically a 1911
with a few product improvements the lock
work is improved it has a captive recoil
spring super easy to take apart which is
pretty cool we'll get to that in just a
moment
it is chambered for the standard nine by
nineteen millimeter cartridge nine
millimetre parabellum earlier French
guns had use various well the the 765
browning long cartridge which was pretty
much only used by the French they got
rid of that and with that they also got
rid of the possibility of using blowback
pistol so this is locked breech just
like a 1911 has a single stack nine
round magazine which we'll take a look
at in a moment it is single action only
it has a manual safety on it as well as
a magazine safety but no grip safety and
in general it took quite reliable pistol
but it's kind of an obsolete gun nine
rounds doesn't give you that much
capacity you don't have adjustable sight
you don't have a lot of the improvements
that more modern guns do so why don't we
go ahead and pull this apart because
really one of the cool parts about it is
just how easy it is to disassemble
looking at the markings on here you can
see on the left side of the slide we
have that MA see that's because this
example was made at Shell teller row
when manufactured transferred to son and
TN which by the way ran from 63 until 78
the 17 pistols are marked ma s then on
the other side we're going to have model
1950 calibre nine-millimeter on the
slides that's the
entered everywhere and then a serial
number down here you'll see this is a si
prefix gun so this would be the twenty
four thousand two hundred and forty
first gun manufactured this is a pretty
early one this would date from probably
fifty four or maybe fifty five exactly
what this kind of burnished Brown red
finish color on the slide is I'm
honestly not sure but I think it looks
pretty cool alright before we do
disassembly let's take a quick look at
some of the controls there's really
nothing on this side except the trigger
on this side we have magazine release
button these magazines do drop free
nicely which is cool we have a slide
release which is kind of
self-explanatory and we have a safety
back here now this is this safety is
probably one of the downsides of the
pistol it is a hammer block only so when
you flip it up what it does is prevent
the hammer from actually hitting the
firing pin it hits the safety drum
instead and thus doesn't fire so to fire
you flip the safety down and then that
allows the hammer to go all the way
inward so to take the gun apart we're
going to lock it open check will do that
with the magazine once it's locked open
here all you have to do is hold the
slide in position and push the slide
stop out from this side slide stop comes
out slide comes off the top of the gun
that's the main disassembly then we can
take the recoil spring out it is a
captive recoil spring assembly which is
a nice improvement over the 1911 the
barrel then comes out you can see we
have two locking lugs cut in the top of
the barrel with matching recesses in the
top of the slide just like a 1911 so
that's the whole slide assembly
field-stripped now with the 1911 you
next have kind of this massive of bits
in the back so the whole fire control
group and one thing that they did nicely
on this was
you unitize that all into one block so
there is the mainspring the sear the
hammer the ejector all of the
potentially breakable working bits of
the action just come out in one unit so
if you're in military service and
something breaks pretty much anything
breaks all you have to do is drop a new
one of these units into the gun which is
really easy to do you just get after
right there drop it in and you're done
that's it so that is a really cool
element this like many of the features
of the nineteen fifty was carried over
from the model of 1935 s pistol in fact
here's a 35 as you can see that the
safety mechanisms are basically
identical the trigger mechanism is
identical all of this stuff is pretty
much identical this gun also has the
single unitized fire control group that
comes out but this is in 765 browning
long the 1950 is scaled up and has a
slightly different locking system that
goes back to the standard browning
system oh I should also point out this
bar in the top of the slide is a loaded
chamber indicator it works in
conjunction with this little slot in the
top of the barrel so that's it the thing
is really simple to take apart really
not much to it at all all right I think
the thing to do now is actually to go
out and do some shooting with this I
actually took this out to a tactical
style run and gun pistol match and there
was enough shooting footage there that I
put that together all as its own
standalone video so take a look at the
description text below you'll find a
link to that second video where I
actually go out and do a bunch of
shooting with this and get some some
kind of first-hand impressions of the
gun and how it handles thanks for
watching I hope you guys enjoyed the
video if you did please do consider
checking out my page on patreon
it's the folks there that make it
possible for me to do things like run
this in tactical matches because I have
to go buy a bunch of rare and expensive
magazines in order to do so at any rate
hope you enjoyed it
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