Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are going to
look at a super cool unicorn of a rifle here.
I do want to point out first however, that I am filming this
in conjunction with the pre-sale release of my first book,
"Chassepot to FAMAS, French Military Rifles, 1866-2016",
and you should definitely go over and pre-order yourself a copy.
If you're still watching this video you're probably interested in either my work or French military rifles,
or small arms development in general and you'll enjoy the book.
So, without any further ado,
this guy is a French MAS 49-56 in calibre 7.62mm NATO.
And while there are a lot of those floating around the Unites States
as conversions done by Century International Arms
when they imported 49-56s,
there was only a very small production run of these guns
by the Saint-Étienne factory originally in 7.62 NATO.
So the question is why?
Well ... until 1966 France was a member of NATO,
part of the integrated military command structure of NATO.
And when in the ... mid-1950s when NATO started to look at standardising all of its small arms,
which of course is part of the big controversy of the M14 versus the FAL versus the EM-2.
While all of that's going on, of course France is in NATO as well, and France is sitting here with their
they have at that point the MAS 49 rifle which is a pretty darn good rifle.
And it's also a rifle that would appear to be very readily convertible to this new American
T65 cartridge that's going to become 7.62 NATO, because it's already got the same diameter bullet,
it's very close in bullet weight, in muzzle velocity, should be kind of an easy thing to do.
So, during this time period the French are doing a couple of things.
They are looking at developing a brand new rifle that's going to be a little more modern,
and be better and faster and cooler and all that sort of stuff,
as a way to integrate into NATO with 7.62mm NATO ammunition.
And kind of as one of their backup plans, they also look at, "Well, it costs a lot of money to buy all new rifles,
what if we get a few new rifles and then we also convert our existing rifles over to the new cartridge?"
And that's where this comes about.
So at the same time they were doing this, by the way, they were also
modernising their MAS 49 and turning it into the MAS 49-56.
This program in 7.62 NATO ... the production would start in the late 1950s.
So 1957, '58 they produced the guns, they did testing from like '59 through '61 or '62.
By 1963 they'd scrapped the whole thing.
So, before we go farther, let me go ahead and show you exactly what differentiates this
from a Century Arms conversion.
Alright, so I should probably talk about this stock for a moment as well, because that's going to attract some attention, like,
"Hey, ... it actually addresses the one big handling issue of the 49-56, it's got a real pistol grip."
Well, when these experimental NATO calibre rifles were made
there were a couple of different styles of stocks that were used on them.
There was one that was basically the same style as the original 49-56 but with a longer length of pull.
And they also used some of these. This would go on to also be used on the MSE 49-56 competition rifles.
And it's the exact same stock that would be used on the FR-F1 sniper rifles as well.
So, having discussed that, and by the way there is also a cheek rest which would be used
when these rifles were equipped with telescopic sights, this brings your line of sight up nicely.
(Put that on there, so.)
There's actually two versions of this. I believe this is the tall one and there's also a slightly lower one. ...
This raises your cheek a little bit uncomfortably high for the iron sights,
but very nicely for the APX optical sight.
Alright, ... the markings, what distinguishes a real 7.62 NATO rifle from a Century import,
that is primarily the serial number and the calibre markings.
So, on a normal 49-56 you would have a serial number vertically right here,
it would be a G or H prefix number.
On this ... trials batch of rifles, they instead actually used "No", number, "nombre",
and a three digit serial number.
So they made 150 of these, the serial numbers started at ... 101, and went to 250.
So that is what you would expect for a serial number on these.
And you'll find that serial number on several other parts as well, and they ought to match.
In addition the calibre markings, where ... a normal 49-56 would be "Cal 7.5", this is "Cal 7.62 N".
And what Century did on theirs was they took 7.5, they over-stamped the 5 to be a 6, they added a 2.
And they'll often be marked .308 as well.
So ... once you know what to look for it's actually really easy to distinguish the real one from one of the Century ones.
Now, it's very unlikely that one would simply run into one of these guys like randomly at a gun show,
because there's only something like 8 or 10 of these that were imported into the United States.
Alright, let's go ahead and take this apart.
... Actually the magazine here is actually marked MAS 7.62 N,
however, as far as I can tell there is absolutely no difference, and from what I've been able to find
in the literature, they expected that the magazines could be used without changes.
And so they didn't make any changes to the mags.
Now the rest of the disassembly is going to go just like a standard 49-56.
The people who have Century Arms conversions typically will complain about a couple of problems.
They'll complain about stuck chambers, they'll complain about slam fires (if they don't replace the firing pin).
And, interestingly, these are the exact same problems that the French military ran into, ... what a shock.
So, they originally thought that this would be a really simple conversion, because the cartridges seem so similar.
However, as it actually turns out,
the powder that ... was used in the 7.62 NATO ammunition had a substantially faster burn rate
than the powder that the French had been using in their 7.5x54 ammunition.
And ... that 7.5 was what they had designed this whole rifle's operating system around.
So when they started using 7.62 NATO, they found basically chamber pressures were a lot higher than they expected,
bolt velocities were higher than they expected, they had a lot of parts breakage as a result.
They had problems with soft NATO primers causing double strikes and slam fires.
And they had problems with cases getting stuck, if the chamber pressure is too high when you try to extract the case,
it'll stick, you'll tear through the rim or otherwise fail to extract the cartridge.
So, interestingly, the same problems that Century had are exactly the same problems that the French military had.
So, let's take a look at the internals.
They did recognise the issue of
an overly heavy firing pin causing problems with light primered ammunition.
As I've mentioned before, the French 7.5 ammo was made with a pretty remarkably heavy, or tough, primer.
There is a spring in here, so.
And it tends to on commercial rifles cause slam fires.
So the spring in this one is missing, but there was originally a firing pin ... return spring there,
and the whole firing pin has been lightened.
So here is a regular MAS 49 or 49-56 firing pin,
and there is the modified 7.62 NATO version. So a lot lighter.
We do also have a 7.62 NATO marking on the bolt.
And it's interesting to me to note that the cam surface here that helps run the bolt is totally squared off.
Compared to a regular 49-56 here, that's kind of curved.
Here's one out of a MAS 49 that is also pretty distinctively curved right in there.
There on the 7.62 NATO one it's completely squared off.
The bolt face has been changed just slightly, notice how the firing pin hole is
smaller in diameter to accommodate that smaller NATO firing pin.
And the recoil spring is actually a little bit shorter.
This is something also that Century did, and if you read on-line you'll find a lot of people calling Century
blithering idiots for cutting like a couple coils off their recoil springs.
Well, if we line up three of these as they came out of rifles.
That's a 49, that's a 49-56, and that is our NATO calibre example.
Just like 2 coils shorter than a standard recoil spring.
Century didn't do that for no reason, they did it because that's what the French had done.
I don't know if you can make it out here, but it's also interesting that these little side plates,
... these are just there as covers.
So you have to machine out this, basically this hook, which serves to unlock the bolt on the whole MAS series of rifles,
and on the standard production ones they have these little metal cover plates
that slide in there just to prevent crap from getting in.
... And it makes it much easier to actually manufacture the gun to be able to
just cut this all the way through and then put a little cover plate over it.
So on these we've got kind of a rounded corner up in there and those metal cover plates.
On the NATO calibre one they actually used a plastic
for that cover plate. And you can see that they've made a square cut that then has a radius in it
to avoid creating a stress concentration, which is interesting.
Presumably part of their attempt to get away from some of the parts breakage that plagued these rifles.
So speaking of parts breakage, the standard that the French military
bureaucracy ... wanted to hold these rifles to was 6,000 rounds without any parts breakage.
And they were by 1962 or so they were unable to reach that,
and at that point this whole program was scrapped.
I find it a little predictable and rather entertaining that the problems that the French had
that led to them abandoning this concept, because of port pressure basically,
are exactly the same sort of problems that people typically report with Century Arms conversion guns.
And they'll often blame this on poor conversion work done by Century, and that may contribute to it, but
the French military spent several years working on this problem and they ended up just scrapping it.
They realised, "You know what? It would require so much modification to the rifle that it's just not cost effective,
and it's not worth it, and we're not going to bother."
So, that leaves these 150 rifles as a really cool
little piece of history from the original French NATO experimentation.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video and learnt something about a cool new rifle.
If you are interested in this and all of the other ... rifles that France used, from the Franco-Prussian war
through basically the present day in Central and Northern Africa,
you should head over to Kickstarter, check out my book and order yourself a copy.
We have ... three different versions of it available. We have a special Kickstarter only edition
that you will only be able to get as part of this pre-sale. So, that's of course pretty cool.
And, well if nothing else, just go over and take a look at the awesome photography that's in the book.
Thanks for watching.
[ sub by sk cn2 ]