Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Morphy's
taking a look at a very special firearm.
This is an FN MAG, specifically a Model 60-20,
which is the standard infantry ground version of the gun.
This is ... almost certainly the most successful Western machine gun of really all time.
It is, if anything, the Western equivalent to the Soviet PK and PKM.
And it is a gun that has been adopted by more than 100 countries,
more than a million of them have been built.
It is the gold standard of belt-fed general purpose machine guns in the West.
So let's take a closer look at it today.
Certainly there are a lot of American service troops
who are quite familiar with a bunch of different versions of this.
But what we have here is an original FN production one.
This isn't one of the models that's in US military service,
this is FN's standard export version.
And this ... was developed in 1957.
It was designed by a guy named Ernest Vervier,
who took over the role of FN's chief military arms designer in 1954.
And he replaced a guy named Dieudonné Saive,
who had been the apprentice and replacement for John Moses Browning.
So Vervier is the third man in a pretty prestigious list of arms designers.
Vervier would also be instrumental in designing the FN CAL and the FN Minimi.
But to get back to our story.
The Swedes had been attempting to convert the BAR to belt feed.
The Swedish military had used the BAR from the 1920s onward in 6.5x55 calibre.
They really liked it, and they wanted a belt-fed version to give it a little more firepower.
But they weren't able to actually make it work as a belt-fed gun.
And so they approached FN to see if FN could.
Of course, FN was the company that was actually producing the BAR
for commercial ... international sales after World War Two.
FN took a look at this, gave the project to Vervier and he came up with the FN MAG.
Which is fundamentally a Browning BAR action flipped upside down.
I'll ... compare ... the bolts between this and a BAR in a few moments.
But in 1958 the gun was formally adopted by the Swedish military.
Incidentally still in 6.5mm which would be a really interesting gun, this in 6.5.
They did convert to 7.62 NATO a few years later, 1962, for ... standardisation with NATO.
Sweden, at least as of the time of this recording, is not actually a NATO member.
But they use the same cartridge.
So, from there FN went on to sell these things to basically everybody and their brothers.
So let's take a look at how it actually works internally.
And then we'll talk about the American usage of the FN MAG.
There are basically no markings on this thing,
so we're going to skip straight through to some controls.
Although first I will point out that FN MAG stands for "Mitrailleuse d'Appui Général",
or general purpose machine gun, which is exactly what this is.
Up at the front here we have an adjustable gas port, and by the way,
yeah, this gun's been fired quite a lot and not cleaned as well as it should have been.
But we have 1, 2 and 3 gas port settings.
These equate to approximately 700, 800 and 900 rounds per minute,
or of course better reliability if the gun gets really, really dirty.
This particular one has an optics bracket on the side.
But let's take a closer look at the iron sight.
It is an aperture adjustable out to 800 metres.
And there is the aperture itself. It is then worth pointing out
that this sight is totally non-adjustable other than range.
There is no windage or elevation adjustment here.
And that's not an accident, it's only the front sight that is adjustable
because this is designed to have multiple barrels for sustained fire.
And if you're going to have multiple barrels
it's important that they all be zeroed at the front sight,
so that when you change barrels you don't lose your zero.
So we have a little bracket here that locks this front sight in place.
In order to adjust the elevation you lift that bracket up, and you can thread this up and down.
And then the entire front sight block here can be adjusted
left to right for windage using these screw settings.
There is the standard flash hider that came on the MAG.
Again, US guns have some different attachments,
as do a few of the other countries that have adopted the FN MAG.
For firing controls it's pretty simple, there is no semi-auto switch: it is full-auto or nothing.
There is a cross-bolt safety here.
This position is fire, push it through over to the right and you're in safe.
I should also point out that later versions do incorporate Picatinny rails on the top cover
for sort of a more modern optics mounting solution.
Now to access the feed mechanism, we have two buttons here on the side of the top cover.
Squeeze those in, you can lift this up,
and it is held in place by ... effectively a spring detent,
either in the perfectly vertical position, or the mostly vertical position.
We then also have a feed tray here.
The MAG is designed to use either US M13 links, that's the M60 link,
or German DM1 belts, those are essentially the modern version of the MG34/42 belt.
... The M13s are individual links, the DM1s are ... actually 50 round belt segments.
So the feed tray is different depending on which style of link or belt you're going to use.
Now this is an open bolt firing gun, so when it is ready to fire the bolt is locked rearward.
The charging handle locks forward and is non-reciprocating.
We have a roller here that is going to operate the top cover, I'll show you that when we pull it off.
And also worth pointing out that ... the top cover can only be closed
when the bolt is locked in the rearward position.
There is a dust cover on the bottom which is going to automatically open
when the bolt closes or when the bolt opens.
So that's your ejection port right there, and this just keeps gunk and crap from getting into it.
Leaving the gun upside down for a moment, the bipod (which is aluminium by the way),
snaps into place rather easily right there for stowage and transport.
And in order to remove it, you actually have to push down on this locking tab.
Until you do, that tab prevents the bipod legs from coming inward.
Once it's down ... these can lift up.
We will begin disassembly with the barrel.
And this process is actually almost identical to the FN D barrel removal.
Which makes sense, ... they were manufacturing FN DA1s
at the same time that they were making the first FN MAGs.
So what you do is depress this button.
And then I want to lock this handle in the downward position,
lift it up to unlock the barrel, and then pull forward.
There are a set of interrupted threads here on the barrel that are connected to the handle.
So when I put the barrel in, I put it in vertically, lock this down.
And then this lever allows me to detach the handle from the locking lugs,
so it can be in the down to the side position when you're shooting,
and in the vertical position for carrying the gun.
You wouldn't normally take the top cover off as part of a basic field stripping,
but we'll go ahead and do it here just to show you.
And I'm actually going to use a punch to get that started.
There we go.
And then I can lift the top cover off.
So here's the top cover mechanism, this is
basically identical to the MG42 which pretty much everybody has copied.
You'll notice it is spring-loaded, and this is why
this roller has to be in the rearward position to close the top cover.
Because if it's forward, the spring is pushing
this part of the cam track over to that side, and it won't line up here.
When this is closed this pin would normally be holding the cam track on this side
as part of the process of pulling a belt in.
The feed tray can come out as well.
Now the more important bits of field stripping.
I'm going to go ahead and take the pistol grip off next.
There is one cross pin back here that holds it in place.
Pull that out ... and the pistol grip just slides right off.
And again this is a really simple firing mechanism: pull trigger, sear drops.
As long as the sear up here has dropped, nothing is holding the bolt
and it will fire until you release the trigger.
Now we can take off the buttstock.
Just depress this latch, and the buttstock
that's just going to clear up through a set of rails right there.
We do have a buffer here in the back of the buttstock, but that's about it.
Now the recoil spring, this is kind of like one of the Browning aircraft guns.
The recoil spring is captive, and it's locked into the back of the receiver here.
I just push it in, and then up, and ...
it will come out ... like so.
This is a multi-coil spring, a really good, durable, powerful style of spring.
And now at long last, I can actually pull out the operating parts.
So we have our gas piston, operating rod, essentially bolt carrier,
and then we have our bolt out here.
So the way this works, this is the unlocked travelling orientation.
When this hits the breech face and stops,
the two pins back here allow the bottom end to keep going.
That drops this arm right here downward, and that is going to lock it in place.
If we look in the receiver, our locking shoulder is right here.
So if I put the bolt assembly in without the spring,
as I bring this forward the bolt is going to hit the breech face right there.
So right there it stops moving, this does.
And then we're going to see this arm drop down and lock in place,
so that the bolt can't come backwards.
The gas piston, however, will push directly back on this.
So once you fire, this is going to come back, it's going to lift ... that one arm up.
Once it's all the way clear of the locking lugs, it then pulls the bolt back
to eject the empty cartridge down out past our ejection port cover there.
And then it's ready to pick up a new cartridge from the belt.
Now let me pop this connecting pin out.
Then I can pull ... the bolt and the locking arm off.
You can see the firing pin here is held in place by this little roll pin.
... It's permanently in place, it can be removed
but then you need to replace it with a new roll pin, so I'm going to leave that in there.
But the firing pin is actually fixed to this, which means if this is not all the way forward
the firing pin can't protrude forward and the gun can't fire.
Now I told you I would compare the FN MAG bolt to the FN D bolt.
This is ... essentially the original BAR.
And you can see here that they are essentially the same gun.
We've got our two position pivot right here.
On the FN D this is the locking surface.
And what it actually does is (the magazine's on the bottom for the FN D),
so this, when it locks, pivots up into the locking shoulder in the top of the receiver.
The FN MAG simply reverses that, and pivots down
into a locking shoulder on the bottom of the receiver.
But fundamentally, these are the same operating principle.
So in essence the FN MAG is the ghost of John Moses Browning coming back to make
what is still today the world's most popular Western general purpose machine gun.
And lastly we can take a look at the receiver here,
and there's in some ways some real anachronisms going on.
This is manufactured as essentially two side plates riveted into a big front trunnion here
that has the barrel and gas system interfaces.
A bottom plate that has the dust cover, the ejection port, an opening for the fire control group.
And also ... here and here, tripod mounting points.
... Obviously a general purpose .30 calibre gun like this
is just begging for a tripod for long range, sustained, precision fire.
And then of course you've got your rear top block with the rear sight.
So the construction method here is actually very similar
to things like the Maxims and early Brownings.
And this is part of why the gun is so heavy.
Competitors like the PK series use a lot of stamped sheet metal,
which is a more efficient, if potentially more fragile or more easily damaged construction.
This was first introduced to the international market in 1958.
It would take the United States nearly 20 years to come around to using it in any form.
And the first American use of this was as a coaxial gun on tanks.
The US had developed the M73 and then M85 tank machine guns,
which were both pretty much complete failures.
They were attempts to shorten the overall length of a Browning machine gun,
and they just didn't work well.
So the US went looking for a replacement coaxial tank gun.
And in 1977 they did some trials of the FN MAG,
as well as guns like the coaxial version of the M60.
The FN MAG came out on top, like by a lot.
In 1975 trials, the FN MAG in testing
went just under 3,000 rounds on average between having any sort of stoppage.
And nearly 6,500 rounds on average between actual failures.
Which is to say something that requires more than basically just running the charging handle to fix.
It is a phenomenally reliable gun.
Now it pays for that in weight, this thing weighs about 26 pounds
which is just under 12 kilos.
So it's a heavy gun, especially compared to something like a Soviet PKM.
But it just always works.
Anyway, the US would adopt this in 1977 as a coaxial gun.
It would then go on to adopt it in other variations for other service branches and uses.
All the way through until 1995 when it ... completely replaced the ... M60E3
as the US infantry general purpose machine gun.
Now by that point the US military was also using the FN Minimi
as the M249, as a 5.56 squad automatic weapon.
So ... if we continue to use the PK comparison,
the PK is the basic single support belt-fed machine gun in ... any sort of unit organisation.
In the United States military there are two guns that can fulfil that role,
the .30 calibre M240, and the .223 calibre M249.
At any rate, this would defeat the M60E4 in trials
to become the new US standard .30 calibre machine gun in 1995.
The US continues to use it, continues to buy it, continues to look at new variations of it.
The US ... has acquired, and will probably be acquiring more of, the 240L variant.
Which is a version that cuts about 5.5 pounds out of the weight
through a shortened barrel, lightened stock, and the use of titanium in a bunch of the parts.
Which is a very interesting, and I can only imagine how expensive, sort of improvement program.
But the US has thousands of 240Ls, and looks to be buying quite a lot more of them.
So this is really one of the most influential and fundamentally successful
general purpose machine guns of the Western post-World War Two world.
And very cool to get a chance to take a look at this one.
This is of course fully registered in the US, this is a pre-1986 dealer sample.
There are only something like two dozen of these on the registry
that aren't post-86 samples in the US, so they are very rare guns to see here in the States.
Very cool for Morphy's to have this one, and give me a chance to film it for you guys.
Thanks for watching.