Hi guys. Thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are taking a look at a
experimental British kind of a last-ditch light machine gun,
except it was a first-ditch light machine gun.
Because for the British, the emergency weapons came at
the beginning of the war and the nicer versions came
at the end of the war. To some extent.
This is called either a Faulkner light machine gun
or a Besal light machine gun, and to be honest,
I'm not sure where the name Besal comes from.
If you know that, then let me know in the comments.
The name Faulkner comes from the gun's designer,
Mr Faulkner. He was an employee of BSA and what he
designed here is basically a simplified version of the Bren gun.
In fact, an interesting way to think about this is
that this is the British equivalent of the MG42.
The MG42 was the simplified, mass production
replacement for the MG34, just as this was intended to be
the simplified, sort of mass production, version of the Bren.
Now the historical backdrop to this gun is based on Dunkirk. At the evacuation at Dunkirk
the British Expeditionary Force lost basically all of its Bren light machine guns,
and as soon as they got back home everyone in England was really quite panicky that,
"Oh my god, we're about to be invaded by Germany."
And there was a very distinct possibility that Germany would, in fact, conduct a land invasion of Great Britain.
They didn't, but nobody knew that at the time. So having lost production of the Bren and
... and there being only one main production facility where the Bren gun could be made, this is a problem.
So the Bren gun is based on this very complex ... milled receiver,
it starts as a gigantic block of steel and gets turned into a very complex receiver.
And only the Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield was capable of producing it.
That was a problem, Enfield was a very easy bombing target. Everyone knows where it is,
you can't exactly move it, and of course Enfield is busily cranking out all manner of firearms.
So what the British decided they needed was something that could be produced by basically mechanics,
home shops, automotive garages. This was in fact known in some circles as the Garage Gun.
It was a simplified version. So instead of having a complex fabricated receiver, it would be made from lots
of square parts pinned and riveted together or welded together to form the more complex shapes.
Wherever possible curved parts would be removed, replaced with square parts.
It is really apparently a quite ingenious design, and apparently it's a reasonably impressive firearm
in terms of practical functionality. However it didn't turn out to be necessary.
So the first guns were available, ... the prototypes were built by March of 1941 and in 1942 they went into testing.
But by the time the testing was coming along on these, they weren't really necessary any more.
Bren gun production at Inglis in Canada had stepped up, things weren't looking quite as grim,
it wasn't nearly as likely that the Germans were actually going to invade the British Isles,
and so this whole project, the technical package, the prototypes and everything
were kind of set on the shelf as a contingency plan and never ultimately used.
As a result, there very few of these left today, in fact, this is the only one that I'm aware of,
although there may be others around somewhere.
There were in fact two versions of the Faulkner, or the Besal, this is a Mark 2.
The Mark 1 had a standard cocking handle and actually used standard Bren gun ... barrels as well as Bren gun magazines.
The Mark 2 here, which I think would have been the production version, still used a Bren gun magazine
but it used a different barrel and instead of having a charging handle, it actually charged using the [pistol grip].
This is a system that ... has been used on a number of Czech machine guns,
and it's worthwhile to point out that the British had a pretty close relationship with the arms factory
at Brno as a result of the Bren gun (which does , of course, stand for Brno and Enfield, B R E N).
And so it's not surprising in retrospect to think that they would have adopted some elements from Czech firearms design.
Now in order to cycle this, there is a little latch at the back. I'm going to depress that, that allows me to
pull the charging handle, the ... grip, pistol grip, bolt handle (it's all the same thing) back into the firing position.
It is an open bolt gun so from here, when I pull the trigger, the bolt will drop, kerchunk, like that.
Then to re-cock the gun I push up on this catch, push the pistol grip forward to grab the bolt, pull it back to cock the bolt.
It's actually a pretty simple system and, like I said, this reportedly was a pretty good gun.
It just didn't turn out to be necessary.
Let's go ahead and take it apart and I'll show you the internals.
So, disassembly on the Besal is going to focus on a couple primary components.
We have this pin which allows us to remove the butt-stock,
and then this plunger is what locks the recoil spring assembly into the receiver.
So in order to take this out, we're going to start by removing the magazine.
While we are at this stage I do want to point out that it does
have a magazine dust cover that locks in place like that.
Which is easily opened by simply opening the mag catch.
Next, we can pull this pin and pull the butt-stock off. Pretty simple set of surfaces back here.
This round hole is what locks onto the bottom and then the assembly pin goes through those two holes.
Note that the stock is flat on the sides, not
contoured any more than absolutely necessary.
There is a lug back here for a rear monopod mount. That is ...
way too tight for me to open at the moment, but that's very similar to a Bren gun.
Next up I'm going to disconnect the recoil spring by taking this plunger and pulling it down.
There we go.
Now I can take the pistol grip assembly off the gun by simply pulling it out the back.
I'm going to pull the trigger to disconnect it from the bolt assembly.
There we go.
Now you can see that pulling the trigger simply drops this very simple sear.
That releases the bolt. This is a full-auto only firearm, there is no semi-auto mode. And then this latch is
what locks the pistol grip to the rear.
That latch catches on this surface here.
Next we can pull the bolt and op rod out.
That just slides out the back.
Note the similarity to the Bren gun setup with a gas piston here, which is also the integral op rod.
But instead of being contoured, and nice and round, and lightweight (well relatively lightweight),
this is all made out of square components that are particularly easy to machine.
The bolt is going to slide right off the back, right like this.
This lug is our locking lug. It's going to cycle up and down.
When it's in the upward position it locks the bolt, in the downward position the bolt can travel.
And this pin runs in a cam in the bolt carrier, which causes the locking block to run up and down.
It is also very easy to take out. Then we can remove the locking block.
Note that the locking block is also a very simple, easy to manufacture component.
Everything in this block ... note that there are no compound cuts, everything is simplified for manufacture.
... The firing pin is right here, and it is spring loaded.
(There you go.)
And then these two lugs are there to strip cartridges out of the magazine.
In the bolt carrier assembly we have this centre hole, that's what the plunger in the receiver goes through,
and what that does is lock the recoil spring into the receiver so that ... these two springs,
compress in this direction when the bolt and op rod go backwards.
Right here, you can see the angled slot that operates the locking surface.
Then the way this actually functions is, in its unlocked position here,
it will travel forward under spring pressure. The bolt face here will hit the face of the barrel and stop.
The bolt carrier and op rod underneath are still being pushed forward.
When they start to go forward you can see that the locking surface here lifts
just like that, locks into place and then this surface, right here, hits the firing pin
compresses it like that. You can see the firing pin ...
protrudes ... through right there, and the gun fires. It fires from an open bolt only.
As soon as it does fire, the op rod is then pushed backward by gas pressure,
which is going to cycle like this, drop the locking lug
and then the whole thing goes backward to cycle.
So there's the sight picture on this.
So the rear sight here is just a two-position rear aperture.
There's the other one.
And then the front sight is bolted onto the barrel assembly.
So overall this really was an impressive firearm. It's easy to strip. It's easy to maintain.
It was fairly easy to make. It was a lot cheaper than the Bren gun.
And ultimately it was really the disappearance of the immediate German threat of invasion
and the idea that the Bren gun may be more expensive, but the Bren gun is a more refined gun.
And once it's in major production, well, why would we want to get rid of it and replace it with something new?
So the contingency plan of the Faulkner (or Besal) here, never ended up needing to be used.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. If you did, check out the accompanying ARES blog post with this video.
That will have a bunch of high-res pictures of this gun.
Very cool for them to make it possible for me to come and take a look at this one.
Thanks for watching.