How the U.S. got shafted out of the FN FAL

there are tons of high quality firearms out there you and I both know that but not all of them and actually not a bunch of them will combine quality functionality and craftsmanship at an extremely high level this one does if there's one thing that the Sturmgewehr 44 showed us at the end of World War 2 it was that we needed an upgrade for our combat rifles it had a much higher capacity magazine than most of the combat rifles that we had at the time plus this thing was very maneuverable a lot shorter in stature and on top of that it was semi-automatic it went well beyond the bolt-action or the single shots that we're accustomed to up to that point and as we stated in our previous cold war rifle video the Soviet Union was very quick to recognize the fact that box fed semi-automatic rifles were like way to go as far as combat weapons the newly formed NATO needed a universal calibre and eventually rifle but the caliber was their first step in trying to get all the countries that participated in NATO to have a common ammunition that they used in battle the British were quick to come up with the 280 it was a seven by forty three millimeter the new Winchester smokeless powder that they loaded the 280 with enabled the projectile to move at an astounding 2,600 feet per second Britain Canada and Belgium all loved the 280 round the 280 round was their thing they were read it ready to roll with it they were smart enough to see that an intermediate round which is what the Soviets had already kind of developed in the ak-47 going forward and what the Stremme covere had used in the past they all recognized that we needed that mid-range round that you know battle rain round at about 400 metres this is where we introduced the villain in our story the villain in this case is Colonel Rene Stutler chief of the US Small Arms development branch in the twilight of his career Studdard was chasing the limelight there was no more war there was nowhere for him to get a pat on the back there was nothing for him to accomplish and let's face it he was looking for his own legacy and there was not really a way for him to establish legacy the push for the development of a nato round more importantly one that the united states developed that was gonna be his claim to fame at this point and he wasn't going to let anything stop him from accomplishing that Stutler push blindly for the 7.62 by 51 regardless of the two Eddy's performance and the need for an intermediate round all the proof was shown the stellar he was able to see how that 280 round performed he was able to see how that intermediate round in full auto was very controllable when you had a fully automatic weapon that you were jamming it into he still wanted to have a little bit more saying that in other words the 280 round was a British round the Americans working in getting credit for developing this thing and he certainly wasn't going to get any credit for going along with a 280 round that was established and invented over in Britain he wanted one that was designed in the United States under his control around the same time Stutler also directed designers at Springfield Arsenal to create the perfect rifle for the 7.62 about 51 one of the requirements that he mandated was that it used 85% of the existing m1 garand tooling and equipment at the same time that we were doing this over here United States and Stoller was jackin things up Belgium was doing some really cool stuff in their neck of the woods FN had a man by the last name of save I cannot pronounce his first name so I'll put it on screen save was the chief design assistant to none other than John Moses Browning who now was working with the Belgians now for those of you who don't know who John Moses Browning is John Moses Browning was one of the most if not the most influential firearms inventor a true genius in his own right for the United States I can't count the rifles that he designed or had an influence in at the time browning was working on the high power well Sayid was working with him on that and actually John Moses Browning legend has it that he died at the desk when working on the high power save is the one that completed the design of the high power and actually made some really nice modifications on the back end of that in 1947 safe produced an early version of the FAL in 7.92 by 30 through curves this was the same round at the stg44 used it was an intermediate round one that was very very effective in full auto in 1950 the light rifle trials were actually held and the FN FAL had a huge impact on the Americans at that point the American military saw the 280 functioning and they were like we like this thing but you know politics is not something new politics back then was just as nasty and dirty as what it is today and that's where our villain Stutler came into play he ignored all of the experts who knew weapons who knew ammunition ignored everything they had to say ignored all their advice and said no i don't like your 280 round and i don't like your f and fa we need an American round and we need an American rifle and this man really screwed the pooch in this case he was so hell-bent on not allowing better ammo and in this case better for what we needed rifles from being adopted by the united states that he pigheaded lee moved on into another direction that no one else was okay with now look guys I'm a huge fan of the 308 round I've always loved the 7.62 by 51 NATO round I probably owned more 308 seen any other caliber I'm just I've always been a big fan of that caliber if I needed some up close and personal combat ammunition I could use a 308 but I also know that if I really need to reach out there and grab something I can do it with that 308 round so I'm a huge fan 3 away it was just not the right realm for that time in spite of what stellar was saying doing and really compromising the whole operation and trying to find the good round and a good rifle to go with it the United States Department of Defense made a handshake deal with Belgian leaders that the United States would adopt the FAL as their battle rifle if Belgium would side with us in saying hey at 7.62 by 51 round we want that the Belgians held up their end of the deal we had stellar on our side we didn't hold up our end of the deal we went with the 308 round and the m14 friends I am a fan of the m14 beautiful classic rifle I love the action of it big fan of the m1 garand but this rifle was not what we needed in 1954 now the United States was not the only country that one of the FN FAL but didn't get it in turn the Germans did as well the Germans ended up with the g3 simply because history had proven that Belgium and the Germans didn't play that great together in fact Belgium played all too well and sometimes too well with the Germans because the Germans invaded and occupied them in World War one and World War two for five years they controlled Belgium under German rule now the Germans wanted FN FAL to produce for their own military but after ordering several thousand of them and finding that they really really like the rifle they in turn went to Belgium and said hey we want to build these under license we want to build these in Germany they wanted the the patent they wanted the prints they wanted to be able to take the FAL instead of buying it from from Belgium they wanted to build them in Germany and create their own rifles Belgium said no Belgium's memory was not that bad look occupation was one thing during the war but Germany under Nazi rule the F in factories were taken over its leaders were locked up prisoners when the Allies turned the tide in Europe Nazis took everything that they could out of the F in factories sit it back to Germany for their own use and basically ramp sacked the place they ransacked the whole FN Factory in fact later on they came back and bobbed the factory with direct hits twice talked about kids running the whole thing if they can't have their way right the Belgians gave Germany the middle finger they told them buy from us will build your guns or go pound sand Conger meanie pounded sand and got with HK eventually and came up with the g3 hk91 set me whatever you want to call it and came up with a pretty darn nice rifle themselves but in my humble opinion still not an F a FN FAL now once the FN FAL made it out into the world some ninety countries over the years have utilized the FN FAL as their battle rifles one of the complaints that and I guess it's two complaints technically up the FN FAL was its weight and its length it was a little heavy at around nine pounds and it was a little bit lengthy but let's face it we had a 308 round so we needed a barrel that was long enough to capture all of the performance of the round so it was did end up being quite a long rifle and if you were going to tight quarters or jungle or anything like that it was a little tough to maneuver with that long of a rifle and you'll be hard-pressed to find somebody in infantry who is okay with lugging around a nine pound rifle all day another somewhat complaint that was more of a geographical issue in terms of where you were in combat with sand the sand especially in Egypt the real fine and though those you guys that have served know what I'm talking about the real fine powdery sand that seems to find its way into everything down in Egypt would easily make its way into the action of the FN FAL so FN being I think the innovative company that they were they literally imported sand from from Egypt brought it back to Belgium and did some sandblasting trials there and they brought FN FAL s that they had done some modifications to back down to Egypt and did some sandblasting trials there they were blasting that exact same saying that they were going to be coming into contact with to these rifles and to the action and they made what they call sand cuts on the carrier these were quote scraper recesses on the breech-block carrier that removes sand from the action during both forward and backward movement of the carrier during firing now one of the benefits of that 308 round even though we were looking for an intermediate round a shorter round that didn't quite go so far the 308 round was a big hunk of lead and it moved fast and went far the cool thing about it was if you thought you were covered if you were the enemy and you thought you had cover it was more likely concealment because whatever you were behind that 308 was a very good chance of going through your cover so your cover became concealment again over 90 countries have employed the right arm of the free world which is what the FN FAL was called because it had such a huge hand in what the West was using at the time to somehow fight the Soviet Union which oddly enough the FN FAL never really fought the Soviets and just fought these proxy wars throughout the late 40s 50s 60s 70s 80s into the 90s some of the other cool things of the FN FAL the gas control system really really cool in my opinion ahead of its time it allowed for various loads different types of loads it also allowed for if you wanted to put a grenade launcher on here you could actually reduce your gas and control your gas to be able to launch that grenade so that was kind of ahead of its time depending on which model you got the sights were either good or bad in this case these sights are not bad they're adjustable and I'm kind of a fan of these some of the FN FAL have the by pallet on here that's kind of a cool little thing right there if you're into that kind of thing actually I haven't ever used the bipod on this one but you know what I've got it if I need to handle on the left hand side I like that the AKS on the right hand side I just feel like I want to keep my shooting hand on the pistol grip at all times I'd much rather be able to support everything I need to with my right hand and control charging the weapons with my left hand if I possibly can the charging handle on the FN FAL is non reciprocating I think it's a British model they do make it reciprocating the benefit of having it reciprocating would be in the sandy conditions if you had sand or any kind of debris inside your chamber that you could drive that handle forward in order to properly seat the round in the event that it was not seated properly the safety is very intuitive much like today's weapons I like the fact that you can very easily get from safe to fire without much effort the magazine release is kind of interesting to me it looks like the hammer of a 1911 remember John Moses Browning did kind of assist from his grave because he had one of his assistants working on this thing so I thought that was kind of interesting in other words an area where you're going to use your thumb on a 1911 had that ribbed hammer and an area where you gonna use your thumb on the FN FAL also uses something ribbed and kind of turned like that yeah it's shaped just like the hammer of a 1911 and works just as effectively so really cool design there I definitely like the way that is you'll notice that the angle of the handle is a little bit different than today's ar-15s it's got much more of a rearward can't for as far as the bottom of the pistol grip have no problem with that I felt like the trigger guards also we're big enough if you did wear gloves in any kind of a cold weather situation that you were fine there are some collapsible stocks on some of the other versions there's so many versions of this thing your recoil spring or your return spring is actually in the stock of this particular model it recalls back into here some of the other I think it's the Parrot model the recoil spring is actually in the top because it's got the collapsible folding stock so your recoil spring is built in here the upper receiver is a little designed a little bit differently than what you see here now of course my FN FAL from Deus Arms is not fully automatic but I can show you in terms of rapid fire how effective this thing actually was it had a way of taming again you've got a little bit of weight 9 pounds but it tamed the recall of that NATO round pretty effectively you could stand almost flat-footed and still pull off what you needed to pull off with this thing I hope you guys have enjoyed this second of the Cold War rifles series that we're doing and this particular one being on the FN FAL I got to tell you I'm a little partial to this rifle I have the 5 that I have in the Cold War series this is by far my favorite I feel like we missed the boat by not adopting this rifle I'm a fan of the m14 I think it's a beautiful rifle I think it's a nice functioning rifle I love the fact that it has the similar action that in one garand it's just I'm a fan of that I like that it's not the FN FAL I feel like had we been able to have these at the early part of the Vietnam War the outcome could have been a little bit different I know I'm speaking from a huge hypothetical because I wasn't around at that time and obviously did not serve during that time so I'm not trying to minimize it and boil it all down to one rifle making that huge of the difference I think there were a lot of other horrible political moves at that time that called the outcome to be what it is I do think the FN FAL would have made a difference had we our troops our warriors on the battlefield imagine the guys that we have fighting for us with this thing in their hand I'm telling you I heard Kaiser brutal and ruthless and relentless and I think it would have made a difference this particular rifle is from disarms up in Illinois Dave and those guys I'm going to tell you what people who care about their work and have an affinity for quality control and precise work you're not going to find many companies like des armes DSA makes some of the finest rifles and I'm so happy with this model this is probably out of every rifle that I own I would have to say this is probably one of my favorite it's a beautiful rifle it's well made it looks brand new like the day that I bought it and I've shot this thing many many times this is a reliable rifle again guys out of all the rifles in the cold war segment this one here is so so cool I encourage you if you get chance to go shoot one you'll appreciate the functionality of this thing how it works you'll see how poor ahead of its time that the epinet FAL was once again guys I appreciate you all checking in with us and watching our Cold War series I'm really enjoying working on this coming up next I know we've got the m14 the m16 and the g3 and I believe the g3 video or the hk91 or the set month I think that's going to be the next one please subscribe to us on YouTube follow us on gun district Facebook Instagram Twitter we definitely like to hear from you guys and look if you guys give us any feedback on our videos have any suggestions on future videos you like for us to do we're very good about responding to you guys so you know drop us a line talk to us email me at paul illegally on america.com i really like to hear from you guys it's it's fun for me to interact with a lot of our friends out there and you guys are no different than just I'd love to hear front again about you your opinions

Channel: Legally Armed America

Views: 1,705,185

Keywords: legally armed america, paul glasco, fn, fal, fn fal, m14, saive, belgium, germany, .308, 7.62x51, nato, ak-47, 7.62x39, stg-44, stg, 44, studler, dsa, ds arms, springfield, armory, m1a, wwii, united states, america

Id: jexf8A462jM

Length: 16min 51sec (1011 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 31 2017