Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another
video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian McCollum, and today we're going to take a look at a really interesting French submachine gun. This is the MAT 49, and it's a pretty iconic machine gun of, well, pretty much, ... every war France has fought since World War Two. These saw extensive use in Algeria, in Indochina, and in all of the other hosts of small conflicts that the French have been involved in. Now this was developed after World War Two. Of course before World War Two the French had the MAS 38 submachine gun, which was an excellent gun that was kind of handicapped by the cartridge that it used. The MAS 38 used the 7.65 French Long cartridge, which is kind of in this grey zone between .32 and .380. Not necessarily a bad cartridge,
but considered underpowered and it definitely wasn't standardised in
the way that 9mm Parabellum was. So after World War Two the French military had some pretty
large supplies of a variety of different submachine guns. They had MP40s that they'd taken from the
Germans, they had a bunch of Lend-Lease war aid guns from the United States, they
had Thompsons, they had Grease Guns. And they decided that, while they had a lot of guns
available, they wanted to standardise on something, and for a couple of reasons
they wanted it to be French made. So of course one of those was simple national pride. If the military is going to be equipped with something
new, it ought to be something made in France. And as a secondary consideration they also wanted
to give some of the French arsenals some business, just to keep them going economically,
make sure that the workers stayed employed. You didn't want to lose your
experienced workforce in the arsenals. So they set up a trials program, and in 1948 four
different arsenals or companies submitted guns. So all three of the major French arsenals,
Tulle, Châtellerault and Saint-Étienne, and then the Hotchkiss company
also submitted a gun to the trials. There were extensive trials done. In fact some of these 1948
pattern guns actually did see field service on small scales. The Hotchkiss contender, by the way, was the Hotchkiss
Universal which, because Hotchkiss was a private company, after it failed to win the French military
contract they did actually continued to try and promote the gun commercially,
which the ... French arsenals did not do. At any rate, the gun from
Tulle ended up winning the trials and was adopted as the MAT
(Manufacture d'Armes de Tulle) 49 in 1949. Pretty much immediately went into
production and would stay in production until 1979. So the gun itself, it's in 9mm
Parabellum and in many ways it's like a product improved Grease Gun. It really
does take a lot of cues from the Grease Gun. So let's take a closer look at this, and I'll show you how it
comes apart and a few of the weird features that it has. So the lineage here to the Grease
Gun is really kind of visibly evident. This is a heavy gauge basically
stamped sheet metal weapon. In particular the lower assembly here is all stamped,
the top is square instead of round like a Grease Gun, but you can clearly see the lineage of the stock. It's interesting to note that where the Grease Gun stock
actually has a loading tool, the French didn't put that in, which seems a little bit curious, but. Got a heavy gauge barrel shroud on the front. One of the distinctive elements of
this is that it has a folding magazine well. So for transport or storage or for
safety's sake potentially you can flip this up. We have really markings only on the top. These were initially produced at the Tulle Arsenal,
although that did change later on to Saint-Étienne. But this is one of the earlier guns made at Tulle. So we have the whole arsenal up
there, Model 1949 and a serial number. That serial number is repeated on the back of
this assembly, this is actually the lower assembly, and so there're only two main parts of the weapon
and the serial number is located on both of them. The controls are quite straightforward.
There is a button here, which locks the stock. So push that button in and
then you can extend the stock. You have two different positions there, and
then push it again and you can retract the stock. In order to fold the magazine well up there's a big
latch back here. So push that and the mag well folds. Once it's in position, there is actually a
little catch right here that locks onto the barrel, like so and that locks it in the upward
position. In order to release the magazine well you don't have to do anything with the lever
back here, all you have to do is push that button in and drop the mag well down. The magazine release is located on the bottom of the
mag well, push that in, and the magazine comes out. The magazine is also heavily influenced by the
Grease Gun and in progressive line by the Sten gun. You can see this reinforced upper assembly,
very reminiscent of a standard Grease Gun mag. These are pretty easily identifiable by
the stop catches here on the bottom. This is a 32 round magazine and, like the Sten and the
Grease Gun, it is a double stack, single feed magazine. So this is a bit difficult to load without a tool, which makes it a little bit odd again
that they didn't include the tool on the buttstock like the Grease Gun did.
They did also make a 20 round magazine which is... basically it's the same length,
but it's got some detent ribs in the body. And the idea, if I understand correctly, I don't have
one to actually look at, but I believe that was a dedicated single stack magazine. So that,
in theory, it was a little less susceptible to sand getting into the mag body because there wasn't
this double stack configuration that you had to deal with. So really the standard magazine that was used however was
32 rounds right here. 32 rounds of course comes because ammunition was packaged in 8 round increments
to account for eight round magazine capacities in pistols, both old captured German
pistols and the French MAC 50 pistol. Going back to the controls for a
moment, we have a dust cover here that snaps in place on the side of the gun.
That automatically opens when you rack the bolt. The charging handle is on this side. It is non-
reciprocating, but it is also not spring-loaded. So when you charge the bolt, you then
push the charging handle back forward. Continuing a grand tradition from French semi-auto
rifles there is no manual safety on the MAT 49. All it has is a grip safety, and
we'll take a look at this inside, but what's kind of interesting is the grip safety
actually doesn't stop the trigger from moving. What I have done right now is sort of jammed
the gun by pulling the trigger without having the grip safety engaged. So in order to fix
that I just pull the bolt back and re-cock it. What this grip safety does is lock the bolt
either in the forward or the rearward position. So in order to take a closer look at that,
we actually need to take the gun apart. Oh, one last thing to look at are the sights. The rear sight is an aperture. It's 100 [metres]
or flip it up for 200 yards or, I'm sorry, 200 metres. Something I have noticed with a lot of French, well specifically French submachine guns,
the Hotchkiss Universal, this and the MAS 38 all is that the sights are actually
remarkably low on the gun. This is the easiest of them to use so far in my experience, but you kind of have to cram your face down
on these things more than you might expect. The front sight is a nice wide post protected with
an integral hood. Pretty simple, pretty basic there. The front sling attachment on
this is kind of a unique thing. It is just this round pin that's run through the front
sight block there. It can pivot from side to side. And the sling itself just has a very simple clip hook on it and attaches like so. Nothing complicated there, just an interesting
system that I haven't seen elsewhere. And then on the back end of the gun the
sling just clips over this bar on the stock, like so. Now to take this thing apart we're going to start
by dropping the bolt to relieve spring tension, so I'm just going to hold on to that, depress the grip safety, depress
the trigger, let the bolt forward. Then I have to fold the magazine well
part way up, and there is a button right here. Hook your thumb behind in the
trigger guard, push this button in, and you unlock the upper and lower halves of the gun. And then just pull the top assembly off. There's the bottom assembly. We
can then pull out the recoil spring, The bolt slides out the back, and
the charging handle comes out. And that's it. As you can really see from this,
well, field stripping process, the thing that the MAT 49 is really particularly
best known for is simple sheer durability. This is a beast of a gun. It's really
pretty much a soldier proof gun. It's heavy, this thing weighs in at about 8 pounds
empty, 3.6 kilograms, and 9.4 pounds loaded, 4.7 kilos. So especially compared to the earlier MAS 38
it's a much heavier gun, but it just always works. And that's primarily what led soldiers to really
appreciate this thing. It may not be super comfortable, you know, it's got a wire frame
stock. That isn't like a wood stock, not as nice to use. This does
have some issues in cold weather, the stock's gonna be cold on your face in cold weather. The hand guards can be really quite cold to handle
in arctic conditions if you don't have gloves on. And at the same time this barrel shroud, while helpful,
doesn't prevent the thing from getting pretty darn hot if you're doing a lot of shooting. This whole thing
would get really quite toasty hot out in the desert, which is one place where the
French used them quite a lot. So there are a lot of details about
this gun that you could complain about, but overall the fact that it just always
worked really endeared it to French soldiers, and honestly to everyone else
who managed to capture them. I should mention the Vietnamese had a habit of
capturing these and converting them to 7.62 Tokarev and used them in reasonably
substantial numbers in that format. So the main operating bits here are of course the bolt.
The bolt rides on a single recoil spring guide rod like so. This doesn't have any specific points
in the receiver that it physically locks into, but it does hold itself in contact with the front of
the receiver, up here. The back of this section is open. You can see the point there where
the back of the recoil spring guide sits. Right like so, and this guide helps
... reduce wear in the receiver itself because the bolt's not really running on
the receiver, it's running on this guide rod. With the MAT 49 the French took really an
extra step in addressing some safety issues that a lot of other submachine
guns didn't bother with. And maybe a step that wasn't necessary,
but it's pretty interesting regardless. You'll notice that the bolt face protrudes substantially
forward like, what, 20mm, a good half an inch or more from the face of the bolt body itself. It's a little bit difficult to give you a really
good view here, but if we look at the back end of the barrel, you can see that the barrel
is also recessed inside the back of the receiver. It means that when the bolt is actually
firing, before the bolt's fully seated like so, the cartridge is fully enclosed
in this extension in the trunnion. And so the reason for this is if
there is an out of battery detonation. If the cartridge detonates early when it's being
chambered. For example if it hits some sort of small obstruction or something in the chamber, and stops.
Well the bolt has a fixed firing pin on it, and so as soon as the bolt has enough force against
the primer of the cartridge it will fire. Well if it fires, normally you'd have it blow gas and debris
out the side of the ejection port which can be hazardous. With the MAT 49 that's actually contained within the trunnion.
And there are two holes here like you can see they go clear through. Those holes on either side of the upper
receiver lead into that area in the chamber, and those are vent holes. So if there is an out of
battery detonation, it will vent out these two holes. It will not damage the gun, it will presumably not
damage the shooter, and it will safely contain the event. That's pretty cool, that's something that you
don't really see in any other submachine guns. And very interestingly, that very serious approach to
safety really isn't duplicated down in the fire control group. So we have a grip safety and a trigger, and you'll notice
that the safety doesn't do anything with the trigger. I can pull the trigger (which is a
very simple trigger, it's full-auto only, there is no semi-auto option on the MAT 49),
pull the trigger, sear drops, gun fires. The safety is this tab. When you
depress the safety the tab goes down. And all that's doing is holding the bolt
in place, so when the bolt is rearward that tab hits the face of the bolt like
that, prevents it from going forward. That's why - you saw when when I had the bolt back
and I pulled the trigger without dropping the safety, the bolt actually dropped from its sear engagement slot,
here, and kind of jammed up onto the safety tab here. When you depress the grip safety, that's out
of the way, the bolt can freely travel forward. And then when the bolt is in the forward position and the
grip safety is released, that prevents the bolt from coming back. So this really does all the work that you
would need of a safety on a submachine gun. It does mean you don't want to carry this thing around cocked and
with the grip safety depressed unless you're actually ready to fire. But in general it's a pretty practical system. Reassembly is just as simple as disassembly. We'll
start with the bolt handle, put that in push it forward, drop the bolt in, push it forward,
put the recoil spring in, push it forward. And then we're ... gonna
pull the magazine well down slightly, drop that in right there, depress it
against its spring, drop the button, pull the stock out, depress the grip safety,
and the gun's ready to go. Note that here when I don't have the
grip safety depressed, I can't open the bolt. This is of course an open bolt gun,
I should have mentioned that earlier. And, of course, the dust cover pops open automatically when you fire. There was also a second version
of this gun made, the MAT 49/54, specifically for the Gendarmerie, the
police, the Metropolitan Police in France. Their version actually had a wooden stock because they didn't
care about having it compact for paratroopers or vehicle crews. It also had a longer barrel because, again, they didn't care
about keeping it compact for paratroopers and vehicle crews. As a gun for policemen on the beat, those
two factors both made the guns easier to shoot, practically speaking made them more accurate and more
comfortable to shoot as well with the wooden stock. So those are out there as well, ... neither of
them is really particularly common in the US. Production of these ended in 1979 with about
700,000 of them made, really quite a large number, because in 1979 the French adopted the FAMAS. And the
idea behind the FAMAS was that it was a bullpup assault rifle, and it was intended to replace both the standard
combat rifle, the MAS 49/56 and the submachine gun. The theory was, and this was kind of
the universal theory with bullpup rifles, is that it had the power and barrel
length of a rifle and could thus do that job. But it was also a very compact style of design
and could take over the job of the submachine gun. Now, that doesn't really turn out to have been the case, and for that reason there aren't a lot of
countries that are adopting new bullpup rifles now. But that was the idea, and that's what
ultimately put the MAT 49 out of production, it's been replaced by the FAMAS.
Now you might think that with 700,000 of them made they'd be
fairly ubiquitous and easy to find. That's definitely not the case.
As with many French military weapons, the French government never really had any
incentive or desire to sell these on the open market. So they didn't really do any marketing to try
and sell them to other major military powers. They were used by a bunch of countries, mostly
small countries that had connections to France from the colonial days, so you'll see them
in a lot of African countries in particular. But they were never sold in large numbers, the way, say, the
Americans sold Thompsons and exported Grease Guns. A lot of American and a lot of obviously
Soviet bloc guns really got around. French stuff? Never really got around.
And when the French were done using it they either gave it as military aid to one of these other
smaller countries, or they just outright destroyed it. So as a result MAT 49s are really pretty
uncommon guns to run across in the United States. Really the only batch of them, the only group of MAT 49s we
have, are those that came back as war trophies from Vietnam. So in order for that to have happened the
gun had to be taken there by a French soldier, captured by the Vietnamese, and then
recaptured from the Vietnamese by the Americans and then brought home. That's pretty much
the story for all of the MAT 49s in the US. Anyway, a big thank you to the owner of
this gun for letting us take a look at it today. Hopefully you enjoyed the video, stay tuned
for another cool Forgotten Weapon tomorrow. Thanks for watching.
Indochina is Vietnam
I was gonna post this, damn.
(Praise be gun Jesus)
I love this guy's channel. He basically does a mix of range and armoury based videos about interesting or iconic weapons, most of which feature in video games one way or another.