Rhodesian FAL - with Larry Vickers

hey guys thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten weapons dot-com I'm Ian McCallum and I'm here today with Larry Vickers and we're gonna take a look at a pretty darn cool foul so Larry might you just tell us what is this thing this is a genuine Rhodesian FAL now what that means is in this particular case this was an FAL that was a South African contract Belgian made FN FAL okay that was sanitized and then sent to the Rhodesian so this happened at a time when Rhodesia was under international arms direct because of well basically because of the apartheid government the only country that was willing to help armed Rhodesia in violation of international sanctions was South Africa yeah because they looked at it and said you know what they're by the grace of God goes I which of course is exactly what happened later on once Rhodesia fell then it all came down on South Africa so they were like you know we need to support these people but there's a lot of politics involved too as well yeah and they need it if they're going to support Rhodesia militarily they need to do in no way that's at least sort of deniable correct so they made a couple of specific well grind marks and marking removals to these rifles yeah well take let's take a close look at that in a minute got it but the other distinguishing features to this thing are the fact that it's covered in this horrific ly ugly baby poop camo colour correct and that's a Rhodesian thing absolutely they used what Tama paint was available generally a flavour a blue and green and then when combined together it had a baby poop effect you know interestingly on this is kind of happened later on in the bush ward so you see a lot of guys carrying FAL Xin pictures that are not camouflaged at all it was kind of something that happened later on they also did it with Portuguese manufactured g3 so you'll see some G threes that will also have baby food okay my understanding is they did this at the same time they stopped wearing super short shorts because that guys could see their legs coming from a mile away so anyway what we have here is a a South African fowl and there are a couple distinctive elements of that we've got a grenade launcher on the front and we've got this weird muzzle device what is that it's called a haulback device and was a clip one muzzle break that the Rhodesian scheme up with you slide it on one you can index it and then you pivot this lever and then clip it on to the barrel it can index it where it provides you basically muzzle brake effectiveness to that for a right-handed shooter or you angle it slightly for a left-handed shoe so kind of the same idea as the slant brakes on a case more or less yes if you're left-handed and firing in full auto the guns gonna tend to travel there's no correct so you angle the brake that way to counteract correct and of course the original brakes on these things the the brakes that FN made had ports on all sides and they had designed for firing rifle grenades yep correct you tell me I guess Rhodesia wasn't that interested in rifle grenades no believe it or not they were okay so you'll see even some guns that various fals different contracts and whatnot that did not have flash suppressors at all they would then put flash suppressors on once they got it yeah they would do a number of modifications to the gun to kind of integrate it into their service one is the electric pencil are a markings Rhodesian army that you saw on the other side that's one piece another thing they would do with these apparently one of their soldiers got a piece of brass deflected off of a carrying handle so they ended up in lost and I know from that that's fast they ended up chopping the carrying handles off okay that wasn't one of the things he did so there's a few telltale signs of an FAL or a kit that was used in Rhodesia okay those are the things you're looking for let's go ahead and take a closer look at those bit sure so like the first thing that really jumps out at you about this foul is this giant hole cut in the side of it what is that well there's a South African crest they're put there by Belgium but by the Belgians by FN and then what they did was to sanitize it as they drilled or milled a large hole there and you can see the last remnants here on the side if you look this crest up on the internet you will see what the crest looks like and you there's the tail signs of the edges of it right there okay now this was a gun that South Africa bought from Belgium from FN South Africa also built its own fouls under license correct and those didn't have the crest did they no they did not Oh God is absolutely correct the other thing is one of the ways you spot them with the markings on the other size and what non they don't have the belt and the FAL mark here though from Greek national markings over here but another one is the lightning cuts on the on the South African made fals are distinct okay there are a little bit different radius in this area also there are different radius in this lightning cut area and if you know what you're looking for you can spot them they also made interestingly nothing they made sanitized versions that the only thing they had was serial numbers that was a little interesting that I've seen some in person the only thing they had was a serial number they had no manufacturer's markings they didn't have to do any kind of sterilization in order to send them north so those those were manufactured but yeah this is a Belgian made FAL which was prior to the South Africans making them under license okay I think we should point out that the furniture on this is Rhodesian the gun is Rhodesian but they were originally from different guns which is why all you see ver here isn't painted but the rest of the gun correct yeah I this gun was sourced it was all black and then I sourced the baby pit the baby poop camo pieces essentially to give it authentically and more or less as a tribute of where the gun came from sure now one of the other distinctive things here is of course this electro pencil a serial number encase them on the bolt carrier it's also there and it's also over here on the lower boy that one's really light yeah very light they were done by hand in this case but I've seen him before where they were black done there were very neat in uniform so they were clearly done on a some kind of pantograph or something to give it a more uniform appearance I've seen that generally you seen where they're elected licked or pencil mark this particular one does not have a matching bolt they are a number is is from a different gun that is very very common with Rhodesian fals because because of the embargo they had to repurpose reuse fix they had to reinvigorate everything they had to they didn't throw anything away right and you see Rhodesian FAL is I mean you're gonna see everything under the Sun because they had to implement what they had they were not going to get replacements that makes sense so there was one bit of defacing sanitizing on the opposite side as well right Yeah right there there's actually two bits the most obvious one is here this was an mu marking a large you with an M inside of it which was essentially the South African military proof mark for a lack of a better term showing it was military ordnance you know accepted by the South Africans and then also down here was the same thing there was an MU mark down here took has eliminated this one's clearly obvious now understand something this initially had a vertical take down lever earlier fals this takedown lever was designed up here and was vertical in nature right over time the design was modified and they came down with a horizontal takedown lever so anytime you see an FAO that say has a serial number on the lower down here in this case that had a marking here in this same serial number one one seven seven one is underneath this takedown lever okay then that tells you it was a gun that originally had a vertical takedown lever that went away for a couple reasons one is it had a tendency when they fired rifle grenades as you can imagine because of the recoil to hinge open and and you know essentially unhinge the upper and lower that's definitely a problem the other issue is that the way this thing is designed the upper and lower fits into kind of a tapered situation tongue and groove setup and what will happen over time that the lever is designed to move farther forward to keep the upper and lower tight would eventually bottom out against this recoil plate okay so now when they flip it down here now they have room for the lever to come down farther and if you notice the pistol grip here has been scalloped that's to clear a lever on a different gun that came down farther as the gun was worn and whatnot okay you you didn't you weren't running up against the recoil plate which bottoms you out and you didn't have any recourse in terms of eliminating upper and lower play okay now another interesting thing in here it's either our uh-huh this is initially for repetition is initially semi-automatic selector oh okay it's been modified for full auto okay so yeah they took there's a beat there's a little bit of a beat going these they grow down the beak off and they also modify it so it can come around and act for fully automatic modified yeah yeah they really did just use everything they could get their hands on lutely so we talked about a bit earlier how they clipped the carry handle off yes that's where it would have been yep right there so that's a distinctive Rhodesian thing yep so Larry can you tell me about the grenade launcher site I've seen these before but never really had much experience we were actually pretty genius when you flip them up right you can spin them around you got to press the plunger and you can spin them around and it'll shut off the gas and also act as a grenade launcher site if you can get there you can hold it pivot it up like this okay so yeah flips around 180 degrees no shut off the gas and then now you have this for the ability to launch rifle grenades okay and actually pretty ingenious and typically the way those things work I assume it's the same here is you line up the tip of the grenade in one of these rear notches so that the grenade is the front sight it's interesting there's certain countries you really saw this widely used South Africa in Rhodesia very widely used so it's very very common to see Rhodesian fals with grenade launcher flip up gas plug sights very very common well rifle grenades really make a great low-cost sort of light artillery option or anti-tank option for countries that don't have heavy infrastructure I know the French also made extensive use of rifles for about a hundred years they really liked those things yeah nervously never really caught on to us man I'm in the military you know he fired him a few times I remember one time a guy firing one was Colt car 15 and he collapsed the buttstock and put the weapon against the ground and fired it and it cracked the buttstock oh yeah as you can imagine that yeah you know plastic car 15 buttstock taking that rifle grenade shocked against the ground it cracked it like a big dog damn well this let's see actually there's two other things here one is I noticed there's no front sling swivel on this yeah it's real common you know I don't know that I have ever seen a picture of a Rhodesian soldier or using sling they generally did not use the slings at all interesting they take off the sling swivels to prevent rattled now this particular one in the buttstock still has the sling swivel but up front it's long gone the real ones not really noisy in the way the front one can correct and then of course the last the really cool thing here is this very unique muzzle device yep the whole back yeah so obviously you've got the three holes there that line up with the holes in the original muzzle break so that's a standard FN muzzle break yep correct absolutely and they came up with this you see that little detent right there that ball that's soldered on this this particular weapon I fired not too long ago that's why it's a little dirty okay and you see the the way it is set up or the lines up with the holes and you also have the little deflector plates and yeah you slide it on and index it where you want no come in close it up and you can index off the holes once you close it up like that now you can pivot this clip around and slide it on and it keeps it from sliding forward because of this little piece here that's welded on okay nice and then though that'd up like I said for right or left-handed shooter yeah those two vents are going to take what would be like this the left and right side holes and deflect them upward now like a lot of this stuff you know this is a cool item and whatnot you see pictures of it I don't know that I've really seen pictures of anybody in the field using it it's one of those things that could have been developed it honestly just didn't see much use okay you've shot one you said there this one yeah shout this one just recently for a video and I actually it was pretty controllable okay it seemed to make a difference yeah I do believe it did that's cool nice alright anything else unique on there we ought to take a look at no just overall you know neat gun you're talking about a gun that saw tremendous amount of combat it really know the fal of the Cold War era saw more combat in Rhodesia than any other place in the world by far and generally held in very high regards by the soldiers that used it it's kind of one of the symbols of the Rhodesian bush war the sale in general so by and large gun that's kind of legendary for its use in that particular conflict well really cool to take a look at a genuine Rhodesian fowl Rhodesia of course says it kind of a special area of interest for a lot of people it's one of these it's a lesser known war it's one of the the African bush Wars and of course it is one of the classic recent Wars of Communists against anti absolutely and unfortunately we had the liberal Western governments at the time both the United States and England that essentially through the Rhodesian under the bus and basically appease the the communist and we see where that's all ended up it's pretty sad really the Rhodesian war is a sad war they went from a government that was not good for a lot of people to a government under Mugabe that was not good for everybody yeah and it's interesting that Mugabe as when we're filming this Mugabe has just recently been kicked out of power it'll be interesting to see what happens hopefully Rhodesia now Zimbabwe can improve itself also things look good well yeah I mean Tory got any worse yeah exactly so thank you very much for taking your welcome walk us through this awesome FAL we will see you guys again next time on forgotten weapons thanks for watching you

Channel: undefined

Views: 497,787

Rating: 4.8765264 out of 5

Keywords: Larry Vickers, Rhodesian, FN FAL, army, FAL, rifle, military, Vickers Tactical, Forgotten Weapons, LAV, FN, Rhodesian Bush War, special forces, neighboring South Africa, detachable muzzle brake, Tac TV, Guns, fal, r1a1, fn, south africa, embargo, baby poop, camo rifle, battle rifle, rhodesia, halbek device, halbek, mccollum, kasarda, inrange, inrangetv, history, development, explanation, disassembly, Firearm, Tactical, delta, spec ops, 308, nato, ar10, g3, hk91, bush war

Id: i7sQL9Rx4io

Length: 15min 7sec (907 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 01 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Why was it delisted originally?

And how come comments are disabled :o

[u/ForgottenWeapons]

Unfortunately, Rhodesia is the new 1488 for some people.