Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another
video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the National Firearms Centre, part of the British Royal Armouries in Leeds. And we are taking a look at a couple of quintessentially British rifles. These are an X8E1 and an X8E2. And these are the very first batch of FALs, or SLRs
that the British government purchased for troop trials. So in ... December of 1953 the British government
formally accepted ... a recommendation that it should go ahead and adopt the FAL, the F.A.L., in .30 calibre.
In the T65 cartridge as designed by the United States. T65 being the developmental title, this would become
designated 7.62x51mm NATO, the 7.62 NATO cartridge. So, having decided finally to go ahead and
adopt this rifle and calibre once and for all, the British went ahead and placed an order for 5,000
of them from Belgium, from FN, the manufacturers, in February of 1954. They ordered 4,000 of these guys
with iron sights, and 1,000 of these guys with optical sights. Now when I say optical sights,
it is technically an optical sight, it's what they called a Unit sight. It is a 1x power
non-magnifying optic. It's underneath this metal shield. It's this little tiny, baby, not more than 3 eighths of an
inch in diameter, not more that 7 or 8mm in diameter, scope,. with a little pointer coming down from the top and
the pointer is zeroed at ... 200 yards for the British, and then there are two additional
graduation lines for 400 and 600 yards. So, in my mind this was a bit ahead of its time. In fact this was
the same optic that the British had been testing on the EM-2 bullpup. And just the idea of having an optical sight on every
standard rifle was a pretty advanced concept in 1954. So, they're to be lauded for that. Now ultimately they decided
not to adopt this, they went with the iron sighted version instead. But at least they were giving it a serious look. Now there are a couple of other interesting
features to these that are a bit different than the standard FAL that would be
adopted as the L1A1 (by the way in 1957). So, let's take a closer look at the unique
features of these very early X8 pattern FAL rifles. Well, we'll start with the X8E1
because it is ... numerologically first. It is of course marked X8E1,
Br for Britain, there on the side. And then we've got the actual
manufacturer mark here on the right side, Fabrique Nationale D'Armes
De Guerre, Herstal, Belgium. In general, this rifle pattern is going to be extremely
similar, it's going to have ... all the main features that the L1A1 would be adopted with. There's only
a few little deviations from the standard pattern. One of them of course is fairly
obvious up here at the top, and that is this top cover that is
cut short with a stripper clip guide. The idea here is that the British military was concerned
about the viability of detachable magazines in combat, they were worried that ... basically that any time
advantage you got in reloading a complete magazine instead of using stripper clips you would lose
again when you ran out of loaded magazines. And then you had to go back and
manually reload your mags by hand. ... You would lose all the time there that you
had gained by being able to switch magazines. So, ... in fact they seriously looked at having
just a fixed 20 round magazine for a while, that was filled by stripper clips on the idea that you'd avoid that
problem and you'd also save the weight of like 8 empty magazines. Ultimately they did of course go with a detachable mag, but
on the early rifles they have a stripper clip guide up here. So this was intended for sort of a horse-
shoe shaped clip. It held 5 rounds. And it ... went in here in the back and then it
also hooked over these two pegs on the front, and the cartridge tips would sit
in between those to line up nicely. Of course, once you've locked the bolt open
you then have access to reload the magazine. They have done this the correct way in that the stripper
clip guide is on the top cover, and not connected to the bolt. So you are much less likely to have trouble with the bolt
slamming closed when you pull the first stripper clip out. Although I can't say that I have actually experimented
with loading one of these with stripper clips myself. The carry handle here, which some countries
decided to use and some countries decided not to, the carry handle would survive on the adopted L1A1,
still in wood for while, it was ultimately changed to plastic. But on the early L1A1 they added some
serrations in here to give it a little bit more grip, instead of just plain smooth
[wood] like on this version. The charging handle ... was one of the other places
that saw definite change between the X8 and the L1A1. And that's because with the order for the X8 rifles the British
told FN that they wanted a ... positive closure for the bolt. Basically they wanted a forward assist on it. And so at the time the existing .30 calibre
FAL was basically the American pattern of rifle put together for an American trials order,
and that's basically what the British got with this forward assist sort of kludged onto it. So you can actually use this to push
the bolt forwards. That's a bit hard to demonstrate without having an actual
stoppage or sluggish bolt to work with. But ultimately what the British found in
their field trials testing with these guns is that the forward assist was less effective
at clearing malfunctions than simply yanking the charging handle
all the way back and releasing it. and so on the L1A1 they would get
rid of that forward assist feature. And then we can look at a few other little things.
The shape of the selector switch would vary. Note that this one does actually have a full-auto
setting which the L1A1 would be adopted without. The bolt hold open and
magazine release are the same. Note that these have a "metric" style of
magazine to them, with a little small front catch. The British would increase the size of that magazine
catch to make the magazine retention little bit better. And that would become recognised
as the "inch pattern" magazine. Of course, what the British would ultimately do is
licence the FAL for domestic production in the UK. And when they did that they had to
basically adapt the whole technical package to inch measurements and
British machining standards, instead of using the patterns
that the Belgians had. Take a look at the front sight here. It has this
kind of funky little sheet metal hood on top there. Adjustable gas regulator. We have a bit of a bayonet lug
there and a bare muzzle. Now the other pattern is the X8E2, British also.
This is the version with an optical sight. So it has its own unique top cover that
has this base added to it, moulded into it. And on this one you can see that the top cover
goes all the way to the front of the receiver, there is not an opening for stripper clips. That was done deliberately. They liked the stripper clip idea,
but they realised that cutting the top cover back to here and not having a solid interface
with the front of the receiver ... it wouldn't fit repeatably enough, sturdily
enough, to maintain zero on an optical sight. So this is still a little bit wobbly,
but probably just good enough. And ultimately the British would find, especially in sand
testing, that they liked ... being able to shrink down the size of the ejection port, instead of having the
entire front of the action open to the elements. We have the same forward assist on the X8E2. The rear sight, the standard aperture
rear sight, has been milled off of this gun. ... because it would interfere with
your ability to use the optical sight. Instead, a little fixed emergency backup iron sight aperture
there has been fixed under the rear mount of the optical sight. Because that emergency sight is offset to the left,
the front sight has also been offset to the left. So this is adjustable for elevation.
So you do have some backup sights there. Same gas adjustment. Same muzzle. And you can see here what would become
the standard pattern for the receiver cover. A couple of interesting things about
the adoption process with these. The British ... did testing on the FAL that no other
countries did. Everyone did some testing on it. But the British were pretty much the only
people to actually test it in a desert environment, because the US wasn't really particularly
interested in desert environments in the early '50s, the Belgians don't have a desert. But the British Empire had a bunch of Middle
Eastern and African territorial connections where they were concerned that they
might have to fight, and with good reason, you would see conflict in ... Suez, for
example, fairly quickly after this was going on. And this also, by the way, ties into the Israeli
experience using the FAL in the Middle Eastern desert. So the British went to do some
sand testing on these guns. And basically what they did is set up a box with a big blower,
and they would blow sand on the gun for, I believe, 30 seconds. And then they would fire the rifle, full magazine in
the gun, starts with a round chambered, bolt closed. After it had run for about 30 seconds they would then
start firing, I believe it was one shot every 3 seconds, until either the magazine was
empty or the gun stopped working. And they recorded, the report that I saw, they
recorded 17 attempts at this, and of those about ... one third of them succeeded
and fired the whole magazine. The rest all failed, and almost all of the
ones that failed, failed after one shot fired. Meaning that that 30 seconds of sand
was enough to gum up the action such that the first round would fire because it was already
chambered, but the rifle would not cycle even a single round after being that heavily exposed to sand. So the British remediated this by making
a number of changes to the design, tweaks to make it a little bit
more resistant to sand infiltration. And this was all work that was done by a guy
named Kent-Lemon, last name Kent hyphen Lemon. I can't remember his first name off-hand.
[Colonel Noel Kent-Lemon] At any rate, he had been one of the
lead guys on the EM-2 design team, and of course when that rifle
was abandoned in favour of the FAL he would continue to do his job and
turned his attention to the FAL instead. So, ... it was those sand tests and Kent-Lemon's work that lead
to those sand cuts that you will see on the side of the bolt carrier, as well as kind of a scallop cut on the underside of
the bolt to give some clearance for dirt to fall out. And some relief cuts inside the lower of the receiver to
work kind of in tandem with the sand cuts on the bolt carrier. So that development actually did substantially
improve the rifle's performance in sand testing, and it would go on the be adopted
by the UK as part of the L1A1. It's interesting to see where
that sort of thing comes from. So, ultimately in March of 1957 the final
version of this rifle would be adopted as the L1A1, and it would go on to serve in British military service for a
couple decades before ultimately being replaced by the L85 rifle. And by the way, if you are interested in the L85, I have an extensive
playlist of videos on the entire development process of the L85. So I'll have those linked at the end here,
definitely check them out if you are interested. And we also did a previous video on the very first FAL
that the British got, the original Fusil Automatique Léger. The very first light automatic rifle, so that'll also
be linked at the end here, check that one out too. A thank you to all of my patrons whose direct
financial support makes it possible for me to travel to places like the UK to
bring you guys guns like this. And of course a big thanks to the Royal Armouries
for giving me access to their fantastic collection, where I can pull out rifles like
this and bring them to you guys. They have a whole bunch more in this period, in this
developmental era with the FAL from British testing. So, the collection is not open to the general public,
but it is available by appointment to researchers, people writing books, or doing research
in other media. So if you are interested in getting in to do some study
in the Armouries collection here you can contact them through their website,
which is linked in the description text below. Thanks for watching.
