THE FAL REACHES ADULTHOOD

     On July 20, 1953, Canada became the first nation to adopt the FAL rifle. Even though the US T65 cartridge (7.62 X 51 mm) did not become the standard NATO rifle round until December 1954. Fabrique Nationale had already produced FALs chambered for it and delivered them to Canada for firing trials in October of that year. These first Belgian/Canadian FALs were built to metric standards.
     The British officially adopted the FAL in January 1954 and purchased some 14,350 rifles built to metric standards. In return for British assistance in the early stages of design, Fabrique Nationale granted the United Kingdom the right to manufacture FALs without royalty payment.
     In May 1955, representatives of the respective ordnance departments of Canada, the United Kingdom and Aus­tralia met to standardize a basic FAL rifle in which all parts affecting functioning would be interchangeable. If the United States and the rest of NATO adopted the FAL and would agree to the standard, well and good. If not, then at least all FALs used throughout the Commonwealth would be standardized.
     Drawings were translated from metric to inch” pattern by Canadian Arsenals Ltd. A set of changes had been agreed upon between the United Kingdom. Canada and Australia that included milled areas on the bolt and frame in a pattern referred to as “sand cuts,” a new bayonet, flash hider, forward sling swivel, front sight, gas regulator, magazine, magazine catch, cocking handle, rifling, machining tolerances and dimensions for the receiver group, extractor, ejector and carrying handle.
     In addition, each of the three nations was allowed to make minor national changes if they did not affect the rifle’s functioning. For instance, the Canadians employed a disk-type sight and a folding "winter trigger guard” held into the pistol grip by a spring. The Australians used a larger diameter eyepiece and a conventional trigger guard secured by a wood screw to the handguard. The Australians also stocked their rifles in coachwood, a native, straight-grained wood that is similar in strength and appearance to birch. The British moved eventually to a nylon stock and forearm. Canada continued to use solid walnut for both stock and forearm.
     Perhaps the greatest criticism heard of the Commonwealth, or “inch pattern” FAL is the lack of a hold-open device to keep the bolt back on the last shot. Commonwealth officials chose to use a manual hold-open for practical reasons. In the 1950’s when the Commonwealth nations adopted the FAL. British forces were operating throughout the Middle East. Experience had shown that the FAL bolt/bolt carrier design functioned unreliably in the desert. Sand particles had a tendency to jam between the bolt carrier and receiver walls. To reduce the problem, “sand” cuts were milled in a zigzag fashion along both sides of the bolt carrier and a corresponding slot was milled in the lower receiver so that sand particles could escape.
     Tests of the new design showed vast improvement under sandy and muddy conditions over the FAL without such cuts. It was decided that the dangers of a weapon rendered inoperative because of sand and other fouling far outweighed the advantages of warning the soldier when the last shot had been fired.
     A second major modification was the omission of the selective fire fea­ture from most Commonwealth pattern rifles. Remember that a major British objection to the 7.62 NATO cartridge was that it was not controllable during full automatic fire. The US Army later modified most of its selective fire Ml4s for semiautomatic fire only for this rea­son. The author’s own experience, while not extensive, bears out this objection. It is virtually impossible to fire the FAL or M14 from the shoulder or hip and keep the third and later rounds on target.
     The author conducted his own experiments. An FAL rifle was shouldered and fired in the approved military fash­ion while in the automatic mode using Fabrique Nationale NATO ammunition on a man silhouette paper target twenty-five meters distant. The first round cen­tered in the abdominal area, the second clipped the right shoulder and the third impacted high and to the right on the mountain slope serving as a backstop.
     The test was repeated five times and not once was the third round ever on target. When the test was redone in the semiautomatic mode and three shots fired within two seconds, all three rounds centered in the body area. Estimating the angle of dispersion from the first round fired in full auto­matic, the second round would have missed completely in all five full auto trials at more than thirty yards dis­tance. Most nations purchasing the FAL elected to omit the full automatic feature, reserving it only for those to be used as squad automatic weapons. More about those later.

THE REST OF THE WORLD

The first major modification, and the only instance of a change in caliber from 7.62 NATO, was occasioned by a Venezuelan purchase of 5000 rifles chambered for the 7 X 49.15 mm Optimum 2 (also known as the 7 mm Liviano) cartridge in November 1954.
     These rifles were later rebarreled in Venezuela in 7.62 NATO when that caliber was adopted and in-country manufacturing began. Venezuela, which had long maintained close ties with Fabrique Nationale — they also adopt­ed the SAFN Model 1949 — was the first nation outside the British Com­monwealth to purchase the FAL.
     Israel followed suit in 1955. The first FALs purchased were made in Belgium, although later rifle parts, with the excep­tion of the upper receiver, were made in Israel. The receivers came from Bel­gium. The Israeli models used the wood­en handguard with finger grooves which had been developed at Springfield Armory for the 1952 Fort Benning trials. The Israeli’s also modified the FAL takedown hinge bolt. The usual method is a male/female bolt entering from either side of the receiver hinge. The screw and bolt have large heads with slots. A cartridge rim is used to loosen the screw which can then be turned out with the fingers. The bullet end of the cartridge is used to push out the female portion. The Israelis use a special two-pronged key to undo the bolt.
     Argentina selected the FAL rifle in 1955 to replace the Model 1909 Mauser rifle. The first batch of rifles shipped to the Argentine Armed forces were man­ufactured in Belgium. Thereafter, the Argentine government negotiated for the right to manufacture FALs at its Direccion General de Fabricaciones Militares (DGFM), the government-owned arsenal. The Argentine rifles fol­low the original design and do not incor­porate the changes made by the West Germans in the G1. Other countries using the original FAL design include Bolivia— purchased from DGFM — Paraguay and Luxembourg.

THE FINAL MAJOR DESIGN CHANGE

     In 1956, the West German Army (Bundeswehr) was reinstituted. At a thirty-eight year remove, it is difficult to recall the soul-searching and opposition this occasioned on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The war had only been over eleven years and the human and materi­al devastation caused by the Nazis was still very visible throughout Europe.
     The first German order to its former slave, Fabrique Nationale, came from the Border Security Police for the “Canada Rifle” with the American-designed five-prong flash-hider, and chrome-plated hammer notch and sear.
     The West German Army ordered its FALs in November. But its modifica­tions were more extensive. Standard on what came to be known as the Gewehr I was a two-piece extractor, a reinforced firing pin, sheet metal handguard and a built-in bipod. The G1 did not use a flash hider and had no provision for mounting a bayonet. The German Army also requested that the line of sight be lowered by three millimeters. The non­plussed Belgians complied. The German design had an effect on FAL designs purchased by other nations, in spite of the less than three years it spent in Bundeswehr service before being replaced by the native manufactured Hechler & Koch G3 (the civilian version is known as the HK91). The grooved forearm became standard for many rifles to permit the attachment of a bipod, as did the new lower line of sight which, according to some experts, also helped to ease the recoil of the 7.62 NATO car­tridge by bringing the rifle’s configura­tion closer to a straight line stock.
     The basic design of the FAL was now fixed. The only changes that would occur would concern minor national modifications to such items as the fire selector levers, sights, flash ­hiders (the Austrian STG 58 incorpo­rated a wire cutter), light weight re­ceivers made from an alloy called “hiduminium,” bipods and attaching methods, bayonet mounts and bayonet designs, and sling swivel placement.

This British trooper, a member of the Royal Air Force Regiment, is firing a British-made L1Al equipped with an L2A1 Trilux low light level telescopic sight.