I'm not a hoplophile, an experienced shooter, or even a firearms owner, but I come rather paradoxically to know a great deal more about such weapons than most folks do. Familial exposure I guess you'd call it. Many hunters, lots of ex-soldiers, much tedious employment of Hoppe's No. 9 and cleaning cloths of an autumn afternoon.
I recall uncles and cousins debating the relative merits of the M14 and the 7.62 mm (.308 caliber) NATO round for which it and the FN FAL were both chambered, particularly versus the M1 Garand and the .30-06 round which that longarm was designed to fire. I recall a uniform dislike of the .308, though personally I really couldn't discern the difference. The bolt-action rifles I handled chambering one and the other seemed to kick about the same, and were equally accurate (or, more precisely - in my hands - inaccurate).
(One and all, those relatives of mine hated the 5.56 mm round, the M16, and everything pertaining thereunto. Not having ever fired even a semiautomatic weapon chambered for the .223 Remington much less the 5.56 mm NATO round, I consider myself not entitled to an opinion. I concede only that when one is required to lug bunches of bullets around while footsore and weary, anything done to reduce the weight imposed has got to be welcome.)
The impression I got from these gun-toting kin back in the '60s was that the FAL was - like the M14 - one of those small arms adopted in the early '50s as part of the plan to get a common ammunition agreed upon so that when the 8th Guards Shock Army came over the inter-German border, there wouldn't be incompatabilities when everybody in West Germany would be grabbing frantically for gunfodder.
It seems obvious to me - at a distant remove - that of the two 7.62 mm NATO longarms, the FAL was the superior instrument. It far outlived its American age-peer, and proved extremely reliable in the hands of a great variety of national military services, some of them thumb-fingered and inept in the extreme. I would appreciate comments from the various FAL shooters as to the relative difficulty (or ease) of maintenance they've encountered in operating their versions of this rifle. Former M1 and M14 operators are understandably much more common than FAL-experienced folk in these United States, and it would be good to get some perspective on the degree to which "idiot-proofing" was engineered into the Fabrique Nationale product.
Thanks.
Oh good! My dog found the chainsaw!
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unclecessna
15 years ago
Hi Predone,
As I posted earlier in this thread I used the FN FAL 7.62 for a time when I served in the Irish Army. The FAL was technicaly replaced by the Steyr AUG A1 5.56 in the Irish Defence Forces in about 1988 but even though replaced a lot of units kept their stocks of ''FN's'' as we called them up untill about 10 years ago because they were so well liked.
I for one prefered it to it's replacement mainly because of it's accuracy and the superior damage that it inflicted on targets. It was easy enough to maintain and not too much could go wrong with it as I remember. When fired on automatic it did not have the same tendency to jam after ploughing through a few magazines succesively as the Steyr 5.56 had although it should be pointed out that the Steyr had a larger magazine and a greater rate of fire.
My only real qualm about the FN was that it was quite a long gun so when out and about on tactical exercises sometimes the muzzle could get caught in mucky ground when stooping or caught in branches etc when running with it.
All in all definitely a lethal weapon.
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mrmojo32
15 years ago
I have probably fired every round displayed in the film and the thing that has always stood out to me how in the movie the FAL's seemed so quiet firing their 7.62x51 rounds while the UZI's firing the pistol cartridge of 9mm were so loud. I know there were many experienced advisors on the tech side of this film and I wonder how this mistake was made.
Anyhow.... It is one of my favorite films of all time. :)
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trpsarge
13 years ago
Again as a former professional user of the FN FAL it was simplistic to a tee, rugged, well liked, good handling qualities and in the hands of a trained operator a very efficent weapon....But...and the big but was it wasn't user friendly accuracy wise and took some time to get used to shooting at ranges in excess of 200 yards.
It was long and loud, with an acceptable recoil but dated in regards to pinpoint accuracy except to people who had been weaned on big rifle shooting, Good shots could be marksmen at a push but average shots would only ever remain that .
Ease of maintainence, so simplistic, ease of instruction again the perfect weapon to instruct on, in the field worst could happen would be bad ammunition or some fouling, never manged to break one without significant human contribution
I was never happy with it as the sighting arrangements and shooting technique required too many contributory factors, it was naturally accurate.
When we replaced it with the Steyr AUG A1 the whole armys shooting average improved . We were still firing the same tables laid out for the FN initially and marksmanship shot up.
Weight, and round and siuze along with sights brought the up the average , within a couple of hundred rounds I was marks man standard and won at all army level on three occassions in my late thirties and early forties.
Steyr has nearly been in service as long as the FN at this point, pound for pound, the FN remained in service too long.
But its back, Irish Army have updated it with stick on Gucci stuff and its now back as a snipers spotting weapon....12 years after it was officially retired from reserve use.
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Lokisgodhi
9 years ago
It had the nickname of the right arm of the free world. Almost everybody outside the Communist bloc used a version of the FAL under many different names. Except the US. Because we're unfortunately pussies when it comes to using weapons designed by someone else, especially when they're better than what we came up with. The FAL is a much better rifle than the M14.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FN_FAL
Oh, the French were the only major NATO western nation that didn't use it. It wasn't popular in Asia outside of commonwealth nations.
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