South African R2 and its Special Furniture
FAL Around the World
•
7m 0s
In South African military service, the R1 was the FN FAL and was the preferred infantry combat rifle until the adoption of the Galil as the R4 rifle. So what were the guns in between? Well, the R2 was a South African adaptation of the G3. A large number of rifles were needed as a reserve, and also to equip second echelon units like the Air Force, Cape Corps, and South West Africa Territorial Force. To reduce the expense of this, South Africa purchased something like 100,000 G3 rifles from Portugal and designated them R2.
The Portuguese hand guards and buttstocks were found to be unsatisfactory, however. In the heat and harsh ultraviolet radiation of South West Africa (now Namibia) in particular, the plastic would shrink and lose its fit, leading to the guns being called "rattlers" by the SADF troops. The fix this, the American firm of Choate Machine & Tool was contracted to make new hand guards based on the H&K export pattern - wider and longer and with fittings for a bipod. New stocks were also made, duplicating the shape of the R1/FAL stock.
Up Next in FAL Around the World
-
C2A1: Canada's Squad Automatic FAL
Canada was the first country to formally adopt the FN FAL as its standard service rifle, and in 1958 it added the C2 light machine gun version of the FAL to its arsenal. The C2, later updated to C2A1, was a heavy-barreled version of the regular FAL rifle. It shared all the same basic action compo...
-
FN FAL / L1A1 SLR Reliability: Ian an...
The US prejudice against the FN FAL (including the inch pattern L1A1 SLR) is that they'll inevitably choke. However, Bloke's legit BSA L1A1 ran like a champ at Finnish Brutality 2023, with only one very minor hiccup at loading on the last rifle stage. Interestingly, the same hiccup that Ian's (Fo...
-
Right Arm of the Free World: FN FALs ...
The FN FAL is one of the iconic infantry weapons of the Cold War. Since Autumn last year we have seen several variant appear in use in Ukraine. In this video we take a look some of the examples seen and get some direct insight from some of the Ukrainian personnel who have used them in the field. ...
