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France

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  • French NATO Standardization: the MAS 49-56 in 7.62mm

    In the late 1950s, France was still part of the NATO integrated military structure. When the 7.62x51mm cartridge was adopted as standard for the alliance, France looked to be in a good position to simply convert their MAS 49-56 rifles to use it. After all, the 7.5mm cartridge the rifle was design...

  • MAT 49-54 Police Submachine Gun

    After the adoption of the MAT 49 as the standard French military submachine gun, elements of the French security services also adopted it to replace the 7.65mm MAS 38 submachine guns. These included the Paris Police, who developed a special variation of the MAT 49 for their use, designated the MA...

  • The French Finger Trap: MAS-36 Bayonet Shenanigans

    Soldiers will be soldiers...give them something that can be screwed up, and they will screw it up.

  • Post-War Paris Police MAS 38 Variation

    At the end of World War Two, the Paris Police decided that they needed a few different features on a police submachine gun than the then-standard MAS 38 offered. A few hundred were converted to the new police requirements, interestingly mirroring the characteristics that would be used a few years...

  • French Underfolding Paratrooper Rifle: MAS 36 CR39

    The CR39 ("crosse repliable", or folding stock) is the paratrooper version of the MAS 36. The need for a more compact and transportable pattern was recognized almost as soon as the MAS 36 was finalized, originally for paratroops but in practice also for alpine troops. Two years were spent devisin...

  • The 1874 Gras: France Enters the Brass Cartridge Era

    After the disaster of the Franco-Prussian War, it was clear to the French military that the rationale for using paper cartridge in the Chassepot was no longer valid - a future rifle would need to use brass cartridges. A competition to design a conversion of the Chassepot to use modern ammunitio...

  • Martyr of Verdun: Émile Driant's Command Post

    Émile Driant was a French army officer who served originally as an aide to General Boulanger (and married his daughter). This connection would tarnish his career when politics forced Boulanger to resign (and shortly afterward commit suicide). It became clear that he would never rise much in rank,...

  • FAMAS PGMP w/ EOTech in a Team 2-Gun Match

    The PGMP (Poignée Garde-Main Polyvalente) handguard assembly is the original modification to allow mounting of optics to the FAMAS rifle. The FAMAS handguard was not designed to hold an optic, and is not nearly stable enough to retain zero. The PGMP adds a hefty metal block to secure the optics ...

  • Shooting the Chatellerault FM 24/29 Light Machine Gun

    The Chatellerault FM 24/29 is an oft-forgotten light machine gun despite its relatively early design (predating the ZB/Bren series, DP28, and Nambu LMGs) and very long service life. It was the standard French LMG for World War Two, Indochina, Algeria, and many small African interventions. It has ...

  • Chassepot: Best of the Needle Rifles

    The Model 1866 Chassepot was France's first military cartridge-firing rifle. It used a self-contained paper cartridge on the same basic principle as the Prussian 1841 Dreyse rifle, but was a substantial improvement on that system. The Chassepot fired an 11mm bullet at about 1350 fps (410 m/s), wh...

  • Book Review: French Tanks of the Great War

    Having recently finished guiding a WW1 battlefield tour in France and Belgium, I found myself curious to learn more about the details of French tank development and service. We are used to seeing and hearing about the British tanks, but it was actually the French Renault FT-17 light tank that wou...

  • French Mle 1892 Revolver in Competition

    Today at the Backup Gun Match, I'm shooting a French Modèle 1892 service revolver. It's a 6-shot revolver with a swing-out cylinder, chambered for the 8x27mm cartridge (often called 8mm Lebel, although it really shouldn't be). I'll be shooting in a mix of single action and double action as seems ...

  • French 1878 Marine Kropatschek

    The French Navy chose not to adopt the Gras rifle, and continued to use the paper-cartridge, needlefire Chassepot into the late 1870s. When they finally decided to adopt a new metallic-cartridge rifle, they decided to jump right to a repeater. Testing was done in 1877 of the Winchester-Hotchkiss,...

  • Comparison: French 1935A vs 1935S Pistols

    I finally have a source for top quality reliable 7.65mm French Long, thanks to Steinel! I can't link to them, but I'm sure anyone who wants some themselves can find them online. Anyway, with ammo now available, I decided to test out the French 1935A and 1935S pistols side by side. First slow fire...

  • 1884 Kropatschek: Groundwork for the Lebel

    After the adoption of the single-shot Gras rifle in 1874, attitudes towards repeating rifles began to shift in the French military. The Battle of Plevna had shown that regardless of their hypothetic detriments, repeating rifles could substantially magnify a force's firepower and allow a smaller f...

  • Shooting the RSC-1918 and RSC-1917 French Autoloaders

    The day has come to do some shooting with an RSC-1918 - and an RSC-1917 as well! The 1917 was the first selfloading rifle to see substantial combat use, with just over 85,000 manufactured in 1917 and 1918 and used on the frontlines by French troops. The 1918 pattern is an improvement of the desig...

  • France's Ultimate WW1 Selfloading Rifle: The RSC-1918

    The French RSC-1917 semiauto rifle was a major step forward in arms technology during World War One, offering a reliable and effective self-loading rifle for issue to squad leaders, expert marksmen, and other particularly experienced and effective troops. No other military was able to field a sem...

  • American Viven-Bessières WW1 Grenade Launcher

    The standard American grenade launching system in World War One was the Vivien-Bessiere, borrowed directly form the French. It had been adopted by France in 1916, replacing copies of the British Martin-Hale rod grenades. The V-B was a cup type launcher using a pass-through type of grenade and sta...

  • Parisian Needlefire Knife-Pistol Combination

    Combination knife/gun weapons have been popular gadgets for literally hundreds of years, and this is one of the nicest examples I have yet seen. This sort of thing is usually very flimsy, and not particularly well made. This one, however, has a blade which locks in place securely and would seem t...

  • Chatellerault M24/29: France's New Wave of Post-WWI Small Arms

    France fought the Great War with an array of weapons which were all sub-par in one way or another - the Lebel rifle was obsolescent by 1914, the Berthier was a cavalry carbine forced into rifle service, the Chauchat was an emergency wartime design optimized for production volume instead of qualit...

  • The French MAS-38 Submachine Gun

    The MAS-38 was France’s first officially adopted submachine gun, rushed into service in 1940. It was basically too late to help with the defense of France, with less than a thousand delivered by June 1940. The Germans kept the gun in production, making 20-30 thousand under the designation MP722(f...

  • Meunier A6: France's First Semiauto Battle Rifle

    France began experimenting with self-loading rifle designs in the late 1890s, although most of this work is mostly unknown today. The work was done by the State arsenals, and kept as military secrets, without patents being filed or commercial sales considered. All sorts of systems were developed ...

  • MAS-36 LG48: A Grenade Launcher for the Bolt Action Infantry

    Once it became apparent that the MAS-36 was going to be used in a substantial amount of frontline combat (to the contrary of its intended role as a reserve or secondary rifle), it became important to provide it with grenade launching capability. The French military really liked rifle grenades as ...

  • MGD PM9 Rotary-Action Submachine Gun

    The PM9 was an interesting an unique submachine gun designed by Louis Debuit for the French firm Merlin and Gerin (hence the MGD name – Merlin, Gerin, Debuit) in the late 1940s and early 50s. The design was intended to provide a very compact package, which it did with a very short action, folding...