America's T48: it almost won!

Guns Magazine, Oct, 2008 by Holt Bodinson

[ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED]

Widely known as the FN FAL, SLR, LIA1 and other descriptive acronyms, Fabrique Natioinale's "Fusil Automatique Leger" has been the world's single most successful 7.62 NATO rifle platform. Given the official US Ordnance test designation of "T48," the FAL might have been adopted as the United State's main battle rifle.

In fact, it was actually manufactured here on an experimental basis. In fact, the Army, assuming the FAL would be adopted, wrote and printed a complete user's manual for the FAL. But it was not to be. It was "NIH" (Not Invented Here), a chronic disease that has infected ordnance departments for a very long time.

Adopted by over 50 countries and made under license by 11 more, the FAL has one of the most distinctive profiles of any military weapon. It has the lines of a strike fighter. It extrudes a bit of "Don't Tread on Me." It's simply very efficient at what it's asked to do--connect with the enemy and be easy to maintain under combat conditions.

The FAL's roots are intriguing because, once more, we come face-to-face with the genius of Dieudonne J. Saive (1889-1973), John Moses Browning's chief design assistant at FN and God-given gift to FN and the Free World.

Monsieur Saive's primary focus during the 1930s was the design of a self-loading rifle to replace Belgium's aging Mausers. The result was the popular SAFN-49 (Saive Automatique FN), incorporating a short stroke piston with an adjustable gas regulator and a carrier-guided tilting bolt that locked down against a steel lug in the receiver. The SAFN-49 was a typical 1930s battle rifle design. It was expensive to make, heavy and, to my mind, a bit of a klutz to handle.

Following WWII, the United States. Britain and Canada began a series of essential meetings to discuss the standardization of their weapons and ammunition. The American-favored refined Garand design emerged as the T44 and later as the M14, firing a full-powered cartridge, the T65, now known as the 7.62x51mm NATO. The Brits were impressed with Germany's compact 7.92mm Kurz round, figured 600 yards was about as far as anyone could realistically hit anything and came to the table with their EM2 bullpup firing their short, intermediate range cartridge, the .280 Enfield.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Meanwhile, eyeing the Allies' debate from the sidelines was FN with Monsieur Saive's latest design in hand, the FN/FAL, that incorporated the gas-regulated, short-stroke piston and tilting bolt of the SAFN-49 in a racy, less expensive new body.

With the formation of NATO between 1949 and 1954, standardization of at least a common rifle cartridge was imperative. The United States carried the day virtually demanding their 7.62x51 be adopted. The debate over the question of a standard rifle was left a bit more open, coming down to either the T44 (M14) or the FAL to be determined through a series of NATO trials from 1950 to 1956.

The result of an initial shoot-out at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in 1950 was the Fort Benning Infantry Board favored the FAL because of its ease of fieldstripping. Testing continued.

By 1954 and not wanting Springfield Armory, the home of the T44, to skew any test results, US Ordnance contracted Harrington & Richardson to build 500 FALs under the "T48" designation at a cost of $2,392 each and High Standard, a total of 13 more.

H&R obtained inch-corrected drawings derived from FN's metric drawings with the help of Canada (already committed to the adoption and manufacture of an inch version of the FN/FAL). This was the beginning of the inch-based FAL as manufactured by Britain, Canada and the United States versus the more widely manufactured metric-based FN/FAL. The inch-based North American design required changes in screw threads, metallurgy, heat-treatment, finishes and even mechanical changes such as reinforced magazine retention lips and hinged winter triggerguards. A clear explanation of the differences between inch and metric FAL's can be found at www.dsarms. com.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The final US test results as reported to the Secretary of the Army by the Infantry Board at Fort Benning were that the FAL was one pound heavier than the M14, was more mechanically complicated, had three gas settings rather than simply one while the M14 could be produced on machinery designed for the M1 (not true) and, because of it's similarity to the M1, would reduce training time.

On May 1, 1957, Secretary of the Army Brucker, ordered the adoption of the T44 as the M14.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The US military didn't get an FAL, but we can, thanks to DS Arms, Inc. of Barrington, Illinois. The FAL "T48" pictured in the article was produced by DS Arms, which produces multiple FAL models in their "Original," "Classic," "Tactical," "Hunter," "Australian," and "California" series. There are rifles, carbines, heavy and medium weight barrel models chambered in .308, .243, and .260, offered with normal or folding buttstocks and with Parkerized or exotic camo finishes. DS Arms also supplies metric and inch receivers, parts kits and magazines. If it's FN/FAL related, they have it.