MAS 49/56 to 500yds: Practical Accuracy feat. Forgotten Weapons / Ian McCollum

This video is brought to you by Slate Black Industries. For grips and accessories, visit slateblackindustries.com. Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten Nine Hole Reviews. Unfortunate for you guys in France, it's theoretically your rifle, but they're all over here and it's really a pretty cool situation for us in the United States. It's not so much that the French decided not to adopt the NATO cartridge as the French didn't need to adopt the NATO cartridge because they already had something that was very similar. See if I can find some rifle grenades for it, maybe. So during the day of the shoot, I forgot to bring the tripod for the spotting scope to see the shots. We were able to fix them with post-production stabilization, but I also forgot to switch on the microphone to record the audio. So you've got onboard audio and 29 mile per hour gusts. Yeah, I was a high-scoring batter that day. So enjoy. We'll catch you at the debrief with Ian McCollum. All right, for the glory of the Republic. 150. Impact. Neutralized. On a two. Impact. Neutralized. Yeah, those are center cluster. Okay, I'm on a 250. Impact. Neutralized. That's what I like to hear. Okay, I'm going to shoot you up to 300 sites. Okay, I'm on at three. Impact. Neutralized. 350. Okay, you're off the right edge. Complete reverse. Bottom edge of the target. Half target to the left. Impact. Short by approximately half a target. Same spot. Short. Left. Three quarters of a target. Good elevation. Impact. I had a little trouble there. All right, 400. 400. Impact. Just off the left edge. That was probably to the right. Just off the left edge. It's literally like an inch off the left edge. Ready? Yeah. Off the left. That was off the left a bit more. Full target. Impact. Okay, the one right before the impact, that was my fault. I heard you. I heard you begrudge it before it even landed. I knew it too. All right, I'm on it. 450. Just underneath. Impact. Push it to the 500 meter setting. I'm actually having to aim over the target and I don't see the target when I'm aiming at it. Impact. Okay, that's a much better arrangement. Better sight picture for you. What? Better sight picture for you. Yeah, I mean basically I'm doing a six o'clock with a gap in between. So 500 meters translates roughly to about 458 yards. 500 yards translates to like 450 or change meters. So I'm going to use a 500 meter setting, hold it low for this one with no gap. Ready? Just off the right edge, three o'clock. It was either way left or it was an impact that grazed off to the left side. Impact. Should I do another one? Yeah, that was a very, very obvious and authoritative hit that the one previous was not. So that first shot we were about 70% sure that it was a hit. And then we made a good second shot. And then we were going to shoot more until the rifle reminded, spoke up and reminded me that it still had its heavy military firing pin in and we were shooting PPU civilian primers. However, we went back and reviewed it at that point and saw that it was a hit. So good to go. Rifles cleared. Okay, so what did we just witness? We saw a MAS 4956 shoot through wild winds and hit the 500 yard target and it wasn't easy. But is that what we should be expecting from these rifles? Someone's talking about French rifles. I can tell. Oh, Henry. Hey, how's it going? Hello, Ian. You must have been out shooting a 4956. How did you know? I just know these things. Were you able to view the shots from wherever you telepathically were viewing from? I saw the whole thing. Oh, wow. Okay, perfect. That absolutely works. So we just, as you saw through your brainwave, so we shot a 4956 from zero to 500 yards, which is 450-ish meters. It wasn't the smoothest reach all the way out there. I mean, it's not going to set any records. However, the winds were also absolutely crazy. So you've shot, you know, you've read a few things about French rifles, presumably. Somewhere or something, yeah. Yeah. Internets, Wikipedia. Mostly Wikipedia. Yeah. So what do you think about the performance of the MAS 4956? Frankly, I was rather impressed. To my mind, the sights on the 4956 and really that whole series, the whole semi-auto MAS series, are much better suited for relatively close range use. They have a really big, chunky front sight post. You know, if you think about the national match style of iron sights intended for precise long-range shooting, you've got very narrow, very crisp, squared-off front sight posts. And the 4956 is the exact opposite. It's not a barleycorn, but it is a sort of a trapezoidal front sight post. It's very wide, and I think it's really good for picking up quickly. I would never, frankly, I, well, obviously, I couldn't shoot it that well at that long of a distance, but that's what you're particularly good at. So yeah, I thought it went pretty well, especially considering the wind. So I guess looking back at this, you know, the 7.5 French, some people will say that it's somewhere in between 7.62 NATO and 7.62 Soviet, the M41 cartridge, 7.6239. But really, I mean, what are we looking at? 139 grains, how fast are we going? We're going about 2,700, 2,650, 2,700 feet per second. So it is in between the two cartridges, but it's much closer to NATO than it is to the Soviet M40. So were they looking for more recoil management when they designed 7.5 French? What were they really looking at, or did the cartridge just exist before? So what they were looking at when they designed 7.5 French was a rimless cartridge. That was the most significant thing, because that cartridge was originally designed for that machine gun, and they were using it in that machine gun for basically a decade before it was used in rifles. This was a cartridge, I think it's important to point out, maybe I think of this as obvious, but I'm much more deeply into it than most people. 7.5 French predates 7.62 NATO by like, what's 1924, 1929 that it was developed? So we're talking like 30 years predating 7.62 NATO. It's not so much that the French decided not to adopt the NATO cartridge as the French didn't need to adopt the NATO cartridge, because they already had something that was very similar. Slightly lower pressure, slightly lower velocity, slightly lighter bullet, which conveys a number of advantages. Everyone talks about how 30-06 was massively overpowered for an infantry rifle, and the 7.62 NATO was essentially designed to duplicate 06. Which, interesting enough, because your 30-06 goes from the M1 to the M2 ball, it steps down significantly. I mean, it's obvious. The trend was already stepping away from the high drainage to the mid-range 30-cal drainage, and then really the next step was to shorten the case, because your M2 ball really was almost like a 308 with a longer casing. It's just loaded less. And the French had already gone through all of that process long before NATO was even conceived. So, what you have essentially is a cartridge that still took the Western standard, the Western idea of we're going to have one cartridge for rifles and machine guns. Where the Soviets, well, today all of NATO, NATO adopted this when they went to 5.56, but after World War II, the Soviets went to a system of, we'll have one cartridge for the infantry rifle, and a larger cartridge for the machine guns. Now, they had a squad automatic in the form of the RPD, but the higher level, the company battalion level machine guns were all in 7.62x54. So, the idea being we've got our serious in place, like the machine guns, they're going to be on tripods that need to be firing at longer ranges. We're keeping this full power rifle cartridge. We would like to have some automatic firepower in the hands of the individual small squad, and the only logistically sensible way to do that is to give them the same cartridge that the individual rifles have. And they did the same thing working in the opposite direction by at that time developing the AK, which uses that cartridge in a submachine gun role. The AK was originally a replacement for the PPS-43 submachine guns. So, it's basically the concept of it is to have a universal system rather than they're designing the cartridge for this one rifle. Pretty much the universal cartridge. It was used in the bolt-action rifles, the MAS 36, which at that time was for the reserve unit. And then the frontline troops got the self-loading rifles. They figured the way the MAS 49 system, 49-56 is built, it has the potential to be a very accurate rifle. And so, they kind of took a page from German design and figured every one of these is accurate enough that it's suitable to be a designated marksman's rifle. And so, they actually have a scope dovetail on every rifle. And all you need to do to make it a marksman's rifle is drop the scope on. At the same time, they also gave it a gas cutoff. So, you can use it for a grenadier's rifle. It's already got a gas cutoff. All you have to do is drop a rifle grenade on the muzzle. Now, the exception to that would be they still used a submachine gun. They had MAT 49s. With the development of bullpups, a number of countries would try to replace, try to basically combine the rifle and the submachine gun into a single item. At this point, that's not happening. That's the downside of using... If you can use the cartridge in a machine gun, you can't use it in a submachine gun. So, how effective were, let's say, in the field? They use it for snipers, right? The MAS 49-56 or just designated marksman? It was intended originally as a sniper's rifle and it didn't really pull off that role that well. It worked well as a marksman's rifle. Part of the problem is sometimes... This goes back to the MAS 49 that predates the 49-56. They sometimes were using the same rifles to launch grenades and to snipe with. You get bore erosion and issues with the grenade launching that impede the accuracy of the rifle. We could talk about that for half an hour and how they adjusted for it, but we won't. Ultimately, what they would do is develop the FR-F1 as a sniper-specific rifle. The 49-56 works fine as a DMR, but it doesn't quite have the accuracy potential that the FR-F1 did. Which the FR-F1 actually shares the same APX scope. The initial, the one we shot anyways. Yeah, in fact, all the FR-F1s did. So, that's the scope. So, it's largely like a copy off of the World War II German scopes. Three and a half power. It's got a nice easy dovetail. Yep, yeah, exactly right there. So, every MAS 49, every MAS 49-56 has that rail on it, and you can just drop the scopes on. There you go. Cool, thank you. Yeah, that was the idea. It's really interesting to me that they actually kept this same scope on the FR-F1 for quite a long time. Because, I mean, you shot this thing on the F1. It's kind of a limiting thing on that rifle, isn't it? Honestly, the FR-F1, that blew my mind. That that particular setup was able to reach out with, honestly, minimal misses. And that was the same cartridge that we shot too. Now, they did have a precision ball loading for the FR-F1. It used a heavier bullet. And it's not so much that the weight was important, but it was a longer bullet that gave it a better ballistic coefficient. That's true. Actually, the cartridges that I sent the rifle back to you with are duplicates of that particular cartridge. Still, I mean, it blew my mind that the FR-F1 was able to basically clean the entire course and still hold the record up until today. I mean, it beat out the M110. Bien sûr. Sorry, what did you expect? So, okay. So that actually transitions us really nicely into the cartridge itself. The downside, like the upside of how the French did the cartridge is it's got less recoil force to it, and it's nicer shooting. The downside is by lightening the bullet and slowing it down, but sticking with a 7.62 millimeter bore, you now have a short bullet. It's a flat-based bullet, and it's not going to do very well in wind. Which you do see me really struggle with it at the 350, I think, 350 or so. Yeah, you went clean out through 300, and then it was like 350 took something like seven shots, I think it was. But remember, too, though, I mean, that was 21 to 29 mile an hour winds that we were facing that day. I honestly, and 7.5 French is not cheap in the States to find right now. Remind me, because I wasn't watching when you set up the whole thing. Were you using straight PPU ammo, or did you use their case? Well, that's part of your issue. I've had, like, I shot PPU to try and do some shooting with my F1, and it's not hugely accurate. So some of your issues are not just wind, they're the not super consistency of 7.5 PPU. Okay, so the difficulty of remanufacturing the French military ball load. PPU is the closest to it because it's got the 139 grand projectiles, right? I did actually prior to this, I bought some actual French surplus ammunition. And I told you about the World War Two surplus that I had. I don't know if it's powder degradation or whatever. But I had a casing split. I mean, it wasn't a huge split. It was just a tiny pressure crack. But it's singed a little hole, it gave the chamber a little bit of a battle scar. And cooked a bunch of smoke inside of the rifle. So, I mean, hang fire aside, finding components, the projectiles specifically, to load for the military ball load is very difficult. So while I will agree with you, PPU may not have the most consistent load, match load, it's not a match load per se. But I mean, I would be able to get somewhere like a three MOA, no issue. That's actually probably... Three-ish MOA. That's probably fairly comparable to what the ball issue ammunition in the military was doing. So really the idea of using PPU outside of the fact that I'm lazy and I don't want to roll every single cartridge that I shoot for every single rifle, is also to duplicate the performance of the military firearm. So we get a better reading on what a French soldier would be expecting in the field. Which again, the winds were quite exceptional this time. But it's nothing out of the ordinary if you were in the Sahara in North Africa, in the Atlas Mountains, or less so in Indochina, but more so in North Africa, I would say. You're probably not making 350 meter shots in Indochina either. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, I honestly, I do think that the MAS 4956 would be... I mean, going up against SKSs in Indochina, I mean, that would not be a bad compromise. But then at the same time, having AKs as the opponent, I mean, that would not be amazing in Indochina to have one third of the magazine capacity, and then the range that you don't really need. Right. That's the thing in an environment like that, is the whole cartridge has been designed to give your machine guns an effective range of something like 800 meters. Well, if nothing is capable, if nothing ever needs to shoot more than 100 or maybe 200, because you're in very dense vegetation, then you're absolutely going to be a disadvantage to the guys who are running around with much smaller, higher capacity rifles. One can argue logistically that France would have been great in those areas if they were... The French Empire has to prepare for a much wider variety of environments than the Vietnamese military does. Right. And I would say in the case of North Africa, and my exposure to really doing deep dives into that is the book Legionnaire by Simon Murray. He talks about going on engagements in the mountains and shooting through brush, punching at combat, actually pretty close to the distances that we saw today because wide open fields, a lot of elevation terrain going up and down mountains sometimes. In that type of open field in, let's say, continental Europe, if there were a Soviet invasion, I mean, that would not be the worst to have that cartridge in the open field. But yeah, the other aspect of weapons though, outside of just talking about the cartridge performance, I think a lot of times people don't think about in a very military context is the wear and tear, the maintenance and really how durable is the weapon. And a lot of times people would compare the MAS 49-56 to the M14. What do you think about that? If you were to compare the MAS 49-56 to any type of battle rifles of the era? I think the much more appropriate comparison to make would be to the G3. So the 49-56 is developed with specifically an eye towards industrial manufacture. It is a very simple gun to make. It has a very small number of parts. It uses a gas impingement system that it's a locked breach unlike the G3, but I think otherwise the two have a lot in common. It has a fixed barrel. There's no moving gas piston on top of the barrel. This sets it up to be intrinsically quite accurate as well as fast and easy and cheap to manufacture. All characteristics that the G3 was also designed for. But people see the wood stock and I think that immediately conflates the MAS with the M14. So the MAS, actually, it sounds like it was designed as a pretty well-suited weapon for continents like Africa. I think so, yeah. Open fighting in Europe as well, yeah. It's a very reliable gun. It's a very simple gun. I mean, you can you take that thing apart and it's just a couple of big chunks and there they all are, you know. If you're in fine sand, don't put so much lube in it or don't put any lube in it. If you're in the jungle, coat that thing with oil to protect the surface. From the ordnance side of looking at things too, like PRS shooters, like if they run a six millimeter cartridge, they need to replace a barrel every thousand rounds. That's, you shoot a thousand rounds out of a bore in a couple training exercises. Yeah, that sort of thing would be insanity for a military to adopt. There is an element of we have how many hundred thousand rifles and how often are we going to have to rebuild them with brand new barrels? That matters. I guess if you think of it this way, if your DMV was also your vehicle's garage and you had to submit paperwork in order to get an oil change, I think if you think of it that way, people would have a much better understanding on why would a military specifically choose a lesser performing cartridge at distance to get a better wear characteristic. The French 7.5, when I think of it, it being shorter and then having maybe, I would say in a high wind condition, a 400 meter effective range, and then in lower wind, maybe push it out to 600. That's not bad if you have that type of effective ranging capabilities. And then to think that it is easily manufactured, there's not a lot of parts hanging off like clanging together in the front to beat itself apart. And then the lower muzzle wear characteristics, I think all of that added together seems to be a pretty decent investment towards military arms. Right. There is an element of the logistical side that, again, most people don't think about because as an individual private gun owner, these really aren't issues that come up. How much does it cost to refurbish 50,000 of your rifle? Well, you've got one. And virtually nobody in the civilian sector is ever going to refurbish it at all. So we just don't think about that. But you have to if you're planning to arm a huge entire army. And the other thing, too, civilian owners tend to... When you pay for a rifle, you tend to take care of the rifle. Better than recruits down in Indochina? Oh, worse than that. The conscripts. I have a couple of Berthiers that came back from Indochina and they are not happy about it. Yeah, so I mean, I think there's a couple of different aspects. It's interesting what you would look at to make a decent military arm versus a good performing civilian sporting arm, right? Yeah. But anyways, could perhaps if we have an opportunity to shoot it with a scope, perhaps we could revisit and see how this works? I'd be interested in that. I think you should pick a less windy day. Just turn down the wind. You have the power to do that, right? I think you do. Yeah, I wish. Do you need it back or do you already have one? We don't necessarily have one right now, but we'll start looking around. Okay, well, why don't you just take this one and you can give it back to me when you're all done. It's my spare. Cool. Let me know how it goes. Yeah, will do. Well, I mean, you won't have to. I'll watch. Oh, sure. Yeah. All right. Well, appreciate everyone for tuning in. Thanks, Ian, for hopping on. I know, you know, this is a... I honestly, I could not think of anyone more appropriate to bring up here to really have an intellectual conversation on what happened in the background of some of these more iconic firearms from history. Oh, thank you. Namely, French. Of course. The most iconic. The best. The most iconic. The best. Subscribe to our newsletter at slateblackindustries.com where you can get updates on 9-hole review publications and access the Practical Accuracy Scoreboard to help you argue with people on the internet on which rifle performs better on the Practical Accuracy course. We maintain this newsletter to be majority gun content with 9-hole reviews updates per every email with less than 33% marketing content. Subscribe today on slateblackindustries.com