Dads rifle, Mau Mau uprising, Kenya.

[smellie]

Thank you for that, 5th Batt.!

I think this would qualify as a VERY early combat usage of the FAL. We were one of the first countries to adopt the thing and we didn't make any real number until a couple of years after Mau Mau.

All the wrong answers on this thread started to weird me out a bit. I was thinking, "What ELSE might be in that part of the world? Kar 71 from the Schutztruppe? Vergueiro?"

I'm really glad I didn't answer; would have made me look even more of an idiot than I already AM!
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[Peter Laidler]

As a matter of interest........... that's if anyone IS interested, the first issue of British made L1A1 rifles was in 1958 to the South Wales Borderers in Malaya who were the only unit there to have been using the trials FN's and who were already fully trained as a regiment in their use. They were Enfield (probably 1957 made) made rifles rushed out there and got there in late '58

Ok...., I know it's a long way from Kenya but it's only two letters away in the alphabet!

[Simon P]

An old shooting friend used to recount stories when we used to shoot together in the early 80s and one of his stories were about trialling the FN Fals in Maylasia. He was in the Malayan Scouts then SAS until he lost an eye.

I am not sure if its is fact or fiction but he mentioned that they bent the barrel on one of the trials rifles during a close quarter skirmish.

[Homer2]

Not a lot of information on that action, but i did manage to pick up a book called, "The Mau Mau Manhunt". I can't remember the author, but it may have been a guy named Baldwin. He was an American who joined the Park Rangers or Police. Apparently they didn't take a lot of prisoners, but it was an effective counterinsurgency. Good book.

[Peter Laidler]

Apparently, the oh so politically correct BBC are now telling us that the Mau Mau and Malaya campaigns were fought by the locals attempting to overthrow the occupying colonial powers....... You just can't win!

[Paul S.]

Apparently, the oh so politically correct BBC are now telling us that the Mau Mau and Malaya campaigns were fought by the locals attempting to overthrow the occupying colonial powers.......

What rot!

I have more I could say, but using such language isn't polite so I'll just keep my opinions of the brain-dead, neo-Leninist, historical revisionists at the BEEB to myself.

[Thunderbox]

The UK FN Trials rifles were until recently used in DP form for SAS selection - the two TA regiments both had them. The rifles must have been exceptionally well made, as the working parts and finish were still in excellent condition despite forty years of exposure to the acid peat bogs and incessant rain of the Brecon Beacons!

I wish I could find one of those UK trials in shootable form; IMHO they had the best ergonomics and build quality of any of the FAL family that I've examined. I imagine that no Trials rfile made it into UK civilian ownership even in the days before self-loading rifles were banned, as they all had full-auto selectors.

[Peter Laidler]

We still had hundreds of them, issued and in fully functioning order in Malaya and Singapore and as I recall, the change levers still move to the 'A' automatic position but the internal configuration and trigger spring support wouldn't allow auto fire regardless of the position of the change lever. There were many old wives tales about using a matchstick or swopping parts etc etc that would make your FN or L1A1 shoot in rock and roll mode but as I explained in a thread on the FNFAL forum some time ago, life was a bit more complicated than that.

On the same subject, those 'selection course' FN's were at the end of their lives during the 80's or so and as I remember it, there were no pistol grips in the system or even available and the L1A1 grips couldn't be adapted to even look the part. That's the reason why the L60 programme came on stream to convert old worn out bodied (usually worn out locking lugs or unfixable loose locking shoulders) L1A1's to DP for paratroopers and 'others....' With those rifles, it was a simple matter to tig the locking shoulders in place.

By coincidence, I was involved in a case a few years ago where someone had 'obtained' one of them by fair means or foul and it was deemed to be no longer a firearm.

Have we digressed far enough T/box?

[smellie]

Sounds as if your BBC is as bad as our CBC.

Harper, our PM, now has a Majority Gummint after two slender minorities. The CBC and almost all other mass media here has been viciously anti-Harper for years.

He managed to get their attention rather well by stripping $30 million a year off their billion-dollar budget for the next 5 years This means that they have to get along on a mere 97 cents on the dollar, but they are VERY aware that he could have just as easily chopped their budget in half.... or simply SOLD their little Marxist paradise to some Evil Capitalist who would have turfed them or (far worse) made them WORK.

They have, very suddenly, become FAR less vocal and vehement, even saying the occasional nice (true) thing. This is vastly preferable to their normal spew of half-truths, alarmisms and outright lies.

Perhaps pressure on the UK Gummint to 'save money for social necessities' might smarten up the Beeb.

It's worth a try, anyway.
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[Paul S.]

Sounds as if your BBC is as bad as our CBC.
Perhaps pressure on the UK Gummint to 'save money for social necessities' might smarten up the Beeb.

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That or spread a rumour that Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner, the American edition of Murdoch have approached the government about buying the BBC.