Falkland Island Imbel vs. L1A1

[Peter Laidler]

You're right Eli......, now that you've reminded me, it WAS an Ballister Molina. It was pretty tough. Even after it had cooked off in the fire and a few rounds had cooked off in the magazine, it only blew the magazine out through the sides of the grips and blew the grips off and jammed the slide to the rear. But I put it into the workshop waste oil bath for a few months, cleaned it down, new magazine (all numbered to the pistols I recall), it went as good as any other M1911

[Trilux]

I remember one Falklands picture in particular of a Brit Para in the streets of Stanley either at dawn or dusk with a folding stock Para FAL slung over his shoulder with the stock folded.

Ive also just watched a documentary called "Battle for the Falklands" from 1983 and right near the end theres a soldier from 2 Para in a truck with an FAL in his lap saying how 2 Para were first into Stanley by quite some time.

Perhaps these guys were armed with Sterlings and found them to be less than usefull over the long ranges in the Falklands and picked up discarded FALs.

[nzl1a1collector]

Probably find the Para's had picked up souvenirs in the hope of bringing them home. But they weren't allowed to. As to the weapons captured .... they "sleep with the fishes".

[Raggylad]

There were a fair few which were picked up as private souvenirs - and mostly subsequently binned. A few came back as official war trophies, some for training use - we had one or 2 in NITAT. All were in a really manky condition; the conscripts just did not look after them. Most were destroyed or dumped at sea.

One thing that those who could did was to get hold of 30 round LMG mags which fitted the SLR and gave an extra 10 rounds.