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After WW2 the french military, devastated and largely disarmed by the german occupation of 1940-44, had to be remade from scratch. One of the most widely spread weapons of the previous war was the submachine gun and France needed them badly. The French national arms concern Manufacture Nationale d’Armes de Tulle, better known as MAT, started working on the design. Adopted in 1949, the designation became the MAT-49 for obvious reasons.-
Firearms engineer Pierre Monteil constructed a gun whose byword was: simple. Made from a thick stamping of sheet steel, it had few components to break. Its action was a rudimentary blowback type, which eliminated an extractor. A heavy mainspring, a 7.7-pound empty weight, and a 1.3-pound bolt made the gun easy to control and its relatively slow 600-round per minute cyclic rate made 3-4 round bursts into a man-sized target quick to master. With the sub gun’s 9mm Parabellum ammo, it was equipped with flip-up, L-shaped rear peep sights graduated to 50 meters on one side and 100 on the other. To keep it fed, the gun could carry 20 or 32-round single-stack detachable box magazines.-
The whole gun could be made compact for use by paratroopers and vehicle mounted infantry through the use of a collapsible wire-frame buttstock and a magazine well that could be rotated forward similar to the Hotchkiss Universal. Overall length with a 9.1-inch barrel was 28-inches with the stock extended and just 18 when it was collapsed. A grip safety kept the open-bolt design safe for the end-user in the field.-
Production was ceased in about 1979, when french army officially adopted the FAMAS assault rifle.-
Firearms engineer Pierre Monteil constructed a gun whose byword was: simple. Made from a thick stamping of sheet steel, it had few components to break. Its action was a rudimentary blowback type, which eliminated an extractor. A heavy mainspring, a 7.7-pound empty weight, and a 1.3-pound bolt made the gun easy to control and its relatively slow 600-round per minute cyclic rate made 3-4 round bursts into a man-sized target quick to master. With the sub gun’s 9mm Parabellum ammo, it was equipped with flip-up, L-shaped rear peep sights graduated to 50 meters on one side and 100 on the other. To keep it fed, the gun could carry 20 or 32-round single-stack detachable box magazines.-
The whole gun could be made compact for use by paratroopers and vehicle mounted infantry through the use of a collapsible wire-frame buttstock and a magazine well that could be rotated forward similar to the Hotchkiss Universal. Overall length with a 9.1-inch barrel was 28-inches with the stock extended and just 18 when it was collapsed. A grip safety kept the open-bolt design safe for the end-user in the field.-
Production was ceased in about 1979, when french army officially adopted the FAMAS assault rifle.-
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Only joking - no offense meant.