We never had any problems with cold weather or snow, the only issue was if you didn’t keep the gas plug clean it could get dirty enough to make it very difficult to remove and also a little oil on the piston
OK I know this is 3 Years old but I believe the Canadian Rangers in the territories actually turned down replacing their Lee Enfields with the FAL in part because it's performance in the cold was not up to their standards.
The Americans messed that one up and it wasn't because everyone else was working in metric. US gallon is 3/4L smaller than the imperial gallon and only the Americans use that gallon.
Sinister Thoughts actually he is correct, here in Australia before we converted to metric in the late 60’s we used imperial gallons and they measure to 4.5 litres. The US gallon in comparison only measures 3.75 litres and the US is the only country that used this measurement. Besides the whole world bar the US ,Myanmar and Sierra Leone uses metric probably about time you guys got your head around it, it is a far simpler system
When I first got into the Canadian inf I was issued the C2. It seems no one wanted to carry it. Over time I started to love it ( the fire power) the worst part of carrying the C2 was the bipod opening all the time. My serial no. Was 2LA211 still burned in my memory. You have a great series keep it up
@@rockbutcher Too heavy...I could not fire it accurately from the hip with sling period...burnt my L hand bad a few times...even when prone I had trouble with accuracy firing bursts. Maybe I was just a shitty gunner but I loved The C1A1 which was my standard weapon
I shoot using meters, drive using Miles. My height and weight are Feet and Pounds, but Temperature is in Celsius. The fence in my yard is 9 meters long and two yards high.
My father told me when he was a kid, 13 roughly, living in the boonies of bc, it was ok for a 13 year old to walk in to a gun store and purchase high-powered firearms. That was early 70's. He said when he was that age he had enough rifles to support a small militia. I really wish I was born in that generation. Missed all that. Caught the tail end of it in the early 90's for some of the dangerous fun we would do as kids.
I lived in the Canadian boonies as a kid, and everybody owned guns around there. I was around 7 or 8 when I got my first pellet gun (powerful enough to kill partridges from about 25 feet) so illegal today. I had a .22 and a .410 when I was around 12, and a 12 gauge, and 30-06 when I was something like 14... They weren't LEGALLY mine, but they were MY guns to use... Today, parents would get arrested for that... Also, in the mid-70s, any kid could walk into a corner store and buy firecrackers of any size...
@@Retr0Whiskey I bet canadian engineers would be the easy to spot because they are the ones sitting in the corner while muttering about conversion tables.
In the old South African Defence Force when doing my 2 years national service and first trip up to the South West Africa/Angola border we had the same weapon with a different bi-pod and sights the "R1/FN FAL heavy barrel/swaerloop" at section level, they were quickly replaced by the FN MAG as the Section GPMG. It was a joy to shoot and at 100 metres you could chase soft drink cans around the range, accuracy and stability was great. For my first 3 month tour as a section leader I carried one andwas always confident when shooting I was going to group extremely well. It was seldom in the Border / Bush War that one had any visibility beyond 100 metres when on a foot patrol. Downside of the R1/FN FAL was it was not very dust proof and tended to jam due to dust and Ovamboland / Southern Angola in the dry season was one big dust bowl. The worst stoppage was fine sand/grit in the chamber that then turned to glass when fired and created a spot weld (tiny glass bead). The straight pull back of the extraction system would break the rim off the cartridge and the weapon was out of action till a pull rod could be used to push the stuck cartridge case out. The enemy's AK47 was a lot better in sand as the extractor turned the empty casing as it came out the chamber and that would break any sand made spot welds.
The G3 aka R3 (ex Portuguese circa 1974/75, the collapse of Angola and Mozambique) was issued to some S.A. Air Force (base protection units) and then in large quantities to the South West African Territorial Force when it came into being in August 1980. The front line SADF Infantry Battalions no's 1-8 and 11 Commando in Kimberly and Citizen Force and Home Guard units all used the R1 aka FN FAL 7,62mm NATO made under licence till in the early 1980's the R1 was replaced by the R4 a 5,56mm NATO calibre based on the Israeli Galil assault rifle also made under licence by the then ARMSCOR. The R2 was a paratroop version of the R1 i.e. folding butt and shorter barrel. The R5 was a compact version of the R4 for armoured crews and helicopter crews etc
@@michaelstrachan6371 do you know if the G3 suffered from the same issues as the FAL in terms of fouling and heat? In my experience the G3 gets dirty and very hot quickly. Perhaps a problem with all 7.62 nato battle rifles?
@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine oh I'm aware of the general issues. Doesn't take long for the fouling to get so bad you have keep the gun horisontal when doing the hk slap. I've also seen a cock off on a safe gun with round in the chamber. After not too many magazines of rapid fire.
Australia also converted Bren guns to 7.62 NATO (L4 designation) which were much preferred to the heavy barrel L2A1 Automatic Rifle. The M60 was also adopted by Australia so at one stage all 3 were in service together.
Yeah, some Brens stayed in service in Canada too. My dad was a Bren gunner in the reserves (then the militia) back in the early 60s. His was still chambered in .303 British, which worked out because the army still had literal tons of old Second World War ammo sitting around in warehouses. Basically they were told to do as much live-fire training as they wanted, because the ammo was 20 years old and just collecting dust.
Plus the ARA (Regular Army) moved to the MAG58 sometime in the 80s. In the early nineties I was carrying a M60 as a reservist and even the 7.62 Bren on a couple of occasions.
The FN FALO (Fusil Automatique Lourd or heavy automatic rifle) also known as FN FAL 50.41, adopted by the Brazilian Army as the FAP (Fuzil automático pesado), I admit I've never heard about it before joining the military
Yep. Brazillian here. Dad served in the army, used the FAL (Fusil Automático Leve), but saw plenty of the FAP (Fusil Automático Pesado) in stock in his base. He said that the FAL was already heavy, he didn't want to have to carry an even heavier FAP.
It would be interesting to know how many of the manufactured guns saw service in the hands of rookies and what amount of the guns given were checked and serviced hand me downs. When I did the obligatory service, I was given a gun Rk 62 that turned out to have a bent barrel. You could not hit on the target at all. Finally the sergeant major shoot with the gun himself only to notice that the bullet hit around two feet sideways compared to the aiming point. Someone had somehow managed to bend the barrel sideways so that it could not be corrected by alingnment.
With respect to the fact that the C1 and C2 rifles were manufactured using imperial measurements (inches) and the sights were in metric (metres) is not anomalous or "tomfoolery" as has been suggested by other commentators. When these guns were first built, Canadian plants made everything in imperial. We did not officially switch to the metric system until the 1970s. The Canadian military was always part of NATO and like the rest of NATO, we had maps with metric grid squares - one kilometer or about 0.62 miles. Therefore, with metric maps, we called in artillery fire and measured distances like patrol routes and road marches in metric. As a platoon commander in the Canadian infantry at the time these weapons were used, it did not make the slightest difference to me that my weapons were manufactured in imperial measurements. If I was on exercise and the OPFOR engaged me, I looked at the map and if I discovered they were in a tree line 400 metres away, I directed the fire of my platoon based on the range to target using a metric measurement so they could use their sights effectively. All of our rifle ranges had mounds (firing lines) at 100, 200, 300 (and so on) metres - not yards. We trained in metres. It was never an issue. The weapons technician at the base who fixed the rifle by replacing a part built to an imperial measurement was not impeded by the fact that the sights were set based on a metric scale. Fast forward to the late 1980s and Canada adopted the C7 (an M16 variant) and the Minimi LMG. The C7 was built in Canada with metric components. Many products made in Canada today are still in imperial because they are sold in the US. Also - because we buy so many products from the US, imperial measurement products and tools are still very common in Canada.
@@imapseudonym1403 i remember doing a biathlon and not checking my gas regulator before I started shooting....got 2 rounds off before I realized I was kicking the sh*t out of my orbital bone lol
A note that may be of interest. The C2 bra had to be created because Canadian '64 pattern webbing didn't include magazine pouches. Instead the '64 pattern combat shirt had extra pouches sewn inside the main pockets for 20 round FN magazines. Of course the 30 round mags wouldn't fit in the pockets, so the bra was made. This ridiculous state of affairs persisted for almost 20 years until mag pouches were re-introduced in the '82 pattern webbing, though the bra persisted because those mag pouches wouldn't fit 30 round mags either. In Canada when we screw something up, we make sure it stays screwed up for at least a generation.
yes but the angled chest pockets did hold cigarette packages quite well. Being a reservist, I managed to avoid having to use 64 pattern webbing and always took my 51 pattern webbing instead. It would stay together and if you did it up correctly, there was always a misty eyed WO who would let you wear it when working with the Reg Force. 82 pattern really was improved 51 pattern, I even have my SMG mag pouch for it.
@@brucegraham4332 Spawn of a night between Alice and 51pat, the pouch layout was very 51pat, the shoulder harness was very Alice, the plastic clips was so Canadian.....
Carried this weapon a lot back in my days in the Canadian Forces Reserve. Definitely had a love hate relationship with it. Tended to jam more with blank but usually shot well with ball. This weapon and C1 had an adjustable gas regulator. When you started to get too many jams due to dirt, you needed to adjust the gas regulator to decrease the exit port opening which increase the gas funneled back into the action. This did help reduce jamming. To hit anything you needed to fire short bursts beyond 100 metres. Bursts went high and to the right so you needed to aim low and left to get several rounds on a man sized target or else you simply provided area suppression. I think that this was from the fact that it was a rifle upgraded to operate in the role of a light MG. But as it was only an automatic rifle and not an actual LMG, that reduced the ability to put sustained accurate fire downrange. Weapons designed from the outset as an LMG like the BREN tended to have a better pattern of fire. BREN was designed to fire auto from a bipod. C2 was a rifle made automatic with a bipod added after the fact. Trouble with this beast is it needed well trained gunners. Technique and firing positions was different than firing the rifle C1. Being a one man weapon, the infantry had two of these per section (that's a squad in US parlance) which was perfectly reasonable as you certainly did not get the range or amount of fire from even two of these than you would from the MAG 58 carried in a British squad. In my many years of carrying it, never burnt my hand once on the exposed barrel or had the bipod deploy unexpectedly. Either I was just lucky or just paid a little more attention than some of the other commentators. The grass is always greener and most of us at the time of the C2 dreamt of the day when we'd get a belt fed MG for the squad. It did come with the C9 (Minimi) in the late 1980's.
One or two guys in my section got burned hands. I loved firing this....handled well for auto fire, but you needed to practice handling it for sure. Heavy with a lot of heavy mags. If you placed the bipod tight into the ground, it didn't jump around as much and gave better control. I had far more jams with my C1 than I did with the C2.
Burnt my hand on them many times. On one course teaching 6 C2's, they let rip on a gopher at the 100m mark (we were at 600) after the dust cleared, a very terrified but untouched gopher frozen into position remained, I made all the gunners run with the gun over their head for missing. When newish, they were accurate, but with to much auto fire their barrels would wear and accuracy would fall off. the bipod was annoying.
the last time I saw one of these I was on exercise in Germany in the late 60s when one night up rolled several humongous APC's the size of which we had never seen before the back door opened and out pilled a bunch of what only can be described as Canadian lumberjacks one carrying one these C2A1 things never forgot that night :>)
Three points: 1) you should have mentioned that the trigger guard folds back and you reinstall it into the pistol grip. 2) The disc sight is also an A1 change the original sight was a tangent type sight mounted on the action cover. 3) The front sight is an A2 type.
I had the pleasure of carrying this on my BTT Infantry Course in the Canadian Army. The Mag Bra sucked, we joked around that it made us look like Vietcong lol
This was my old Canadian Armed Forces Infantry Weapon back in the day. Nice to see it again. I kind of hated the bipod, as they always seemed to spring open if whacked through brush. It wasn’t as sleek as the C1, and the magazine bra hurt like blazes if you had to slam to ground and, well, forgot how much it could hurt. Loads of weird bruises from that.
Ral Don only on The Bitch that the SAS used barrel was shortened to be level with the gas plug reported to sound like a 50 Cal frightened the beegesus out of the vc
At a bout the same time this was being developed, the "Bren, Cal .30" was on the drawing boards. This was the first official "rethink of the Bren and the "Cal. .30"" refers to the soon to be finalized 7.62 NATO round BEFORE its adoption. A set of drawings detailing the concepts and conversion features was circulated around various Commonwealth countries, including Australia. At that stage, the magazine "of choice" was the 20 rd, SMALL catch, early FAL job. It was quite some years after that drawing was issued for the L4 series to materialize. Every Oz L2A1 I ever handled / fired has a rear-sight mounted on the dust cover The aperture was fitted to a tangent leaf arrangement. The dust cover was also a full-length unit, so no charger guides. These features of our L2A1s were apparently of Canadian origin. All of ours seemed to have a "Sunkorite" black-painted finish, (over a grey phosphate), as well. And a Brit. pattern Mazak butt-plate as per the L1A1. Saw several people burn their hands on the barrel during live "fire and movement" shoots on various ranges. When the bipod is down, guess what is exposed? In that regard, the front-end setup was a definite step backwards when compared to the FALO HB monster. Most spent their last years of service as "truck guns" in vehicles belonging to folks like vehicle forward recovery teams or signals detachments. Basically, every time the vehicle halted to perform a task, some happy camper was tasked with deploying the L2A1 as "area defense".
That's because they were never surplussed. Most Canadian FALs remain in storage with the CF. Given the political climate now, the will be destroyed when the govt wants to get rid of them.
Great video but I think that you've been given a jaundiced view of the C2. If you read British and Dominion memoirs you will see there has always been a great demand for multiple light machine guns at the squad level that disregarded ruperts and doctrine. In the two world wars line infantry would field as many Lewis and Bren guns as they could scrounge. Even today it is still seen as necessary in an infantry squad that has fully automatic rifles to field a light machine gun. The reasons I heard for adopting the C2 were that a lot of the Brens were clapped out after Korea and commonality of parts meant less tooling costs for production and increased utility in the field. I first fired a C2 as a Cadet at a range weekend in 1971, it was being used by our reserve regiment as a recruiting tool. The mags had only a partial load (10 or 15 rounds) but every kid got to blast away at full auto:) Later when I was in the reserves (it worked:) no range weekend was complete without everyone blasting away at least a few mags on the C2. By the end of a decade of use like that most C2s were more worn out than the goodyear condom in a Scottish regiment. With the poverty of the Forces back then I doubt if much was spent on them in the last decade of service and I'm sure most grunts then had the negative experience of a clapped out C2. I know we did, to the point of actually making up a song about it that I included here in another post. But I had the pleasure of firing a new example when I did a stint in Germany. During our live fire "infantry section in the attack" training we would put at least 3 mags through it supporting a contact and attack. We would repeat these drills all day, all week and the C2 had no problems with overheating or fouling. It had some other pluses that seem to have been overlooked. From a distance it was difficult spot when carried with the bipod folded, and on the ground from the business end it looked similar to the other rifles, unlike the flagazine of the Bren. Like the C1, the stripper clip guide in the body cover was useful for loading all your mags, in Germany the ammo in the field was all stripper clips in plastic bandoliers so you could load up quickly with the added benefit of looking like a Gumby Rambo:) The C2 pivots on the bipod so mags you slid out of the bra can quickly be changed while still hugging the ground. On soft ground pushing the rifle forward would bed in the toes of the bipod and help stabilize it even though you would only fire it with your "finger, C2". This was a practiced repetitive trigger pull that that would allow for 2 or 3 shots and made the fire very controllable. And when you had to get up and move the carrying handle allowed you to run with the bipod deployed to a new position. Flipping up the carrying handle and grabbing it without burning your hand while you pushed off in one fluid motion was a skill every C2 gunner needed to master even if they learned it the hard way:) For extra firepower our platoon would have "heavy" sections that included a second C2, it seemed very useful in winning the firefight and providing complimentary cover fire for movement even though it threw a few noses out of joint at the infantry competition. So in conclusion, I'm no C2 Sam but I still think the FN C2A1 is getting a bad rap.
Right up until the enemy breaks out the incendiaries, of course. I wonder if it has an emergency release? "oh, how about that, eh? My mags are on fire!" "... Tom... Just pull the release already."
Carried this in Australia for a few years, it was great, so reliable; from memory Australian L2A1 were heavier barelled them that one. I then got a 60....it was SO unreliable and would even fall apart. L2 FTW
I'm not sure where the presenter received his information on the C2 not being desired by soldiers, in my time the FN series of weapons were liked and very reliable, they could take more punishment than the C7 or C9 and continue to fire. Often after we transitioned over to the newer weapons, I heard soldiers wishing they had their FNs back.. One added benefit the C2 had was its accuracy at distance when fired in repetitive fire, I myself had obtained a 2 inch group at 600m in Petawawa in the mid 80s with iron sights.
I can tell Ian doesn't know all, he put an empty mag back like it was loaded. The mags were in the bra as unloaded, when they were loaded you slid them in bottom up. Mags slide out easier, and you can tell by touch which ones are full. Most C2 gunners would agree with your assessment of using the folded bipod as a foregrip. Leaving the bipod down, and using it as a grip was how most gunners used it.
I can say, without the shadow of a doubt, that these things were a serious pain-in-the-butt to clean. Also, getting 'barrel-burns' weren't uncommon either, especially during advance-to-contact drills. Nonetheless, two of these in each 8-man squad provided some much needed automatic fire at the time. Was really happy when the C9s came online though...
Tactics at the section level were different back then. The section commander had way more leeway to be 'creative'. The C2 where controlled by the 2 I/C on one flank or another. Come under effective enemy fire, Rapid fire to win the fire fight...The C2's keep the enemy heads down while the rest of the section maneuvers to be at 90 degrees or so from the C2's to flank the target.
I was a C2 gunner in 1 PPCLI in the 70's, the C2 was a great weapon, easy to maintain and very accurate. Cold ........ no problem, balance the gas system properly and it never failed to fire.
The Canadian Army 'Combat' uniform of the era had two slanted pockets on the breast of both the shirt and jacket designed specifically to fit the 20 round FN C1A1 magazines. The longer 30 round mags for the C2 were too long to fit, hence the 'bra'. The 'bra' was almost never used as the standard webbing pouches at the front could carry two 30 round mags each. Much better. A couple times at the range we tried unloading an entire 30 round mag at a standard 4'x4' target from 100m on full auto. Very few holes in the target! The C2 jumped all over the place and you could NOT put a hand on top to steady it unless you wanted major burns. After our 30 round experiment you couldn't put your hand anywhere near the barrel for half an hour. Training was to use 5 round bursts. Should have done like the UK and re-chambered the Brens.
I'm not sure who gave you background info, but we "C2 gunners" loved this weapon, also the weapons rear sight was graduated out only to 800 m, I think the one you have, as you said, was a civilian purchase therefore is graduated out to 1000 m. Also I'm not familiar with the carrying handle on this particular weapon. We would use a boot band to keep the bipod closed when nor in use, probably it's only drawback. All C2 (and C1 for that matter) were well made and very reliable, and could take the punishment that would break most C7 and C9s.
In hindsight all these heavy automatic rifles with small magazines seems like such a bad idea. Lets make a more cumbersome version of the weapon everyone already have.... Ok?
@@jackdoe7401 as in Assualt rifle or Automatic rifle ? I mean the M27 is literally just a 16" hk416? Aka a perfectly normal assault rifle. You could argue that they've created a role in the squad 'automatic rifleman', but in the case of the M27 itself it doesn't have any of the common automatic rifle 'improvements' , besides an after market bipod that will go on anything with rails.
i shot the Aussie version back in the mid eighty's, i got good money for selling some 30rd mags that i "found"...., and those bi-pod legs were shite as they opened without warning and folded up without warning, but pull that trigger on full auto and all was good
My husband trained on this in the Black Watch in 1968 and hated it. He had used the Bren in the militia before joining the regulars and loved it. This thing jammed twice per mag and he said everyone who fired it got a burn from that exposed barrel. That bipod never stayed closed for long and was murder moving in tall grass or brush. Accurate but hateful.
His magazines were probably dented around the top. It used to be a game in my unit to see how you could swap magazines around from your barracks mate to get rid of the crummy ones (bent feed lips) and hoard all the good ones - magazines were not serialized. I always was the straight man in this game. :p
This was a terrible weapon. Always in danger of burning your hands on the exposed barrel after firing. The gas tube was totally exposed and was easily damaged and prevented the gas tube from cycling the action.
I was quite fond of the C2. The training from the C1 to the C2 was minimal. Although it wasn’t as accurate as the Bren on semi auto, it was much lighter. The magazines were interchangeable with the 20 round C1 mags which was handy.
During my time in the Brit Army, I found myself on unit shooting teams using the FAL and the 7.62 Bren "LMG" conversion. Good days, with lots of trigger time. 😏
The concept of using the same family of service weapons into a squad automatic weapon to support the squad or section. Was way ahead of its time. The Canadians were thinking of commonality of magazines and ammunition with using the same weapon system. They got this from their use of first using the same ammunition with their Lee Enfield rifles and Bren Guns during WWII. The Canadians after Korea using one system but two different roles within the Infantry squad. The Americans did the same with the M-15 and M14E2 borrowing from the Canadian concept of the squad automatic weapon using the same receiver design with a larger magazine capacity. The US Marines today what the Canadians did and the US Army did in the mid 1980s by issuing bi-pods to M16A1 riflemen designated to be automatic riflemen. Units from the 82nd Airborne burned up a lot of M16A1 barrels during training along with Germany based US Army Infantry units in all Infantry and Armored Units. The Canadians were thinking after combat in Korea along with the US.
I used one of these as a young soldier in the Canadian Army during the 1970s. It has been a few years but my memories of it are largely positive. It was very accurate, and under most conditions, very reliable. Yes the springs on the 30 round magazines were occasionally too weak to push the last couple of rounds into the chamber, the clip to keep the legs in the stowed position would often release given the slightest provocation, and I burned my hand once or twice on the exposed gas tube and barrel, but it was a solid weapon that did what was needed. The Bren Gun was before my time, and I was an officer by the time the C9 (FN Minimi/SAW) was introduced so I did not have anything to directly compare it with on a personal level. While in Afghanistan later in my career, the guys I was with certainly appreciated the C9's superior firepower, but having an accurate, relatively lightweight, 7.62mm automatic rifle available to the section (squad) would certainly have been welcome. Of course there are better options today, but the C2 did the job during its day.
This rifle with Brit 280 would've been a far more controllable and potable LMG, much like an RPK. Being saddled with 7.62 NATO took away its intended functionality. Only now with adoption of 6.8 SPC, 6.5 Creedmore and Grendel are we beginning to understand how a mid-range 6mm-to-7mm round would've been a better compromise. NOTE: BIG THANKS to Colonel René Studler (head of the US Small Arms Bureau of Ordnance) - from WIKI: Renee Studler went on record, stating that, any non-American design was "a waste of time" and refused point blank to accept any "foreign" design. It was learned that Studler had gone so far as to bury reports that suggested the .280 was superior in US testing.
Wow haven't seen one of those puppies since I was last in the service. Ian is right, it was not popular. I think FN just said "fuck it" and half assed a design just so they could say it existed. We loved our FN's, and some of us were not happy going to the C7's(m16A2). Those old FAL's had a lot of balls, especially in the longer ranges we're dealing with in Canada.
Saying Canadian Infantrymen hated the C2 is a bit of an overstatement. Most C2 gunners in the platoon loved them for the full auto fire from what I remember. Maybe they were psycho’s ( haha), there were 2 per Infantry Section or up to 6+ on a fighting patrol ambush or in defensive positions. The features you missed was the heavy steel butt plate and an 8” bayonet worked great for bayonet fighting. The C1A1 could easily be converted to full auto, pretty much all infantrymen knew how.
To properly configure the trigger guard assembly for Winter Operations.... The metal Trigger Guard rotates inwards and is stowed in the hollow interior of the walnut Pistol Grip.
I'm guessing all those AKs in the background are grandfathered in and very expensive. Edit: MAG can have anything and fire blanks. Those poor type 2 AKs.
I think Ian did a video talking to the owner of MAG awhile ago. If I recall, he said they can import them because they have a special firearms licence for film industry prop suppliers. Apparently it’s easier to get them in Canada than for American film prop suppliers.
With a service life of that long, I hope we get the comments of servicemen soon about how they really felt about it. Great work as usual, Ian, but I was curious of why some of your more recent videos have been posted earlier then normal. Yours tend to get posted around 7am here but a few have been earlier like 530-6am. Is it earlier morning start or insomina? Hope you're well.
The C2 was not a great gun, but I will say that most soldiers really liked, or loved, the C1. It was more accurate than it should have been for that rear sight - being separate from the upper.
C2A1 also has a heavy extractor. Since the breach blocks were interchangeable with C1 it was a crap shoot if you got the correct one for the C2. Also, the drill was to put the sling around the small of the butt to aid in carrying. The front sling swivel rotates 360, unlike C1.
Knight Of Blades think Chinese and Russian at least on the civilian market. Otherwise double the cost of what you see in the stores down south, (exchange plus various import taxes make our guns about 60% more expensive). However Chinese guns are super cheap and some of them are quite excellent plus former Soviet and communist country surplus.
I have two cases of SKS’ I bought for a bachelor party along with a heap of ammo. Turned out they were extras so I’m keeping them for a future trade for a nice rifle or two since I paid so little for all ten of them.
Here is another old canadian weapon the SMG which was used as the storm trooper guns in star wars (minus the magazine) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NtOrF_IJMB4.html
These guns got so hot after a few mags that they kept firing even after you took your finger off the trigger. Unintended mag dumps were a regular occurrence. A quick change barrel and open bolt action are essential components of a good LMG design.
The C2 was substantially better than the Bren: the mag underneath gave a better view of the battle field, and it weighed a lot less. also the mags were interchangeable with the other rifles in the section. Also, it did get hot, but it never over heated.
I was a BREN gunner when we converted to these things, and your right they were a pice of crap operationally, compared to the BREN. Crappy sights, slow mag change, overall slower volume of fire (because we couldn't change mags/barrels as quickly). Ya, they're lighter, but they were also much less stable than a BREN in action. Glad I never had to use one in combat!
I don't know anyone who had to hump one of these around in the field, that liked them (myself included). On the range however, loads of fun!! Just one point about the "Arctic Trigger Guard", once it's removed the guard was folded back and the plate was screwed back on. The trigger guard was now stowed inside the pistol grip. Another great video that brought back somewhat fond memories, thanks for that.
Emptied a dozen or so mags in a C2 on a weekend at CFB Pettawawa in the winter of 75 - my shoulder was black and blue. At that time we were told that simply switching breach blocks from the C2 to your C1 would make it fully auto - though now I wonder about the lack of A on the fire switch. Great videos and thanks for the memory trip it gave me.
it wasn't the breach block you had to switch, it was the selector . C2 selectors had a second cut-out in them that enabled auto fire. I carried both C1 and C2 for a lot of years. in the RCR's
I fired many 1000s of rounds through 1 on those for competition and destroyed 2 Berets being number 2 where your shoulder was up against the bipod and your head was very close to the flash hider , LOL but we did win the top trophy in Connaught twice
Still think it's funny we had a LSW variant of a rifle in the 50s, as did Russia, fast forward to now and it seems the route that a lot of militaries want to go for a squad level support weapon instead of bulky belt fed ones.
I got this beast to carry a lot as an infantryman in my platoon. Hated it to know end. Heavy with the mag bra, and you always had a lot more running to do than the regular riflemen due to the fact the C2 was always on the flanks of a section moving in formation.
@@DesertAvenger I thought the same thing, So I started going through the comments lookin for an explanation. Lo and behold, look what I found! Lmao. Gun Jesus is InFALlible!!!
They were replaced mid to late 1980's with the C9. We were still using them winter 1988 and the C6, C7/8 and C9's replaced them later that summer as part of the Weapons Replacement Program.
What a memory- the Australians called these the L1A2 and I used one . A little heavier than an SLR but a heavy barrel and a lovely bipod to keep it out of the dirt much more of a rifle with automatic capacity rather than section light machine gun though! Happy days
L2a1 ;) Did you nick the L2 mags from the Q Store and fire 20 rounds in an exercise waiting for the opposition to turn up then fire the next 10 at them quickly? That was an old trick when I was in the cadets....
@@matthewmoses4222 Strangely we were issued these things with the weapon! When I did officer training we had mag fillers to load five round stripper clips bayonets, and even although we never used them the fittings for and inert Energa grenades- the kind used to rob banks in the Congo
Strangely we were issued those mags with the weapon! When I did officer training we had lots of oddities : mag fillers to load five round stripper clips; bayonets; and (even although we never used them) the fittings for and inert 'Energa' rifle grenades- the kind used to rob banks in the Congo!
I’m in Scouts and one of my scouters were part of the Grey and Simcoe Foresters from 1982 to 1996 and carried one of his section’s C2A1 LARs. He always described it as “When you pull the trigger you’d have to put your off hand on the hand guard or bipod to keep it down.” Good times listening to his stories.
So first I get to watch a apocrypha video of Ian making Alton Brown's ( Love that guy, glad he's back again ) aged eggnog recipe where gun Jesus forgoes the addition of French cognac and sticks with half again as much good old American bourbon and Jamaican rum instead and NOW a Canadian vintage C2A1 SAW ( I am Canadian though I did serve in the Army Reserves after they converted to the C9A1 SAW )... It's a sign! I'm making me some eggnog tonight! I'll let you know how mine ages Ian if you let me know how yours ages! Deal?
Ian, just a point, in respect of the Bren, when they converted it to 7.62 NATO, they introduced Chrome barrels and no longer issued spare barrels. I agree, I much preferred the Bren to the L2/C2. In Rhodesia, both were in use (nearly everything was in use).
