Origin
Belgium
A small but strategically important nation, Belgium was the site of major WWI and WWII battles. Its arms industry, particularly FN Herstal, produced influential weapons including the FN FAL rifle and Browning-designed pistols that were adopted worldwide.
Belgian Arms & Weapons
Overview
Belgium is a small country with an enormous impact on world weapons history, driven almost entirely by Fabrique Nationale d'Armes de Guerre (FN Herstal), founded in Liège in 1889. The Liège region has been a center of European gun-making since the 16th century. FN's partnership with American designer John Moses Browning produced some of the most influential firearms of the 20th century.
FN Herstal and John Browning
Browning, after falling out with Winchester, brought his designs to FN, which produced and sold them globally:
- FN Browning M1900 — Among the first successful semi-automatic pistols; widely sold; introduced the slide mechanism that became standard
- FN Browning M1903 — 9mm; influenced the Swedish m/07 and others
- FN Model 1910 — Compact pistol; the weapon used to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, triggering WWI
- Browning Hi-Power (FN GP35) — 9mm; 13-round magazine; completed by Dieudonné Saive after Browning's death; the most widely adopted military pistol of the 20th century; used by over 50 nations
- Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) — Designed by Browning; produced in various forms for the US and Belgium
FN Post-WWII Designs
- FN FAL (Fusil Automatique Léger) — "The right arm of the Free World"; 7.62×51mm NATO; selective fire; adopted by over 90 nations; one of the most widely used military rifles in history
- FN MAG (M240) — 7.62mm belt-fed GPMG; the NATO standard medium machine gun; used by over 80 countries
- FN Minimi (M249 SAW) — 5.56mm light machine gun; adopted by the US and NATO
- FN SCAR — Current modular assault rifle; used by US Special Operations Forces
Historical Context
Belgium was invaded and occupied in both World Wars, with FN's factories producing weapons under German occupation in WWI and again in WWII. Belgian weapons ended up on both sides of both wars as a result.
This article is a stub. Contributions covering FN's history, specific weapons, and Belgian military history are welcome.
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FN FAL
The FN FAL — Fusil Automatique Léger, or light automatic rifle — was the most widely adopted battle rifle of the Cold War. Designed by Dieudonné Saive at Fabrique Nationale in Belgium and chambered for the 7.62x51mm NATO cartridge, it served more than ninety nations, which earned it the name 'the right arm of the free world.' Britain and the Commonwealth carried it as the semi-automatic L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle, and it fought in the Falklands, Rhodesia, the Middle East and Africa, often on both sides of the same war.
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Lewis Gun
The Lewis gun was the British Empire's light machine gun of the First World War: an air-cooled, gas-operated gun with a distinctive fat cooling shroud and a flat, rotating pan magazine on top. Designed in the United States but rejected there, it was built in huge numbers by BSA in Birmingham from 1914 and gave British infantry platoons their own portable automatic fire. It was also the first great aircraft machine gun, flown by observers and fighter pilots of both world wars, and it served in reserve and anti-aircraft roles until 1945.
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M249 Squad Automatic Weapon
The M249 Squad Automatic Weapon is the American version of the Belgian FN Minimi: a gas-operated, belt-fed 5.56mm light machine gun light enough to move with a rifle squad and firing the same ammunition as its rifles. Adopted in 1984 after a decade of trials, it gave each fire team a base of automatic fire the M16 could not provide, and it fought in Panama, the Gulf, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan. It can feed from a 200-round belt box or, in an emergency, from a standard rifle magazine, and the shortened Para and Mk 46 versions serve special operations forces.
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Nagant M1895 Pistol
The Nagant M1895 is the seven-shot Belgian-designed service revolver of Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, unique among military revolvers for its gas-seal mechanism: on cocking, the cylinder slides forward to press the cartridge's extended brass mouth into the barrel's forcing cone, sealing the gap that lets every other revolver leak gas. Adopted in 1895, made at Liège and then at Tula, it served through the Russo-Japanese War, the First World War, the Revolution and the Second World War, and the seal made it one of the few revolvers that can be usefully suppressed.