The AA-52 (Arme Automatique Transformable Modèle 1952) is one of the first French made guns of the post World War II era. Also called "Le Cinquante-Deux" it is still used today despite it being very inaccurate and out of date. The AA-52 is the predecessor of the FAMAS.

Technical Specifications

Caliber: 7,5mm Fr.; 7,62mm NATO
Starting Velocity: 830 m/s
Weight with tripod: 21,15kg
Weight: 9.75kgs
Length: 1080 mm
Barrel Length: 600 mm
Feeding: belt 50 or 200 rounds
Rate of Fire: 900

History

The AA 52 machine gun was conceived and developed because of the experience in the campaigns of Indochina of the beginning of the fifties. At this time, the French army was equipped with an ill-assorted materialfrom English and American arsenals, as well as German weapons of the Second World war.

The supply in ammunitions and in spare parts was an almost insoluble task and the army decided to adopt a standard machine gun. The result was the AA52, conceived for easy production. The construction was of simple welded stamped sheet steel . The AA 52 was an exception among modern machine guns by its differential system of rearmament in which the force applied to the cartridge at the time of the shot is used to send back the breech in position of armament and introduce a new cartridge. This system works well with pistol cartridges in sub-machine guns. But rifle cartridges in machine guns require something more complex for safety reasons. The AA 52 uses a breech-block in two parts: a control lever amplifier maintains the part before the block while the back part begins to move. When the cam crosses a certain distance, the block is sent towards the back. To facilitate the ejection of the cartridges, the chamber has grooves allowing gases to get between the chamber and the cartridge and to avoid the blocking of the cartridge. That is why a cartridge fired by an AA 52 can be recognized easily by the considerable destruction of part of the cartridge. The AA 52 can fire with a bipod or a stand, but, when the stand is used for a continuous shot, the machine gun is equipped with a heavy cannon. In its machine gun version, the AA 52 is a relatively heavy weapon to carry, especially if the box of ammunition of 50 cartridges is carried by the other hand. Therefore, the box is often left to the side and the bands of cartridges hang freely. An unusual detail of the AA 52, for a machine gun, lies in the presence of a strap fixed under the butt. This may be embarrassing at the certain moments. Another annoying point lies in the change of the cannon: normally rather fast, the bipod fixed permanently to the tube can return the very difficult dismantling, especially since the standard(cannon) arranges no treatment of the room(chamber) allowing to reduce the temperature of the tube. The AA (é was conceived originally to pull(fire) cartridges of 7,5 mm used(employed) by the machine gun model 1929. This cartridge is powerful enough, but the passage of the NATO in the cartridge of 7,62 mm left the French army with one not standard ammunitions, and reduced the possibilities of exports. The basic version was however adapted to pull(fire) the cartridge NATO under the naming of NF-1, and certain number of this new version was introduced into the units of the French army. But the expectations of export did not materialize.

Nevertheless the AA 52 is an effective machine gun, but it possesses numerous points (of whom(which) some are considered as little sure by the other countries) which(who) are at least unwanted. The weapon is not any more in production, but always offered to the export.

(paraphrased from Gun's World AA-52)

References

• Gun's World AA-52
• French Foreign Legion

External Links

• Gun's World AA-52