WEAPONS OF THE FRENCH FAR EAST EXPEDITIONARY CORPS
 

Before World War Two, France had a large army equipped mostly with weapons from France’s own weapons industry. They could easily sustain control over their colonies with their superior arsenal.

After World War Two yet however, technological advances had been fast. France, witch had been occupied, now lacked a modern arsenal. They were given a sizable arsenal by the US and the British and they did take a lot of military material from defeated Germany. Yet however, after World War Two most countries started to use semi automatic weapons while France stuck by the idea that the army was to be equipped with bolt action rifles.

Most of the weapon models that France had in its army were sooner or later to be used in the war in Indochina. An ever returning problem for the French was that there was not one ruling caliber, instead there were many different weapons needing ammunition of different calibers. This resulted ever to often in shortage of ammunition or – too much ammunition to one kind of weapon and little to others.
Also the French got to discover that their bolt action rifle stood little chance against the Viet Minhs automatic arsenal, supplied by China and the Soviet Union.

The French also used weapons not brought up on this list, such as the M1Garand, the BAR machine gun, the M3 Grease gun, the British BREN machine gun and a few others. These weapons were mainly used in the later part of the conflict when the Americans gave more support to the French in order to stop communism.

     Pistols

     Sub machine guns

     Machine guns

  Mortars

To Viet-Minh guns

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