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The 'Chauchat' (pronounced 'show-shah') was a light machine gun used mainly by the French Army but also by seven other nations, including the USA, during and after World War I. Its formal designation in the French Army was 'Fusil-Mitrailleur Mle 1915 CSRG'. It was also known as the 'CSRG' or 'Gladiator'. Over 260,000 were produced, making it the most widely manufactured automatic weapon of World War I. It was among the first light machine gun designs of the early 1900s. It set a precedent for 20th century firearm projects: a light automatic weapon built inexpensively in very large numbers. Like later military weapons that sacrificed quality for quantity (such as the World War II Sten), the firearm itself had noted performance issues. It also introduced altogether novel features, such as a pistol grip, an in-line stock and selective-fire which are now typical of modern assault rifles.

Contents

Overview

Battlefield Performance

Comparison

American Chauchats

Use by Other Countries

Replacing the Chauchat: the "Fusil-Mitrailleur (FM) Mle 1924-29"

References

See also

External links

Overview

The Chauchat machine gun functions on the long barrel recoil principle with a gas assist. The long barrel recoil principle had also been used by the Hungarian Rudolf Frommer for his "Frommer Stop" pistol (1910) and some experimental rifles (1905). The chronology of the patents makes it clear that Rudolf Frommer and Louis Chauchat had simply borrowed the mechanical principles of an already existing long barrel recoil, semi-automatic rifle filed by John Browning in his milestone of October 16, 1900. This precursor was the "Remington Model 8" semi-automatic rifle which was successfully marketed between 1906 and 1936.
Browning's long barrel recoil principle was also applied in 1907 to autoloading shotguns: the classic "Browning Auto-5" and the "Remington Model 11". Following behind these commercial developments, Lt. Colonel Louis Chauchat and armorer Charles Sutter, at Atelier de Construction de Puteaux (APX) arsenal since 1903, proposed a machine gun based on the working principles applied in Browning's Remington Model 8 rifle. In 1908 it was dubbed ''Fusil-Mitrailleur C.S.'' ("C.S. Machine Rifle") and it used the 8 mm Lebel service cartridge. An improved version of the "CS" was also tested in 1913 with excellent results. After the war had started in August 1914, the realization sunk in that automatic weapons had become essential for success on the battlefields. General Joffre, the Commander in Chief, pressed to adopt a portable automatic weapon for the infantry. The only thoroughly tested light machine gun which also fired 8 mm Lebel cartridge was the "CS" machine gun. It was quickly modified into the ''Fusil Mitrailleur Mle 1915 CSRG'' and adopted in July 1915. The "R" in CSRG stands for Ribeyrolles, manager of the Gladiator ("G") cycle factory, in the Paris suburb of Pre-Saint-Gervais. Manufacturing of the CSRG begun there in early 1916 and ended in December 1918. Another facility away from Paris (SIDARME) also manufactured CSRG's beginning in 1917. The Chauchat machine gun delivered to the French Army fired the 8 mm Lebel rifle cartridge at the slow rate of 250 rpm. The gun was much lighter (9 kilograms) than the contemporary portable light machine guns of the period, such as the Maxim Mle 1908-15 and the Lewis Gun. It was a select fire weapon, either automatic or semi-automatic mode. The gun's ergonomics, rather than its recoil, were difficult to cope with but could be tamed by well-trained gunners.
The Chauchat's construction was composite thus not fully consistent in terms of parts quality. The recoiling barrel sleeve as well as all the bolt moving parts were precision milled from solid steel and always fully interchangeable. The barrels were standard Lebel barrels that had been shortened from the muzzle end . The barrel radiators were made of ribbed cast aluminum. On the other hand, the outer breech housing is just a tube that betrays Gladiator's pre-war activities in motorcycle manufacturing. The rest of the gun was built of stamped metal plates of mediocre quality. Side plate assemblies were held by screws that could become loose after prolonged firing. The sights were often misaligned on the Gladiator-made guns, creating aiming problems that had to be corrected by the gunners. In general, this use of stamped metal to build weapons quickly and at low cost presaged the manufacturing methods used in World War II, which led to the mass-production of automatic weapons such as the British Sten submachine gun. The exact number on record of Chauchat machine gun manufactured between 1916 and the end of 1918 is 262,300. The Gladiator factory manufactured 225,700 CSRGs in 8 mm Lebel plus 18,000 in the US caliber .30-06 between April 1916 and November 1918. SIDARME manufactured 18,600 CSRGs, exclusively in 8 mm Lebel, between October 1917 and November 1918. The SIDARME manufactured Chauchats were generally better finished than those made by Gladiator. The French Army had a stock of 63,000 CSRG's just before the Armistice.
The French military at the time considered the Chauchat's performance as inferior in comparison to the reliable heavy Hotchkiss M1914 machine gun. However it was a light weapon that could be mass-produced quickly, cheaply and in very large numbers. It was also never intended to take the role of static defense of the heavy machine gun but to be a portable weapon that would increase the firepower of infantry squads on the offense. A significant plus is that it used the 8 mm Lebel service ammunition. The other light squad automatic weapons available at the time included the Hotchkiss M1909 Benet-Mercie machine gun, the Madsen machine gun or the Lewis Gun, but none of these, except the Hotchkiss M1909, could be successfully converted to accept 8 mm Lebel ammunition.

Battlefield Performance

The Chauchat's performance on the battlefields drew mixed reviews from the users when the war was stagnating in the trenches in 1916 and 1917. Later on, in the spring of 1918, the war moved into open fields while French infantry had been reorganized in small combat teams using the Chauchat and the VB rifle grenade for mutual support. At this point in time, in 1918, the regimental records and statistics of medals given to Chauchat gunners prove that they had contributed in no small part to the success of the new infantry tactics.
The technical complaints found in the surveys organized by General Petain in late 1917 were: 1) the magazines were too flimsy and, being open on one side, were easy to clog with dirt, (not an ideal situation in trench warfare). The surveys showed that two thirds of stoppages were caused by bad magazines. Due to poor design, the magazines tended to feed the first few rounds nose-up, but the last few rounds nose-down, causing stoppages. 2) the gun could not fire more than about 300 rounds (15 magazines) continuously without seizing momentarily due to overheating. The gunner had to wait until the gun cooled off before resuming firing. The latter problem is never mentioned in modern gun literature but it was the Chauchat's most aggravating limitation in combat. As a result, the recommendation given in application schools for the infantryman was to fire for effect only in short bursts (3 rounds), or on semi-automatic. The weapon was to be fired in long bursts very rarely, and only in case of emergency. Because of dispersion, it was also recommended to engage targets at relatively short distances, never exceeding 200 yards. Walking fire on full-automatic was actually easier to execute than fixed fire but lacked effectiveness except at almost point blank range.

Comparison

The Chauchat was not comparable to the submachine guns of World War I, which were less powerful because they used pistol rather than rifle ammunition. The Italian Villar-Perosa and Beretta Model 1918, the first two submachine guns to appear in World War I fired the 9 mm Glisenti (a weak 9 mm round). The MP18 Bergmann, a German Army submachine gun fielded during the spring of 1918, fired the 9 mm Luger cartridge. Compared to the Chauchat, these early submachine guns were used in relatively small numbers (thousands rather than ''hundreds'' of thousands), and had much shorter effective ranges.
Unlike much heavier air-cooled and water-cooled machine guns (such as the Hotchkiss machine gun and the various belt-fed Maxim gun derivatives), the Chauchat was not designed for sustained defensive fire. The tactical edge expected from the Chauchat was to increase the infantry's offensive firepower during the assault. The Chauchat in spite of its obvious limitations, such as the Lebel ammunition and reliability problems, was an early forerunner of the assault rifle concept.

American Chauchats

After the USA had entered World War I, in April 1917, the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) arrived in France without automatic weapons or field artillery. It turned to the French ally rather than to the British to purchase ordnance. General Pershing chose the Hotchkiss machine gun and the Chauchat machine gun (dubbed "automatic rifle" by the AEF) to equip the U.S. infantry. Between August 1917 and the November 11 1918 Armistice, Gladiator delivered to the A.E.F. 39,000 Chauchat "automatic rifles" in 8 mm Lebel and, late in 1918, 18,000 Chauchats in .30-06. The performance of the M1918 Chauchat in .30-06 was soon recognized as unsatisfactory: the common problem was a failure to extract after the gun had fired only a few rounds and became slightly hot. Based on archival records and recent trials, including a firing test performed at Aberdeen Proving Grounds in July 1973, the adaptation of the Chauchat to use .30-06 ammunition had been compromised by incorrect chamber measurements and sub-standard manufacturing. Only small numbers of the .30-06 Chauchat ever reached the front lines and they were immediately discarded by the troops as useless. As a result, the Chauchats in 8 mm Lebel continued to be used by the A.E.F. until supplies of the newly manufactured and vastly superior Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) were allocated sparingly and late, during the Meuse-Argonne offensive (September 1918). About 75% of the U.S. Divisions were still equipped with the Chauchat - in its original French M1915 version - at the Armistice of November 11 1918. It is also well documented that General Pershing had been holding back on the BAR until victory was certain, for fear it would be copied by Germany ( Ayres,1919 ). As to the U.S. Marines, they had initially received .30-06 chambered Lewis Guns, but had to exchange them for Chauchats after their arrival in France. This was the result of an old feud between Mr Lewis and the superior officer in charge of the U.S. Ordnance Department). As a matter of interest and as documented by Laurence Stallings and U.S. Divisional Histories, Congressional Medals of Honor were awarded to three American Chauchat gunners in 1918: 1) Private Niels Wold (35th Division, 138th Infantry). 2) Private Frank Bart (2nd Division,9th Infantry) and 3) Private Thomas C. Neibaur (42nd Division, 107th Infantry).^[1]

Use by Other Countries

Other countries, beside the USA, used the Chauchat in fairly large numbers during World War I. They are:

★ Belgium: 6,900

★ Romania: 7,200

★ Russia: 5,700

★ Serbia: 3,800

★ Greece: 3,900

★ Polish Blue Army: over 5,000
A number of captured Chauchats were used by German frontline infantrymen because they had no light machine guns of their own until the portable Maxim MG08-15's were issued to them during early 1917. [1] Most of the Belgian Chauchats were converted to fire their 7.65 mm Mauser ammunition. Poland received French military assistance after World War I and received over 2,000 Chauchats as part of a weapon transfer and used them during the Polish-Soviet war. After the war Poland bought more of them and their number reached 11,869, becoming a standard Polish light machine gun in the 1920s. According to some publications, a small number were modified in the 1920s to use German 7.92mm Mauser ammunition, but there is no clear confirmation. In 1936-1937, 8,650 were sold abroad, probably to Republican Spain^[2]. During the Winter War between Soviet Union and Finland, over 5,000 Chauchats were donated to Finland which lacked automatic weapons. Some remnants of the Chauchat design are reported to have appeared in the 1960s during the Vietnam War.

Replacing the Chauchat: the "Fusil-Mitrailleur (FM) Mle 1924-29"

The French military decided during the post-war years to urgently upgrade with a more reliable light squad automatic weapon. The new light portable machine gun was developed at the "Manufacture d'Armes de Chatellerault" during the early 1920s, culminating in the adoption of the F.M. Mle 1924. The new light machine gun (in French :''fusil-mitrailleur'') had been designed by Lt. Colonel Reibel and Controller Chosse and was gas operated, like the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) which had inspired the new gun's internal features. The venerable 8 mm Lebel round, which was one of the major handicaps of the Chauchat, had been discarded for a 7.5 mm rimless cartridge resembling a necked down 7.92 mm German Mauser round. The F.M. Mle 1924 featured a bipod, an in-line stock, a pistol grip, a top-mounted 25 round magazine and a bolt hold-open after the magazine's last round had been fired. Protection of all the openings against mud and dust was excellent. The cyclic rate was 450 rounds per minute. It was modified in 1929 to accept a slightly shorter 7.5 mm cartridge that could not be mistaken for a German Mauser round or a Swiss 7.5 mm round. The new weapon and modern rimless ammunition had finally corrected all the problems associated with the Chauchat. The reliable and well-liked FM (''Fusil-Mitrailleur'') Mle 1924-29 was manufactured in large numbers (187,000) and widely used by the French Army until the late 1950s.

References

1. Medal of Honor Recipients World War I army.mil
2. Andrzej Konstankiewicz, ''Broń strzelecka i sprzęt artyleryjski formacji polskich i Wojska Polskiego w latach 1914-1939'', Lublin 2003, ISBN 83-227-1944-2


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★ Leonard P Ayres (1919),The War with Germany-A Statistical Summary, US Government Printing Office,Washington DC.

See also

★ Hotchkiss M1909 light machine gun

★ List of individual weapons of the U.S. Armed Forces

★ Infantry Weapons Of WWI

External links

★ Detailed description page