Chauchat
From Free net encyclopedia
The Chauchat (pronounced 'show-shah') was the primary light machine gun used by the French in World War I (Also known as the CSRG or the Gladiator) Over 250,000 were manufactured, making it the most widely manufactured automatic weapon of World War I. It was also among the first light machine gun designs of the early 1900s. The program set the standard for 20th century firearm projects- a new lighter automatic firearm that used cheap construction techniques. Like many later projects later in the century that sacrificed quality for quantity, the firearm itself had often noted performance issues though it did have many features that would become more common, such as a pistol grip and select-fire.
The CSRG name comes from people involved in its production and development:Louis Chauchat, Charles Sutter, and Paul Ribeyrolles, and its other name, Gladiator.
Contents |
Overview
The Chauchat designs traces back to 1907 from a design based on the Hungarian Rudolph Frommer, and further developed by Captain Louis Chauchat. It fired the 8 mm Lebel rifle rounds at the relatively slow rate of 250 rpm. The design had open spaces in the magazine. This allowed the remaining bullets to be seen and saved weight. However, it also allowed mud and debris to find their way into the inner workings of the gun quite easily and in the muck-ridden environment of trench warfare this was an invitation to disaster. There was a similar problem when using belt fed firearms on the move as well, the floppy belts would get mud on them. The most frequent malfunction was the failure to extract spent shells, meaning the next round would become wedged in an occupied chamber, thereby seizing up the mechanism. In any case, the cartridge used was originally conceived for a bolt-action rifle, just like all the other rifle rounds in use at the time. The gun was easier to handle than heavier and medium machine guns of the period, such as the Madsen machine gun and was also several pounds lighter than the Lewis gun. Because the firearm weighed much more than the regular French rifle, but fired the same round from about the same length barrel, the amount of actual recoil would be about the same- and the recoil felt similar. It employed a 'long recoil' system throwing the force against the user's shoulder (as opposed to a rifle which has no recoil system). It was so advanced that the many untested concepts caused problems (some point to inadequate ammunition) and it has sometimes been referred to as "the worst machine-gun ever issued to any army at any time in history". In fairness, the mere fact that the firearm was made at all is quite notable, Germany, for example did not field similar weight light machine gun at all during WWI, and it would not be until WW2 that Germany fielded a light machine gun that used similar stamped construction techniques.
The Chauchat was built of a rather shoddy stamped metal construction and of such poor quality that oftentimes its parts were not interchangeable between guns, meaning that a new gun could not be assembled from the parts of two others. However, this use of stamped material to build many weapons quickly and at low cost presaged the manufacturing methods used in World War II, which, with the refinements developed in the inter-war years, led to the more reliable mass-production of automatic weapons such as the Sten, MP-40, MG-42 and so on.
Performance & Comparison
French sources at the time considered the gun's performance very poor but acceptable because they had no other way to produce many automatic weapons in a short timeframe that could use existing ammunition. Given the lack of other light automatic weapons available at the time this is not unreasonable; the nearest comparable weapons include the Hotchkiss M1909 or Madsen machine gun, both of which was more expensive to make but more reliable. The Lewis Gun was also more reliable, but was a different sort of machine gun;it was several pounds heavier, more expensive, and unlike the chauchat was used on tripods, tanks, and aircraft, in addition to serviing as a light machine gun.
The Chauchat is not comparable to the submachine guns of WWI, which had vastly shorter range than the Chauchat. The Italian Villar-Perosa and Beretta Model 1918, the first two submachine guns fielded in WWI used the 9 mm Glisenti (a weak 9 mm round) from a much shorter barrel, and were made with more traditional manufacture methods. The MP18 Bergmann, a German Army submachine gun which entered service a couple months after the Berretta, also used the 9 mm Luger round. Compared to the Chauchat, these other automatic firearms were fielded in vastly smaller numbers (thousands rather than hundreds of thousands), and had much shorter range (tens of meters rather than hundreds of meters). They did all use box magazines (or variants) to feed rounds; the Beretta 1918 used a top mounted 'banana' type, the MP18 a side mounted 'snail', and the Chauchat a bottom attached semi-circle (or box magazine on the .30-06). In comparison to the BAR, the CSRG was a few pounds heavier, but was cheaper and had an integrated bipod.
Unlike much heavier air-cooled and water-cooled machine guns (such as the various Maxim models), the CSRG was not meant for pro-longed fires. The advantage was to field more, more mobile automatic firearms in addition to heavier models. For sustained fire the French mainly used the Hotchkiss M1914, and to a more limited extent the St. Etienne M1907 (though the M1907 was not successful).
American Chauchats
In 1917, after America had entered World War I, the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) was given Chauchats bought from the French allies. They received a mix of ones chambered for 8 mm Lebel and ones designed for the US .30-06 caliber round. The idea was to simplify ammunition supply (they could share stocks of 8 mm), though it probably created more problems than it fixed since both types were still needed. The performance of the M1917 .30-06 Chauchat was even worse than the original Chauchat and not surprisingly it was soon unceremoniously dumped by the troops who used it. The .30-06 version used a box magazine rather than the semi-circle one. No further .30-06 caliber versions were produced and when supplies of the superior but more expensive Browning Automatic Rifle became available they were immediately acquired. Thereafter the AEF only used the Chauchat - in its original French M1915 version - when necessary. The U.S. Marines had been using 30-06 chambered Lewis guns, and was not very happy about having to use the French firearms which caused supply issues. The Army however, which had rejected the Lewis (Mainly because Mr. Lewis had a bitter feud with the man essentially in charge of Army procurement), and primarily had the Hotchkiss M1909 for a light machine gun at the time. Along with the Chauchat, the US also bought Hotchkiss M1914 machine guns as well, which was a much heavier model meant for sustained fire.
Following the war it was alleged that the adaptation of the Chauchat design for US .30-06 rounds had used incorrect measurements but in any case the radical differences in size, shape, impulse and power of the 8 mm Lebel and .30-06 US rounds would explain the disastrous performance of the M1917 .30-06 Chauchat.
Finnish use and Vietnam
In WW2, during the Winter War and Continuation War between Russia and Finland, over 5,000 Chauchats were donated to Finland and, for lack of anything better, found use. Some remnants of the Chauchat design are reported to have appeared in the 1960s during the Vietnam War.