The Chauchat (, ) was the standard light machine gun or "machine rifle" of the French Army during World War I (1914–18). Its official designation was "Fusil Mitrailleur Modèle 1915 CSRG" ("Machine Rifle Model 1915 CSRG"). Beginning in June 1916, it was placed into regular service with French infantry, where the troops called it the FM Chauchat, after Colonel Louis Chauchat, the main contributor to its design. The Chauchat in 8mm Lebel was also used in 1917–18 by the American Expeditionary Forces (A.E.F.) (who notoriously hated it for its unreliability and jokingly nicknamed it the "Sho-Sho") where it was officially designated as the "Automatic Rifle, Model 1915 (Chauchat)". A total of 262,000 Chauchats were manufactured between December 1915 and November 1918, including 244,000 chambered for the 8mm Lebel service cartridge, making it the most widely manufactured automatic weapon of World War I. The armies of eight other nations—Belgium, Finland, Greece, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Serbia—also used the Chauchat machine rifle in fairly large numbers during and after World War I.
The Chauchat was one of the first light, automatic rifle-caliber weapons designed to be carried and fired by a single operator and an assistant, without a heavy tripod or a team of gunners. It set a precedent for several subsequent 20th-century firearm projects, being a portable, yet full-power automatic weapon built inexpensively and in very large numbers. The Chauchat combined a pistol grip, an in-line stock, a detachable magazine, and a selective fire capability in a compact package of manageable weight (20 pounds, 9 kilograms) for a single soldier. Furthermore, it could be routinely fired from the hip and while walking (marching fire). The Chauchat is the only mass-produced fully automatic weapon actuated by long recoil, a Browning-designed system already applied in 1906 to the Remington Model 8 semi-automatic rifle: extraction and ejection of the empties takes place when the barrel returns forward, while the bolt is retained in the rear position. Afterwards the barrel trips a lever which releases the bolt and allows it to chamber another round.
The muddy trenches of northern France exposed a number of weaknesses in the Chauchat's design. Construction had been simplified to facilitate mass production, resulting in low quality of many metal parts. The magazines in particular were the cause of about 75% of the stoppages or cessations of fire; they were made of thin metal which was prone to deforming if gripped too tightly and they were open on one side, allowing for the entry of mud and dust. The weapon also ceased to function when overheated, the barrel sleeve remaining in the retracted position until the gun had cooled off. Consequently, in September 1918, barely two months before the Armistice of November 11, the A.E.F. in France had already initiated the process of replacing the Chauchat with the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle. Shortly after World War I, the French army replaced the Chauchat with the new gas-operated Mle 1924 light machine gun. It was mass manufactured during World War I by two reconverted civilian plants: "Gladiator" and "Sidarme". Besides the 8mm Lebel version, the Chauchat machine rifle was also manufactured in U.S. .30-06 Springfield and in 7.65×53mm Argentine Mauser caliber to arm the American Expeditionary Forces (A.E.F.) and the Belgian Army, respectively. The Belgian military did not experience difficulties with their Chauchats in 7.65mm Mauser and kept them in service into the early 1930s, as did the Polish Army. Conversely, the Chauchat version in U.S. .30-06 made by "Gladiator" for the A.E.F., the Model 1918, proved to be fundamentally defective and had to be withdrawn from service. The Chauchat has a poor reputation in some quarters; the .30-06 version in particular is by some experts considered the worst machine gun ever fielded.
History The design of the Chauchat dates back to 1903, and its long recoil operation is based on the John Browning-designed Remington Model 8 semi-automatic rifle of 1906, not (as so often repeated in the past) on the later designs (1910) of Rudolf Frommer, the Hungarian inventor of the commercial Frommer Stop pistol. The Chauchat machine rifle project was initiated between 1903 and 1910 in a French Army weapon research facility located near Paris: Atelier de Construction de Puteaux (APX). This development was aiming at creating a very light, portable automatic weapon served by one man only, yet firing the 8 mm Lebel service ammunition. The project was led from the beginning by Colonel Louis Chauchat, a graduate from Ecole Polytechnique, assisted by senior armorer Charles Sutter. Not less than eight trial prototypes were tested at APX, between 1903 and 1909. As a result, a small series (100 guns) of 8 mm Lebel CS (Chauchat-Sutter) machine rifles was ordered in 1911, then manufactured between 1913 and 1914 by Manufacture d'armes de Saint-Étienne (MAS). Because they were light, they were used temporarily during the early part of World War I to arm observation crews on French military aircraft. Only one CS machine rifle is known to have survived in a Prague museum.
In 1914, when World War I broke out, French troops did not operate any light machine gun. It was clear that this type of weapon had become indispensable in modern warfare, because of the increase in firepower it could provide to an infantry section. Spurred by General Joseph Joffre, it was decided to adopt the Chauchat, above all else because the pre-war CS (Chauchat-Sutter) machine rifle was already in existence, thoroughly tested, and designed to fire the 8mm Lebel service ammunition. Furthermore, due to its projected low manufacturing costs and relative simplicity, the newly adopted (1915) CSRG machine rifle could be mass-produced by a converted peacetime industrial plant. The term CSRG is made up of the initials of Chauchat, Sutter, Ribeyrolles and Gladiator, the respective manufacturers. Paul Ribeyrolles was the general manager of the Gladiator company, a peacetime manufacturer of motor cars, motorcycles, and bicycles located in Pre-Saint-Gervais (a northern suburb of Paris). The fairly large Gladiator factory was thus converted into an arms manufacturer in 1915 and became the principal industrial producer of Chauchat machine rifles during World War I. Later on, in 1918, a subsidiary of Compagnie des forges et acieries de la marine et d'Homecourt named SIDARME and located in Saint-Chamond, Loire, also participated in the mass manufacture of CSRGs.
Design details
The Chauchat machine rifle or "automatic rifle" functioned on the long barrel recoil principle with a gas assist.
The Chauchat machine rifle (CSRG) delivered to the French Army fired the 8mm Lebel cartridge at the slow rate of 240 rounds per minute. At , the gun was much lighter than the contemporary portable light machine guns of the period, such as the Hotchkiss M1909 Benét–Mercié machine gun and the Lewis gun. It was a selective fire weapon, either on automatic or semi-automatic mode.
The Chauchat's construction was a mix of new, high quality components, re-used parts proven in other designs, and the shoddy and sub standard. This combination did not help in the reliability of the weapon. 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 rifle 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 was a simple tube, and 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 firings. The sights were always misaligned on the Gladiator-made guns, creating severe aiming problems that had to be corrected by the gunners.
The exact number on record of Chauchat machine rifles manufactured between 1916 and the end of 1918 is 262,300. The Gladiator factory manufactured 225,700 CSRGs in 8 mm Lebel plus 19,000 in the U.S. caliber .30-06 between April 1916 and November 1918. SIDARME manufactured 18,600 CSRGs, exclusively in 8mm Lebel, between October 1917 and November 1918. The SIDARME-manufactured Chauchats were generally better finished and better functioning 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, whereas the Hotchkiss was a weighty, tripod-mounted weapon, the Chauchat was a light, portable gun 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. On the contrary, it was designed to be a light, thus highly portable, automatic weapon that would increase the firepower of infantry squads while they progressed forward during assaults. A significant plus is that it could easily be fired while walking (marching fire), by hanging the Chauchat's sling over a shoulder hook located onto the gunner's upper left side of his Y–strap.
The CSRG 1915 Chauchat was operated with Balle D 8mm ammunition, which was standard for the French until 1932 when they went to an improved Balle N 8mm Lebel cartridge. The Chauchats, as they were retired, were not converted to the Balle N, and as a result, they do not operate well with the Balle N cartridge (French World War I weapons converted to Balle N will have a noticeable "N" markings). Only Balle D 8mm should be used in the Chauchat 1915. The quickest way to identify the different cartridge is that the Balle D bullet is brass colored while the Balle N is a shiny silver.
French Service
The Mle 1915 Chauchat's performance on the battlefield drew decidedly mixed reviews from the users when the war was stagnating in the mud of the trenches in 1916. This brought about a survey, regiment by regiment, requested by General Pétain in late 1916; the survey's essential conclusion was that the open-sided half-moon magazines were defective and caused about two thirds of all stoppages. For instance, it was a common practice for the gunners to oil up the inside of the magazines to facilitate movement of the 8mm Lebel rounds. Also, loose earth, grit, and other particles easily entered the gun through these open-sided magazines, an ever-present risk in the muddy environment of the trenches. An insistence on using only good, undeformed magazines with strong springs was the most practical solution to this problem. Chauchat gunners were also known to load their magazines with 18 or 19 rounds, instead of the maximum 20, in order to avoid the dreaded first-round failure to feed. The Chauchat's long recoil system is often cited as a source of excessive stress on the gunner when firing, though recent and extensive firing tests have demonstrated that it is the Chauchat's ergonomics and its loose bipod, rather than its recoil, that makes it a difficult gun to keep on target beyond very short bursts. On most of the Gladiator-made guns, the sights also made the Chauchat shoot systematically too low and to the right, a failing which was soon recognized but never corrected. Overheating during uninterrupted periods of full automatic fire (about 120 rounds with the 8mm Lebel version) often resulted in the barrel sleeve assembly locking in the rear position due to thermal expansion, causing stoppage of fire until the gun had cooled off. Hence, French and US Army manuals recommended firing in short bursts or semi-auto. In 1918, the A.E.F. officially labeled the Chauchat in its user manuals as an "automatic rifle", a product of mistranslation of the term "Fusil Mitrailleur", instead of "Machine Gun Rifle", a more accurate description.
Improvements