Fusil Mitrailleur Modele 1915 CSRG ‘Chauchat’
Widely, and wrongly vilified as one of the worst machine guns ever made, the Modele 1915 CSRG was adopted by the French Army in 1915. The Chauchat’s predecessors had been in experimental development before the war but not adopted.
The weapon was refined for production in 1915, and the first weapons reached French troops in 1916. It was the first mass produced Automatic Rifle to see military service. It was the quality of the gun’s manufacture which led to problems. Screws which came loose during firing, some of the materials used were inferior and the weapon’s sights were frequently misaligned. The magazine was also found to have problems with dirt easily entering the action. Despite this 250,000 were made and it became one of the most common light machine guns of the war. The Modele 1915 was select fire, fired from an open bolt and used a long recoil system with a rotating bolt, this operation can clearly be seen in the animated video above. The predominant problems with Modele 1915′s in the field was ingress of mud into the magazine but more importantly overheating. With sustained rapid fire the barrel shroud/jacket headed up and prevented the recoiling barrel from cycling until the gun had once again cooled.
Fusil Mitrailleur Modele 1915 CSRG (source)
The Chauchat had an extremely low rate of fire, firing just 250 rounds per minute and fed from a 20-round magazine (which operated best when loaded with just 18-rounds). The low rate of fire had the positive effect of preventing the weapon from heating up too quickly and also allowed the weapon to be kept on target when firing in fully automatic. As well as the French, the Romanians and Belgians also used the Chauchat and US forces arriving in 1917, lacking an automatic rifle, were issued 16,000 Chauchats chambered in 8mm Lebel.
A .30-06 M1918 CSRG & a 8mm Lebel M1815 CSRG (source)
A rechambered version, the M1918 CSRG, firing .30-06 was also developed with an improved magazine (which held just 16 rounds). However, the US Chauchats were poorly made with the chambers not properly sized to the American round. Some sources also suggest that the .30-06, which was more powerful than French 8mm (although only marginally), strained the guns’ receivers compounding problems. Like the American BAR which would follow it the Chauchat was really a Automatic Rifle, not a Light Machine Gun. The concept of walking fire is demonstrated in vbbsmyt’s video above. The gunner would be accompanied by an ammunition bearer/assistant gunner who would, in theory, load the weapon. When advancing the gunner would fire a round every other step, in practice it was probably used to fire in short bursts from cover while advancing from shellhole to shellhole.
The Chauchat saw significant post-war service with France, Belgium, Romania and Finland. While the Modele 1915 is not a perfect combat weapon, it was the first of its kind, and is certainly not the worst firearm ever made.
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