The Little Gun that Couldn’t— The Chauchat.During World War I the Chauchat was one of th

The Little Gun that Couldn’t— The Chauchat.During World War I the Chauchat was one of the first man portable light machine guns ever produced.  Created and used by the French, it weighed twenty pounds and thus could be carried by and fired by a single man.  Chambered in 8x50mm Lebel, the gun used a long stroke gas operated system that was borrowed form John Brownings designs.Officially called some very long French name that I don’t feel like typing, the Chauchat had a reputation as being one of the biggest pieces of toad crap ever produced in human history.  But is that assessment fair or accurate?  Why yes, yes it is.  While the design itself was sound, the quality of it can only described as being put together by drunk Frenchmen in a dark room.  Many complaints often documented was that the sights were mounted crooked, the magazine springs wore out quickly, and sometimes parts were so crudely made that they were not even interchangeable.  The biggest complaint was reliability.  The magazines had a large open port so that the user could see how much ammunition was loaded in the magazine.  The problem was that with the dirt and mud of World War I trenches, this large port often attracted grit that would stop up the entire mechanism.  It was not uncommon for Chauchat teams to travel in pairs, so that one could fire while the other cleared a jam.When the United States entered the war they needed large amounts of arms and equipment.  The French saw this as an opportunity to dispose of their supply of Chauchats.  About 16,000 were converted to .30-06, a move that would make the situation even worse.  Documentation was found that 40% of all Chauchats that were inspected at American munitions factories were rejected, while the rest were found to be “problematic” anyway.  Despite its problems, the Chauchat would make up about 75% of all light machine guns issued to US troops during World War I. -- source link
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