HAhahaha... good one (I actually just recently watched the 7+ year old video of Ian putting together one of the early prototype firearm display walls with the inventor of the system, when he displays & talks about some of the firearms in his own collection)
Yeah, you can be sure this was a true French idea of it era. That's not to say that the Elbonians weren't declaring it to be the best idea since the portable outhouse and pounding the table for it, (I think the Elbonians still issue it even yet today for their high speed low drag operators). And it's arguably better idea than the German Mg 08/15 version of their standard Maxim.
When I was a kid, one of the things I enjoyed was sitting in the background and listening to my dad visit with the neighbors and his drinking buddies (we had no electricity in our farm house and drinking was a way of life). One I remember well had served in WWI and talked about that machine gun. He called it a "shit shit" and said they had to piss on the barrel to get it to work when it got hot. Seems pissing on the barrel would release it when it was hot and get it back in action till it heated up again. He said as soon as he could he threw the damn thing in a junk pile and picked up a Springfield, then he had a gun that worked all the time. This was in the 1950's back when both WW1 and WW2 vets were around, the Korean war vets were young men still, one of my cousins married a Korea war vet who had his arm blown off when he tried to throw a grenade back out of his fox hole and it blew, took off his arm one eye and left him with bad scars all over including on his face. It made me think twice before I joined the US Army in 1970 but I went anyhow, I couldn't buy a damn job as a high school drop out in my home town, we had moved to Minnesota and found work out there but my wife was home sick so we moved back to South Dakota and after a month of job search's turned up nothing I called the Recruiter who was more then happy to come and get me, then send me off to training and on to Vietnam. That was indeed a trip but then that is another story completely.
It's probably just a coincidence, but the fact that it looks exactly like it was made from actual bicycle frame tubing really drives home that "made in a bicycle factory" thing. :)
Thinking on it, its probably not a coincidence. If they had a massive bicycle factory that was used to making tube frames why not keep it as close to what they know how to make as possible.
It's so weird to think of this as a competitor to the BAR. The BAR just seems miles and miles ahead as far as modernity, quality, usability, really everything.
Is it really though. The fire rate of the Chauchat is a lot more realistic for 15-20 round mags than the BAR which fires quickly with a small mag. The original BAR overheats quickly and doesn't have any tweaks like a shroud to reduce heat. It just isn't that advanced for it's time.
@@tylersmith3139 I think you have some misconceptions here. The fire rate of the BAR in low is effectively identical to that of the chauchat, they just eventually got rid of the low bc it was one of the few truly bad features of the BAR. In fact, in general extremely low fire rates for LMGs were a feature that, even by WW1, was pretty obsolete. Especially to be included as the sole fire mode for the chauchat. Walking fire was always a joke and that alone is a big part of the reason the BAR lasted and the chauchat didn't. Also, idk what you're basing your overheating issue claim on, but that is also simply wrong. For an MG, the relatively low fire rate and mag capacity on the BAR ensure that it's pretty difficult to overheat. Now, later model BARs did use cooling fins on the barrel (yet another thing your comment was wrong about), but that was for longevity and handling, not in-combat functional overheating issues. Look, you may not like it, but fact is the BAR was really really advanced for it's time. Was it the perfect gun? No, there are better LMGs today. But, was it miles better than basically any other option in 1918 and made the chauchat look like a joke? Yes, absolutely. Hell, the US used it for so long that when it left service it was competing with the M240, and that's still standard issue today! There's a reason it's the longest serving light MGs in US military history.
@@ianloughney9570i wouldn't say it was miles better than all the competition as Lewis and Madsen were also fine weapons to my knowlage. Hell Madsen is still used today by brazilian police
@@ianloughney9570 in fairness the biggest issues with the BAR were all relatively easily fixed as it was tweaked throughout its lifetime. That said the US military managed to keep its biggest issue when it came to using it for basicslly its whole lifespan. The god awful control setup, the lack of a pistol grip made it so much less user friendly than nearly anything else you could find, the few versions of it with that as standard are so much more comfortable to use and becsuse of that so much easier to be accurate with.
@@cgi2002 Definitely agreed, there's a reason it got an A1 and A2. And really IMO the fatal flaw that finally did kill it was its weight, they could never really incrementally improve that out lol. But yeah, like I said, its not like the BAR was a perfect gun, hell it's been obsolete for 50 years. But compared to the chauchat, or even the lewis or madsen as another guy mentioned, it was lightyears ahead.
Only gun channels I watch are Forgotten Weapons and Paul Harrell. Both are informative and straight to the point in regards to the task at hand, with no fluff as a bonus.
If I am not mistaken those were the French pattern, and they should arrived in small quantities to the Republican side. From the logistics point of view, the Nationalist side was a nightmare, while the Republican was hell. I guess all existing calibers of the time were present at some point or another.
Given the reports from the International brigade im going to go with a solid no on that! The Chauchat was badly assembled and needed skilled well trained operators, the ones the republic got were clapped out WW1 relics that had been badly stored and were operated by unskilled amateurs. Most opinions on it were that youd be lucky to get a 2 round burst before something fell off.
@@diegoferreiro9478 The quantities weren't that small (atleast not for spanish civil war). Poland had almost 12000 Chauchats in early 20s, later in the same decade they converted half of them from 8mm Lebel to 7.92mm Mauser, and in 1936-37 sold 2650 abroad, mostly to Republican Spain and Mexico, who themselves were 3rd biggest arms supplier (after Poland and soviet Union) to Republicans.
Well Hellenic Army got French surpluses and used it extensively in 1919 Odessa campaign, 1919-1922 Asia Minor Campaign and of course in 1940-41 . In fact it was our main SAW and we produced 8 mmR Lebel for that reason. My Grandfather fought with this in Greco-Italian war for 6 months. He was drafted back in 1934 and in the meantime took part in 3 month long manoeuvres. So, lot of retraining. He never mentioned malfunctions, fault case rejection or difficulties in operating the machine. Only complaint was limited ammo. So now after Ian explaining manufacturing deficiencies, i am convinced about bad the source of bad reputation.
It's been over a hundred years, and as far as we know, no one has made repro Chauchats. Considering, the STEN is equally 'cost optimized', that really says something about the Chauchat...
An important thing to remember is that creating a reproduction of a historical firearm is very expensive. Such a product would not be targeted at mass market (pretty much any LMG would be better for recreational/sportive shooting), but for a relatively small - and very accuracy-demanding collectors' market. So you have to set up a unique production line for a mechanically complex - well, at least compared to a stamped subgun like Sten - gun (which, by the way, you almost certainly would have to reverse-engineer yourself, as I highly doubt there is the technical package available in public), with an infamously finicky proprietary magazine, in a semi-proprietary cartridge that almost no-one used or produced in large quantities for 80 years. And then you would have to make profit with the target audience of several hundred people. It took decades for someone to risk trying to produce and sell STG44 repros, and it is an iconic, German (!), WW2 (!) gun that pioneered an entire weapon class of assault rifles. In no way anyone would invest in reproducing a crappy, French, WW1, LMG, the only notable things about which are how quickly everyone ditched it as soon as they had access to anything better, and how low was the -BAR- bar to be better then Chauchat.
maybe the Sten has been more publicized and therefore there is enough demand to produce it profitably? try to find effective but little known weapons republics, you will see that there are none either.
Considering what happened after with that weapon, I suspect the reports were not so much lost, more taken round the back, dispatched with a service revolver and left in an unmarked grave.
The WWII mod for Ravenfield has this American version of the Chauchat. It's coded to jam after the same number of shots with every magazine, and has an animation for the stuck casing being pulled out. There is nothing you can do to avoid this.
Wow what a great job, love to listen to you “wax poetic” about doughboys “wacking poughetically” during their campaign overseas. I never feel that you Ian do anything except deliver. My Uncle Jim Blanchard from South Portland Maine was into all things war related, collectibles, etc. he sadly passed away and now your channel means even more to me. I spent many years looking at the comings and goings of his collection which sprung from the many circles of shows in your area. Thank you Ian, our family represented in the World Wars and all of these things mean a great deal to freedom and the values that we share today.
I understand that Gladiator contracted the magazine production to tin plate toy makers who had the pattern makers and tooling to press them out. However the tooling was made around the thin toy tinplate sheets hence the flexible magazines and the ribbing to try to stiffen them.
@@classifiedad1 I doubt if the presses could accommodate a double thickness nor make them to a close enough fit to put two together but I do not actually know the answer.
I have a friend who purchased one of these ,without magazine, in the late 90's. He took it to his friend, Max Atchisson, for some help. Max stuffed the mag well with aluminum foil, really tamped it in, then carefully removed it and took some measurements. After some modification and fiddling, he made a Johnson LMG mag somewhat functional in that particular gun. I don't know if it had the chamber modification. If it didn't have a mag, why bother? These were $17-$21 DEWAT guns in the 1960's, and amnesty registration was free. I can see why a $20 live leagal, nonfunctional machine gun could exist, but really, only in this sort of circumstance.
@Hysteria98 Yes. Max was a long-time Atlanta area resident, who sadly passed in the early 2000's. I was fortunate to shoot several of his different prototype firearms. The Chauchat guy bought several at auction.
I never really thought about it, but John Browning had a rather large impact on post WWI MG development. Even though he was nearing the end of his life he still had a big impact on MG evolution. With his 1917, 18, and 19 designs being fielded through most of the 20th Century. With the M2 still in widespread use to this day!
My paternal grandfather was in the 77th Division. He was in the same battle that saw MAJ Charles Whittlesey's battalion cut off. He received a hunk of steel in his butt from artillery and was able to make hospital. He told me he was an ammo bearer for a M1918 Chauchat and none of what he said was good. He could have been in Whittlesey's battalion during the assault, his records (and mine) were destroyed in a fire.
@@TitouFromMars And it’s important to recall that its low production cost would mean that the Chauchat was cranked out in astonishing numbers, something not to be sneezed at in a war of attrition where it was one of the few, truly portable, fully automatic weapons available.
The Chauchat wasn't actually a bad design. It wasn't a particularly exceptional one, but almost all of its issues have been linked back to the holes in the magazine. In environments that aren't literal hell on earth, it's a little heavy but it tends to run without issues.
How many of us tried to pick out all the guns behind Ian on his first video from Morphy's? There's just one I wasn't sure of and he hasn't gotten to it yet...but I'm enjoying this series immensely.
To quote great american novel: “Ugly frigging thing,” Krazewski said. Crouching over the Chauchat automatic rifle, he yanked at the stock, twisting it on its bipod. “Look at it.” Anton Myrer "Once an Eagle".
I saw some Chauchats with box magazines in the Belgrade Military Museum. From what I read these must have been Belgian Chauchats sold to Yugoslavia and rechambered from 7.65mm Belgian to 8mm Mauser.
An example of Woodrow Wilson’s denial of the probability of the US getting involved in the war. No real preparations were made prior to the declaration of war, and Springfield and Rock Island had been in very slow production rate compared to TR or Taft administrations.
There's a school of political science thought that, like, half the bad stuff that happened back in the 20th Century can be traced back to Woodrow being an oblivious moron.
@@hoilst265 Tommy Wilson was not stupid, he was evil. Joseph Hall-Patton (The Cynical Historian) mocks his own reaction to Woodrow Wilson, which he fully justifies. Aside from being a Fascist before Mussolini invented the term, he was a creatively destructive historian justifying the Southern side in the Civil War. His conduct before and during WWI offended all sides, justifiably. He totally pissed off both the Chinese and Japanese at Versailles, again by being his racist self. Most people know about his offending the Germans, but he egregiously offended the faction of the Republicans in the US who might have backed his policies, so he was assured that they could not pass Congress.
@@tomhalla426 Aye. I'm not American, but I should not have been so glib. I am Chinese-Australian (my Grandfather left in the late 1930s for...obvious reasons, though he was sorta Australian anyway), and while the CCP is rightfully seen as bad today...eh, on the other hand, you can't really blame 'em. The phrase "Century of Humiliation" is not an exaggeration - while Europe, for example, was offered help and support to rebuild after WWI, China was kept as a Western playground.
@@TheArklyte To be fair, the BAR is more mechanically complex than the MG42. IIRC, there was a version of the BAR that had a switch that changed the full-auto firing rate.
@@TheArklyte And the Germans couldn't have designed and produced the MG42 2 decades earlier either. And almost 80 years later, ain't no one using the MG42 design either.
9:11: the SPROING!! noise that things make that I have never taken apart before, launching some critical part into the darkest, dustiest corner of my basement, never to be found again...
One issue with the Chauchat is that it required lubricated ammunition to function well. Did the American gun work around that or did they also have to have oiled cartridges? A point worth making is that in WWI, it was still really difficult to process aluminum and it was something of a wonder metal. So to see it used in this gun is interesting. Also, as I recall, basically no one was really ready for WWI and everyone found themselves QUICKLY short of all sorts of items and had to massively increase production.
I just went and watched the Mythbusting video on this gun that Ian did. It's really an amazing machine gun, and like the Lewis, it just screams WW1 badassery. Great video.
First off, I love your videos. I have been collecting collectorables, war artifacts. Furthermore, a long time I've been collecting swords, bayonets and what not. At the end, I've always found out of my room looks like a pirates hoarding room from the 1700s & 18s. I'm a pirate at a heart and cannot let my sh go.
Greetings from Belgium! Bravo for your french, it's actually not bad at all. I don't want to bragg (but I can't resist), but I remember a certain Ian making a video about the Belgian Chauchat and stating it was the best of all. No take back!
Morphy really likes Ian so much to the point they let him see all the French guns he can find and the M1918 Chauchat is one of those despite being also American. That part at the beginning was pure genius.
With America rearming prior to Pearl Harbour and Lend Lease underway to supply arms to Britain were any Chauchats available still in the US inventory for 2nd line use at home or for supply to the British Home Guard?
@@hoilst265 "It's not that great Pierre!" "Putain, we have a war to figh we can't spend too much designing and refinig the thing! Send it to the production lines asap!"
Absolutely, doughnuts would have been made at least weekly by both regimental (and perhaps even battalion) kitchens as well as the Red Cross and other civilian organizations
That's a very interesting design. Some aspects seem ingenious and others are kind of insane. I was surprised by how short the barrels were. The long recoil is an interesting system, I don't think I've seen that on a rifle before.
Sacred Bleau, Mon Ami!! It's a French design (LoL)!! Brother, I'm like you.... I could never understand why the U.S. (Our beautiful America) chose the Chauchat over the Lewis (American designed) LMG. The Lewis was the most reliable of the early 20th Century/ pre-WW1 designs and could be manufactured faster than the Maxim-System guns (the British were building 04 Lewis LMGs to every 01 Maxim-Vickers MG). Great Video, as usual. I greatly enjoy your knowledge & expertise. Also, like you, I'm fond of Antigue, Classic Military Smallarms. GOD Bless you; keep up the good work!
I only know like 0.15% French so at the start, I thought you said "Armes oubliette" and I was like.... yes, I can picture Ian gleefully entering The Gun Pit. Alternatively a fun nickname for your channel.
One of the design features of the ar-platform utilizes the different expansion rates of steel and aluminum . Your steel barrel extension slips into the aluminum upper. Then a steel barrel nut threads over that aluminum . As you fire, the aluminum expands faster than the steel around it , locking the barrel into place even more rigidly. When it is a steel ,aluminum ,steel interface the handguards ,especially floating handguards are much harder to torque off the gun when the user is under extreme stress with adrenaline . They can crush the gas tube . This is why quality free float handguards that require their own barrel nut use steel . Others use the existing barrel nut .
I've had imagery of this gun in my head for a long time after reading To the Last Man by Jeff Shaara. Wasn't expecting that but I think the author did a great job showing the attitudes towards the gun regardless if it was effective at times or not.
It was well known that .30-06 Chauchat machine rifles tended to be "expended in combat" much more than one would think. Between crappy fabrication and that abortion of a magazine the thing was as likely to get you killed as save you. Doughboys tended to report them "lost in combat" which wasn't a lie, although that phrase was more intended for "damaged in fighting" rather than "Thrown in a shell-hole full of water never to be seen again". They would "lose" the .30-06 version and be issued the 8mm version as a replacement. (I read this in several Doughboy memoir books, all of whom seemed to have loathed the American version but found the French version much better. Wish I could remember what they were titled!).
You know, Ian, American sentiment was fairly neutral or even antiwar before WW1, with cases in the books about people protesting the draft or even advising others to not comply with the draft, and maybe Americans had something to do with some of the teething problems this gun had with machining, it’s just a theory, there’s no factual evidence to back it up, but there do exist cases in Constitutional Law that we still study today about Americans protesting the draft and the War in general! Thanks for the videos, you remind me of a friend I have who really gets deeper in to his hobbies than I ever have!
The stock is probably shortened to allow use with a BAR style belt cup (yes, they haven't released the BAR yet, but have decided to use its tactics in the CSRG). Interestingly, this belt did not have pockets (with the exception of two double pockets for M1911 magazines, reduced to one on the BAR version), instead magazines were carried in bags over the shoulder (each bag could hold about six such magazines), and you would probably have at least two such bags.
But was the Chauchat really meant to be used as a light machinegun like we think of it today. I see it more as semiautomatic gun, that also can fire in full auto.
Like the Sten what the Chauchat brought to the table is that it used manufacturing from outside the firearms industries which were already overstretched. Bicycles and tin plate toys in the case of the Chauchat.
Very cool to see. I've only seen the Chauchat with American use in the WWI movie 'The Lost Battalion'. I recall the American soldiers in that film were not glowing with praise for the weapon.
Me, armed with the knowledge Ian has bestowed upon me, telling my buddy why his guns failure to extract is bad: "Ermmm, well..cause...you need them to!" Love your videos Ian, your delivery of that line was perfect.
My great grandfather fought in WWI at St. Étienne, and it makes me wonder what he fought with. My guess is the 1918 since I’ve seen picture(s) of him with one, but I’ve always wondered what else was firing around him.
I was waiting for Ian to say it is the standard LMG of Elbonia via a multi-million dollar arms purchase. Of course, the Elbomians required it in 7.7 x 58mm Japanese to match their Arisaka rifles previously purchased. They also wanted to develop a drum magazine.
My great-uncle actually used these during WWI. I can't use the words on here that he used to describe them. Let's just say that he hated them. He said that they were junk that continually jammed and were useless.
My grandfather was issued one of these in France. First time over the top it gets a stoppage he couldn't clear, gets tossed and he grabbed an M1917 off a fallen doughboy
Th M1918 wasn't not considered a front-line wheapon and it's unlikely , if it was usued in combat .. I'm really curious of the veracity of a " first shot" jamming issue ... that thing happen in cartoons and rarely in real life .
@jameljay2183 He didn't say "first shot" nor did I. The Chauchat had a severe design flaw: the bolt had to be removed to clear many types of stoppages. This is evident from Ian's disassembly of the weapon. My grandfather refused to discuss his experiences in France with children. I only know this story because he told it to his WWII veteran son-in-law my father. Don't beclown yourself by attempting to sound authoritative about things you have no way of knowing the truth of.
Genuinely speaking I think the American Chauchat would've actually been the bell of the ball if it was made correctly. It was fantastic more reliable than it gets credit for, the problem Is the chambering fix that with increase the mag count of at least 20 as well as make the mags with stronger steel and The bipod add a more human length and I believe this thing could have been a real good rival for the BAR. Cheaper Too.
The engineering is a big draw for me. There’s another channel I found recently, Gilles Mercier’s Our Own Devices, that does a lot of similar stuff with non-guns.
there's something about chauchats that always makes me think they look like small bore rocket launchers or reccoiless rifles, just extend the back of the tube so it's over he shoulder when... shouldered...
Morphy employees had to lure Ian out of the room by shaking a bag of .32 French Long ammo after filming this video
HAhahaha... good one (I actually just recently watched the 7+ year old video of Ian putting together one of the early prototype firearm display walls with the inventor of the system, when he displays & talks about some of the firearms in his own collection)
*whistles*
"Here, boy!"
"hold on, shh, that sounds like someone shaking a bag of 7.65mm French Longue."
Ian owns one of these I believe.
Ahaha
Military: We need machine guns! We're desperate!
Lewis Gun: What about me?
Military: We're good thanks.
Britain: WE NEED MACHINE GUNS
Lewis: I have a design
Britain: WE’LL TAKE YOUR ENTIRE STOCK
The Lewis weight twice a Chauchat and cost 3times more: this is the real explanation…
Ironically, they also had the BAR
@@jamesricker3997it's well known that the BAR barely made it to the war.
@@DarnedYankee more like "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!"
Something tells me the rejection of Lewis guns in .30-06 came from a certain William Crozier 😡
I feel like Lazerpig could make a whole video roasting him.
@@nickthompson9697maybe, he usually does videos on vehicles not weapons
@@nickthompson9697 C&Arsenal have made it something of a running joke ;)
Yea
Is that the guy who stopped the US Army from buying Lewis Guns because he had a grudge against Lewis?
I love how, at about the 5-minute mark, the Chauchat flops over by itself as it faints. So the gun was so bad it even scared itself. LoL.
It gave me that vibe of when I'm exhausted after work and I jus flop onto my bed like "annnnnd I'm done"
This made me laugh more than it should've
Ian personally owns of of these. Curious if it's his gun for sale.
@@rogerjohnson8707 He said he's been assured that it runs ok, so no.
It’s French, so it probably surrendered..sorry I’m English, it comes naturally to us.
Are we SURE the designers weren't secretly Elbonian in heritage?
Fifth columnist Elbonians infiltrating the French Arms industry!
That's a question for 23andMe.😂
Scott Adams was right.
Yeah, you can be sure this was a true French idea of it era. That's not to say that the Elbonians weren't declaring it to be the best idea since the portable outhouse and pounding the table for it, (I think the Elbonians still issue it even yet today for their high speed low drag operators). And it's arguably better idea than the German Mg 08/15 version of their standard Maxim.
Seeing the field strip the spirit of John Browning smacks his forehead…
"This is my Chauchat. There are't many like it, but this one is mine."
Eight-milimeter LEBEL..
Full Metal JACKET!
5:00 "you would think this simpler magazine would be a better design... but it's kind of not, really."
M1918 - "aw 😞" *falls over*
Cute reaction... Poor gun :')
Might be why it spit out the end cap later in retaliation.
@@markfergerson2145 The end cap flying off is a defence mechanism when threatened.
Agreed! AT least Eugene Stoner did learn from their mistakes. Chauchat magazine, bad, AR magazine (AKA Stanag), great.
3:00 Ian: for the first 2 divisions that are being sent over-
My brain: OVER THERE!... OVER THERE!.. SEND THE WORD, SEND THE WORD, OVER THERE!
When I was a kid, one of the things I enjoyed was sitting in the background and listening to my dad visit with the neighbors and his drinking buddies (we had no electricity in our farm house and drinking was a way of life). One I remember well had served in WWI and talked about that machine gun. He called it a "shit shit" and said they had to piss on the barrel to get it to work when it got hot. Seems pissing on the barrel would release it when it was hot and get it back in action till it heated up again. He said as soon as he could he threw the damn thing in a junk pile and picked up a Springfield, then he had a gun that worked all the time. This was in the 1950's back when both WW1 and WW2 vets were around, the Korean war vets were young men still, one of my cousins married a Korea war vet who had his arm blown off when he tried to throw a grenade back out of his fox hole and it blew, took off his arm one eye and left him with bad scars all over including on his face. It made me think twice before I joined the US Army in 1970 but I went anyhow, I couldn't buy a damn job as a high school drop out in my home town, we had moved to Minnesota and found work out there but my wife was home sick so we moved back to South Dakota and after a month of job search's turned up nothing I called the Recruiter who was more then happy to come and get me, then send me off to training and on to Vietnam. That was indeed a trip but then that is another story completely.
I want you to know that man knew the true name of the Chauchat. #shitshit
5:00 The gun was so shocked by the insult, it fainted
It's probably just a coincidence, but the fact that it looks exactly like it was made from actual bicycle frame tubing really drives home that "made in a bicycle factory" thing. :)
Thinking on it, its probably not a coincidence. If they had a massive bicycle factory that was used to making tube frames why not keep it as close to what they know how to make as possible.
The bipod made from a bicycle stand is going a little too far tho
The word you're looking for isn't "forgotten", it's "denial". 😁
You win the internet today
Yeah I thought repressed traumatic experience would fit but denial is much shorter 🤣
It's so weird to think of this as a competitor to the BAR. The BAR just seems miles and miles ahead as far as modernity, quality, usability, really everything.
Is it really though. The fire rate of the Chauchat is a lot more realistic for 15-20 round mags than the BAR which fires quickly with a small mag. The original BAR overheats quickly and doesn't have any tweaks like a shroud to reduce heat. It just isn't that advanced for it's time.
@@tylersmith3139 I think you have some misconceptions here. The fire rate of the BAR in low is effectively identical to that of the chauchat, they just eventually got rid of the low bc it was one of the few truly bad features of the BAR. In fact, in general extremely low fire rates for LMGs were a feature that, even by WW1, was pretty obsolete. Especially to be included as the sole fire mode for the chauchat. Walking fire was always a joke and that alone is a big part of the reason the BAR lasted and the chauchat didn't.
Also, idk what you're basing your overheating issue claim on, but that is also simply wrong. For an MG, the relatively low fire rate and mag capacity on the BAR ensure that it's pretty difficult to overheat. Now, later model BARs did use cooling fins on the barrel (yet another thing your comment was wrong about), but that was for longevity and handling, not in-combat functional overheating issues.
Look, you may not like it, but fact is the BAR was really really advanced for it's time. Was it the perfect gun? No, there are better LMGs today. But, was it miles better than basically any other option in 1918 and made the chauchat look like a joke? Yes, absolutely. Hell, the US used it for so long that when it left service it was competing with the M240, and that's still standard issue today! There's a reason it's the longest serving light MGs in US military history.
@@ianloughney9570i wouldn't say it was miles better than all the competition as Lewis and Madsen were also fine weapons to my knowlage.
Hell Madsen is still used today by brazilian police
@@ianloughney9570 in fairness the biggest issues with the BAR were all relatively easily fixed as it was tweaked throughout its lifetime. That said the US military managed to keep its biggest issue when it came to using it for basicslly its whole lifespan. The god awful control setup, the lack of a pistol grip made it so much less user friendly than nearly anything else you could find, the few versions of it with that as standard are so much more comfortable to use and becsuse of that so much easier to be accurate with.
@@cgi2002 Definitely agreed, there's a reason it got an A1 and A2. And really IMO the fatal flaw that finally did kill it was its weight, they could never really incrementally improve that out lol. But yeah, like I said, its not like the BAR was a perfect gun, hell it's been obsolete for 50 years. But compared to the chauchat, or even the lewis or madsen as another guy mentioned, it was lightyears ahead.
Ian makes a Chauchat video without saying "cachunk" once? Inconceivable
Inconcevable!
I don't think you know what that word means, and if you do it doesn't mean what you think it means.
These are the best firearm history videos on the internet.
Ian is doing valuable work. May he prosper greatly!
Only gun channels I watch are Forgotten Weapons and Paul Harrell. Both are informative and straight to the point in regards to the task at hand, with no fluff as a bonus.
Chauchat LMGs were used in Spain during the Spanish Civil War: it is entirely possible that someone got good with one back in the late 1930s!
If I am not mistaken those were the French pattern, and they should arrived in small quantities to the Republican side.
From the logistics point of view, the Nationalist side was a nightmare, while the Republican was hell.
I guess all existing calibers of the time were present at some point or another.
I seen to recall that the in the second War, the Waffen SS, got lumbered with some. They must have been desperate.
Given the reports from the International brigade im going to go with a solid no on that!
The Chauchat was badly assembled and needed skilled well trained operators, the ones the republic got were clapped out WW1 relics that had been badly stored and were operated by unskilled amateurs.
Most opinions on it were that youd be lucky to get a 2 round burst before something fell off.
@@diegoferreiro9478 The quantities weren't that small (atleast not for spanish civil war). Poland had almost 12000 Chauchats in early 20s, later in the same decade they converted half of them from 8mm Lebel to 7.92mm Mauser, and in 1936-37 sold 2650 abroad, mostly to Republican Spain and Mexico, who themselves were 3rd biggest arms supplier (after Poland and soviet Union) to Republicans.
Well Hellenic Army got French surpluses and used it extensively in 1919 Odessa campaign, 1919-1922 Asia Minor Campaign and of course in 1940-41 . In fact it was our main SAW and we produced 8 mmR Lebel for that reason. My Grandfather fought with this in Greco-Italian war for 6 months. He was drafted back in 1934 and in the meantime took part in 3 month long manoeuvres. So, lot of retraining. He never mentioned malfunctions, fault case rejection or difficulties in operating the machine. Only complaint was limited ammo. So now after Ian explaining manufacturing deficiencies, i am convinced about bad the source of bad reputation.
It's been over a hundred years, and as far as we know, no one has made repro Chauchats.
Considering, the STEN is equally 'cost optimized', that really says something about the Chauchat...
there is a replica bfong chauchat coming onto market for the ww1 reenactors
It’s a product of its era.
Remember the Sten came out twenty years later after a lot of lessons had been learned
An important thing to remember is that creating a reproduction of a historical firearm is very expensive. Such a product would not be targeted at mass market (pretty much any LMG would be better for recreational/sportive shooting), but for a relatively small - and very accuracy-demanding collectors' market.
So you have to set up a unique production line for a mechanically complex - well, at least compared to a stamped subgun like Sten - gun (which, by the way, you almost certainly would have to reverse-engineer yourself, as I highly doubt there is the technical package available in public), with an infamously finicky proprietary magazine, in a semi-proprietary cartridge that almost no-one used or produced in large quantities for 80 years. And then you would have to make profit with the target audience of several hundred people.
It took decades for someone to risk trying to produce and sell STG44 repros, and it is an iconic, German (!), WW2 (!) gun that pioneered an entire weapon class of assault rifles. In no way anyone would invest in reproducing a crappy, French, WW1, LMG, the only notable things about which are how quickly everyone ditched it as soon as they had access to anything better, and how low was the -BAR- bar to be better then Chauchat.
maybe the Sten has been more publicized and therefore there is enough demand to produce it profitably? try to find effective but little known weapons republics, you will see that there are none either.
You did prove in project lightening that both versions can work. But, under the right circumstances and training.
Don't forget all the remedial work needed on the magazines!
There's nothing like starting your Saturday morning with a plesant video from Forgotten Weapons.
"Putting the vertical grip way out here is just too far to be useful" Daniel Defense says hold my beer and watch this!
"So here is our 18" rifle, we have a grip at about 18" too. Careful where you place your fingers..."
Is anyone else excited when there is a longer video? It means more history or more interesting mechanisms!
Amen.
Considering what happened after with that weapon, I suspect the reports were not so much lost, more taken round the back, dispatched with a service revolver and left in an unmarked grave.
The WWII mod for Ravenfield has this American version of the Chauchat. It's coded to jam after the same number of shots with every magazine, and has an animation for the stuck casing being pulled out. There is nothing you can do to avoid this.
That's proper attention to detail.
'Happy as Ian in a French Armory.'
Wow what a great job, love to listen to you “wax poetic” about doughboys “wacking poughetically” during their campaign overseas. I never feel that you Ian do anything except deliver. My Uncle Jim Blanchard from South Portland Maine was into all things war related, collectibles, etc. he sadly passed away and now your channel means even more to me. I spent many years looking at the comings and goings of his collection which sprung from the many circles of shows in your area. Thank you Ian, our family represented in the World Wars and all of these things mean a great deal to freedom and the values that we share today.
I understand that Gladiator contracted the magazine production to tin plate toy makers who had the pattern makers and tooling to press them out. However the tooling was made around the thin toy tinplate sheets hence the flexible magazines and the ribbing to try to stiffen them.
Did they ever consider just using more than 1 layer?
@@classifiedad1 I doubt if the presses could accommodate a double thickness nor make them to a close enough fit to put two together but I do not actually know the answer.
I have a friend who purchased one of these ,without magazine, in the late 90's. He took it to his friend, Max Atchisson, for some help. Max stuffed the mag well with aluminum foil, really tamped it in, then carefully removed it and took some measurements. After some modification and fiddling, he made a Johnson LMG mag somewhat functional in that particular gun. I don't know if it had the chamber modification. If it didn't have a mag, why bother? These were $17-$21 DEWAT guns in the 1960's, and amnesty registration was free. I can see why a $20 live leagal, nonfunctional machine gun could exist, but really, only in this sort of circumstance.
Max Atchisson? By chance the same guy who made the AA12?
@Hysteria98
Yes. Max was a long-time Atlanta area resident, who sadly passed in the early 2000's. I was fortunate to shoot several of his different prototype firearms. The Chauchat guy bought several at auction.
I never really thought about it, but John Browning had a rather large impact on post WWI MG development. Even though he was nearing the end of his life he still had a big impact on MG evolution. With his 1917, 18, and 19 designs being fielded through most of the 20th Century. With the M2 still in widespread use to this day!
My paternal grandfather was in the 77th Division. He was in the same battle that saw MAJ Charles Whittlesey's battalion cut off. He received a hunk of steel in his butt from artillery and was able to make hospital. He told me he was an ammo bearer for a M1918 Chauchat and none of what he said was good. He could have been in Whittlesey's battalion during the assault, his records (and mine) were destroyed in a fire.
Chauchat and the phrase “good enough” is an odd combination to say the least
The chauchat, despite all its flaws, fulfilled its role. So no, "good enough" is exactly the right word.
@@TitouFromMars And it’s important to recall that its low production cost would mean that the Chauchat was cranked out in astonishing numbers, something not to be sneezed at in a war of attrition where it was one of the few, truly portable, fully automatic weapons available.
Well, with enough time and development almost every gun can improve.
The 280000 "good enough" machine guns you have is better than the 280000 "amazing" machine guns they dont have. Or something to that effect
The Chauchat wasn't actually a bad design. It wasn't a particularly exceptional one, but almost all of its issues have been linked back to the holes in the magazine. In environments that aren't literal hell on earth, it's a little heavy but it tends to run without issues.
How many of us tried to pick out all the guns behind Ian on his first video from Morphy's? There's just one I wasn't sure of and he hasn't gotten to it yet...but I'm enjoying this series immensely.
Time to go rewatch Project Lightning!!
Who else actually bought it?
To quote great american novel:
“Ugly frigging thing,” Krazewski said. Crouching over the Chauchat automatic rifle, he
yanked at the stock, twisting it on its bipod. “Look at it.”
Anton Myrer "Once an Eagle".
I saw some Chauchats with box magazines in the Belgrade Military Museum. From what I read these must have been Belgian Chauchats sold to Yugoslavia and rechambered from 7.65mm Belgian to 8mm Mauser.
An example of Woodrow Wilson’s denial of the probability of the US getting involved in the war. No real preparations were made prior to the declaration of war, and Springfield and Rock Island had been in very slow production rate compared to TR or Taft administrations.
There's a school of political science thought that, like, half the bad stuff that happened back in the 20th Century can be traced back to Woodrow being an oblivious moron.
@@hoilst265 Tommy Wilson was not stupid, he was evil. Joseph Hall-Patton (The Cynical Historian) mocks his own reaction to Woodrow Wilson, which he fully justifies. Aside from being a Fascist before Mussolini invented the term, he was a creatively destructive historian justifying the Southern side in the Civil War. His conduct before and during WWI offended all sides, justifiably. He totally pissed off both the Chinese and Japanese at Versailles, again by being his racist self. Most people know about his offending the Germans, but he egregiously offended the faction of the Republicans in the US who might have backed his policies, so he was assured that they could not pass Congress.
@@tomhalla426 Aye. I'm not American, but I should not have been so glib.
I am Chinese-Australian (my Grandfather left in the late 1930s for...obvious reasons, though he was sorta Australian anyway), and while the CCP is rightfully seen as bad today...eh, on the other hand, you can't really blame 'em. The phrase "Century of Humiliation" is not an exaggeration - while Europe, for example, was offered help and support to rebuild after WWI, China was kept as a Western playground.
That strip down looks loads of fun to strip and fix in a muddy trench
And the Army couldn't even catch Pancho Villa
all the Federales say / they could have had him any day / they only let him go so long / out of kindness, I suppose
Ian should do an entire video in French for an April Fool's joke.
Or just to expand to a francophone audience?
Maybe a crossover with Gilles Messier?
@@Justanotherconsumer Pretty sure all the french firearm enthusiasts on UA-cam already know about Ian.
John Moses Browning saw this abomination, and said to himself; "Nope. I can make something better than this for our boys to go to war with."
You mean "I'm already making something better. Better hurry up to get it to troops... working."
And then he made an awesome automatic rifle... that costed almost three times as much to produce as MG42 two decades later😅
@@TheArklyte To be fair, the BAR is more mechanically complex than the MG42. IIRC, there was a version of the BAR that had a switch that changed the full-auto firing rate.
@@TheArklyte And the Germans couldn't have designed and produced the MG42 2 decades earlier either. And almost 80 years later, ain't no one using the MG42 design either.
@ringding1000
Except for the MG3, which is still in use, and the M60, which is a essentially a blend of the MG42 and FG42 chambered in .308
Ah yes, the "better than nothing, but not by much" gun.
9:11: the SPROING!! noise that things make that I have never taken apart before, launching some critical part into the darkest, dustiest corner of my basement, never to be found again...
One issue with the Chauchat is that it required lubricated ammunition to function well. Did the American gun work around that or did they also have to have oiled cartridges?
A point worth making is that in WWI, it was still really difficult to process aluminum and it was something of a wonder metal. So to see it used in this gun is interesting. Also, as I recall, basically no one was really ready for WWI and everyone found themselves QUICKLY short of all sorts of items and had to massively increase production.
I just went and watched the Mythbusting video on this gun that Ian did. It's really an amazing machine gun, and like the Lewis, it just screams WW1 badassery. Great video.
First off, I love your videos. I have been collecting collectorables, war artifacts. Furthermore, a long time I've been collecting swords, bayonets and what not. At the end, I've always found out of my room looks like a pirates hoarding room from the 1700s & 18s. I'm a pirate at a heart and cannot let my sh go.
Greetings from Belgium! Bravo for your french, it's actually not bad at all.
I don't want to bragg (but I can't resist), but I remember a certain Ian making a video about the Belgian Chauchat and stating it was the best of all. No take back!
Got my Ianpat Boonie and just wow, really wanting to get the rest, great video as always!
I looked at the thumbnail with my drowsy morning eyes and was like: “What kind of newfangled mall-ninja ar15 is this?”
Morphy really likes Ian so much to the point they let him see all the French guns he can find and the M1918 Chauchat is one of those despite being also American. That part at the beginning was pure genius.
With America rearming prior to Pearl Harbour and Lend Lease underway to supply arms to Britain were any Chauchats available still in the US inventory for 2nd line use at home or for supply to the British Home Guard?
Best intro for a forgotten weapon’s video!
I did not know there was a US version of that gun. Thank you Ian, as always. Please do the Lewis gun vid, I'd love to hear that story.
Thats a scary looking piece of factory equipment turned in a rifle. 😮
"PIERRE! This machine gun is too long! Tres ridiculous!"
"Fine, Jacques. Then we just put the buttstock under then receiver."
@@hoilst265 "It's not that great Pierre!"
"Putain, we have a war to figh we can't spend too much designing and refinig the thing! Send it to the production lines asap!"
*Did the Doughboys ever make doughnuts?*
Dough nuts are what you see when the pillsbury doughboy bends over
@@tim5114it’s 9 in the morning. I didn’t need to see this.
@@generalawingsee these dough nuts! HA goteem!
Absolutely, doughnuts would have been made at least weekly by both regimental (and perhaps even battalion) kitchens as well as the Red Cross and other civilian organizations
The battlefield of france made them into burned crossaints. Folded over and over and burned out.
C'etait une introduction magnifique :)
Ian: "You might think this would be a much better design, but its kinda not really..."
Chauchat: *dies*
That's a very interesting design. Some aspects seem ingenious and others are kind of insane. I was surprised by how short the barrels were. The long recoil is an interesting system, I don't think I've seen that on a rifle before.
I'm less than a minute in, but I needed to say thanks to project lighting this gun is iconic at least to me.
Sacred Bleau, Mon Ami!! It's a French design (LoL)!! Brother, I'm like you.... I could never understand why the U.S. (Our beautiful America) chose the Chauchat over the Lewis (American designed) LMG. The Lewis was the most reliable of the early 20th Century/ pre-WW1 designs and could be manufactured faster than the Maxim-System guns (the British were building 04 Lewis LMGs to every 01 Maxim-Vickers MG).
Great Video, as usual. I greatly enjoy your knowledge & expertise. Also, like you, I'm fond of Antigue, Classic Military Smallarms.
GOD Bless you; keep up the good work!
I only know like 0.15% French so at the start, I thought you said "Armes oubliette" and I was like.... yes, I can picture Ian gleefully entering The Gun Pit. Alternatively a fun nickname for your channel.
One of the design features of the ar-platform utilizes the different expansion rates of steel and aluminum . Your steel barrel extension slips into the aluminum upper. Then a steel barrel nut threads over that aluminum . As you fire, the aluminum expands faster than the steel around it , locking the barrel into place even more rigidly. When it is a steel ,aluminum ,steel interface the handguards ,especially floating handguards are much harder to torque off the gun when the user is under extreme stress with adrenaline . They can crush the gas tube . This is why quality free float handguards that require their own barrel nut use steel . Others use the existing barrel nut .
8:50 --> Thanks for the channel shout out Mr. Ian, it means a lot to me!
Rehbiroll is my favorite French gun designer because he has the coolest name
5:06 ian:"Allow me to show you the magazine"
The formidable American Chauchat: *KACHUNK*
I was missing Chauchat content. Great video, Ian!
I've had imagery of this gun in my head for a long time after reading To the Last Man by Jeff Shaara. Wasn't expecting that but I think the author did a great job showing the attitudes towards the gun regardless if it was effective at times or not.
Ian: “Ooooh an American Chauchat ! I’m buy it!”
Also Ian: “Well I just bought this, time to make a video!”
Love this channel 🤣
Family legend is my great grandfather was issued one of these in WW1, tossed it and went on with his .45
It was well known that .30-06 Chauchat machine rifles tended to be "expended in combat" much more than one would think. Between crappy fabrication and that abortion of a magazine the thing was as likely to get you killed as save you. Doughboys tended to report them "lost in combat" which wasn't a lie, although that phrase was more intended for "damaged in fighting" rather than "Thrown in a shell-hole full of water never to be seen again". They would "lose" the .30-06 version and be issued the 8mm version as a replacement. (I read this in several Doughboy memoir books, all of whom seemed to have loathed the American version but found the French version much better. Wish I could remember what they were titled!).
You know, Ian, American sentiment was fairly neutral or even antiwar before WW1, with cases in the books about people protesting the draft or even advising others to not comply with the draft, and maybe Americans had something to do with some of the teething problems this gun had with machining, it’s just a theory, there’s no factual evidence to back it up, but there do exist cases in Constitutional Law that we still study today about Americans protesting the draft and the War in general! Thanks for the videos, you remind me of a friend I have who really gets deeper in to his hobbies than I ever have!
The stock is probably shortened to allow use with a BAR style belt cup (yes, they haven't released the BAR yet, but have decided to use its tactics in the CSRG).
Interestingly, this belt did not have pockets (with the exception of two double pockets for M1911 magazines, reduced to one on the BAR version), instead magazines were carried in bags over the shoulder (each bag could hold about six such magazines), and you would probably have at least two such bags.
Interesting - from your description of the action, it sounds like it works exactly the same way as the Remington Model 8.
Yes, they are both long recoil systems.
@@ForgottenWeapons But I think the Chauchat fires from an open bolt, correct? I didn't see any hammer. Does it have a fixed firing pin?
But was the Chauchat really meant to be used as a light machinegun like we think of it today. I see it more as semiautomatic gun, that also can fire in full auto.
I see it as more of a FN FAL than an LMG.
Like the Sten what the Chauchat brought to the table is that it used manufacturing from outside the firearms industries which were already overstretched. Bicycles and tin plate toys in the case of the Chauchat.
Very cool to see. I've only seen the Chauchat with American use in the WWI movie 'The Lost Battalion'. I recall the American soldiers in that film were not glowing with praise for the weapon.
Perfect pronunciation of Ribeyrolles Ian! 👏👏 (Hard for non French speakers)
5:05 "But it's kind of not really" and the American Chauchat took offense to that! 🤣
Me, armed with the knowledge Ian has bestowed upon me, telling my buddy why his guns failure to extract is bad: "Ermmm, well..cause...you need them to!"
Love your videos Ian, your delivery of that line was perfect.
.....🤦🏻♂️
Ian: _And you might think this would be a much better design, but it's kind of not really._
Merican Chauchat: *_Thud_*
excellente vidéo
Another great video Ian.
My great grandfather fought in WWI at St. Étienne, and it makes me wonder what he fought with. My guess is the 1918 since I’ve seen picture(s) of him with one, but I’ve always wondered what else was firing around him.
Even though it's goofy, I like the Chauchat. Good video.
I was waiting for Ian to say it is the standard LMG of Elbonia via a multi-million dollar arms purchase. Of course, the Elbomians required it in 7.7 x 58mm Japanese to match their Arisaka rifles previously purchased. They also wanted to develop a drum magazine.
Good food for lunch and a video of Ian... Today is a better day
Funny, I rewatched Project Ligthening recently. Good times.
The French gun god back at it again
I was fr talking about this gun yesterday and you posted this video right after
My great-uncle actually used these during WWI. I can't use the words on here that he used to describe them. Let's just say that he hated them. He said that they were junk that continually jammed and were useless.
My grandfather was issued one of these in France. First time over the top it gets a stoppage he couldn't clear, gets tossed and he grabbed an M1917 off a fallen doughboy
Most Doughboys said Chauchat was french for peice of shit 🤣
Th M1918 wasn't not considered a front-line wheapon and it's unlikely , if it was usued in combat ..
I'm really curious of the veracity of a " first shot" jamming issue ... that thing happen in cartoons and rarely in real life .
@jameljay2183 He didn't say "first shot" nor did I. The Chauchat had a severe design flaw: the bolt had to be removed to clear many types of stoppages. This is evident from Ian's disassembly of the weapon. My grandfather refused to discuss his experiences in France with children. I only know this story because he told it to his WWII veteran son-in-law my father. Don't beclown yourself by attempting to sound authoritative about things you have no way of knowing the truth of.
18:10.
...Hence, the "relic grade" Chauchats being dug up on the battlefield....
Genuinely speaking I think the American Chauchat would've actually been the bell of the ball if it was made correctly. It was fantastic more reliable than it gets credit for, the problem Is the chambering fix that with increase the mag count of at least 20 as well as make the mags with stronger steel and The bipod add a more human length and I believe this thing could have been a real good rival for the BAR. Cheaper Too.
So, you’re saying if they actually made it better it would have been better? Neat how that works.
I'm not trying to be crude, but those front grips remind me of truck nuts 😂
The thing is, Ian didn’t even realize he made a video. This is just what he does on Saturday mornings.
I don't even own a gun and this is my favorite channel
The engineering is a big draw for me.
There’s another channel I found recently, Gilles Mercier’s Our Own Devices, that does a lot of similar stuff with non-guns.
there's something about chauchats that always makes me think they look like small bore rocket launchers or reccoiless rifles, just extend the back of the tube so it's over he shoulder when... shouldered...
That thing must have been a nightmare to do immediate action on in a fight.
Whenever Ian says "long forgotten" and chuckles a little I check the date to make sure it's not April 1st
Ian's French is starting to sound really good. Tres bien!
I've always wondered about this specific lmg. The first place I was made aware of its existence was while playing Verdun.
I wonder if the standard grunt back then would make up what CSRG stood for, like Can't Shoot Real Good or Cheap S#itty Rifle Given.