WW1 Light machine gun: French Chauchat (Sho-Sho)

[Sharpie443]

One of the guys i was with at the Southern Ohio machine gun shoot had one of these with them so I thought I'd do a video on it. Hope you like it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qea0CVIQRE

 

[bikerdoc]

Nice video.

Strange weapon design.

 

[highlander 5]

Piece of junk,makes a better boat anchor than a machine gun. One of the reasons for the creation of the BAR,I believe.

 

[SDC]

Interesting, thanks for the vid. This LMG was probably also responsible for the idea of the modern "assault rifle"; in 1915, V.G. Fedorov was touring the Western Front as a military attache, and it was seeing some of these in action around Mont St. Eloi that gave him the idea of mobile individual full-auto fire. In his memoirs, he wrote “My attention was attracted to several machine-gunners armed with the latest Chauchat autorifle system, recently issued by the French army. The autorifle had a practical rate of fire of around 150-200 rounds per minute, and can replace about 15 shooters...Only here in the trenches around Mont-St.-Eloi, I first see the absolute need for us to adopt a new weapon ... not an automatic rifle, which is what was primarily designed for the Russian army, but something close to it, between a rifle and a light machine gun, what we now call an automatic.”

 

[dprice3844444]

had one in the 80's as a dewat.full functional ones going for about 7 grand

 

[Vaarok]

The US .30-06 versions were terrible, and earned the successful French version an undeserved reputation. They didn't make 120,000 of them because they didn't work.

They were an early, primitive SAW. But for all that, they worked and were a huge advantage at the time.

A Mg08/14 kinda sucks compared to a CSRG, actually. Try carrying either.

 

[Tommygunn]

The Chauchat was a horrible gun. There was little to no parts interchaneability, it jammed a lot -- a problem excacerbated by those large windows on the magazine that allowed dirt inside.
One wag did, however, allow that they'd managed to convert one to make a pretty decent coffee grinder though.

 

[Jim K]

I replied on another site to the same poster, but will do it here also. The design of that gun was not bad, the problems being mostly in poor manufacturing techniques and quality control, plus the problems arising from the terrible 8mm Lebel cartridge. Made originally and correctly for a round like the 8x57 or .30-'06, it would probably have been a pretty good gun.

But the whole idea of an "assault rifle" or "marching fire" was tragically disastrous. It might have worked in the Civil War against rifle-muskets without artillery support,* but in the WWI context, the idea that veteran troops, solidly entrenched and supported by machineguns, will duck down and allow themselves to be overrun just because the attacking enemy is firing had to be some general's pipe dream.

The worst, and silliest, ramification of that idea was the Pedersen device, which was supposed to cause enemy soldiers to hunker down and cover up in response to firing such a low power cartridge that they wouldn't even have known they were being fired on. Fortunately, the war ended before thousands of American soldiers were slaughtered proving that Pedersen's idea was ingenious, but didn't belong in a real war.

*For evidence that it didn't even work in the Civil War against entrenched troops supported by artillery, have a chat (if it can be arranged) with one Maj. Gen. George Pickett, CSA, who had some personal experience in that line.

Jim

 

[Cosmoline]

But the whole idea of an "assault rifle" or "marching fire" was tragically disastrous.

LMG's weren't a bad idea. Nor were SMG's. They were extremely successful in WWI and formed the basis of many subsequent small arms. The Chauchat had some issues, but served as a gap filler for the woefully ill-equipped American troops.

Marching fire gets a bad rap as spray and pray, but it has a place as well to clear a concealment position by marching and sweeping. They used to do that with FAL's in Africa. The use of portable full auto weapons by small units taking entrenched positions was well documented by the end of WWI, and illustrated again many times in WWII everywhere from Finland to Iwo Jima. If the troops are well trained and disciplined with their fire, opening up the hose can be extremely useful. I believe our special forces still like to have that option available.

 

[Jim K]

I don't know about Africa, but I doubt anyone there was attacking dug in positions manned by disciplined troops with water-cooled machineguns. Such light weapons have their place, but it is not in attacks over hundreds of yards of open ground against entrenched machineguns.

In WWII, the SMG proved useful to the Russians, mainly because it was cheap firepower. I don't know how many Russian soldiers died assaulting German machinegun positions with short range SMGs, but Russian casualties were horrendous. German reports indicated that their positions were overrun because there were more Russian soldiers than there were German bullets. I doubt that Americans would have been willing to accept that kind of casualty rate. (Not that the Russians had much choice - political troops with machineguns were behind them with orders to kill any soldiers who hesitated or refused to attack. One advantage to a Communist state - orders are always obeyed. Leftists who keep telling us how wonderful the USSR was might think about those things a bit.)

Jim

 

[wdyasq]

Thanks for posting. It filled in a large gap in my machine gun history. That history has LOTS of large gaps.

Ron

 

[2DREZQ]

One of the reasons for the creation of the BAR,I believe.

IIRC, We already had the BAR, but didn't take it with us. Something to do with not wanting it to fall into German (or French???) hands?

Of course, I could be mistaken, I wasn't there.

 

[Swing]

Cool video of the Shout-Shout. Still, make mine a BAR.

 

[Cosmoline]

I don't know how many Russian soldiers died assaulting German machinegun positions with short range SMGs, but Russian casualties were horrendous.

That was due to their brass's complete indifference to casualties and had nothing to do with small arms at all. The frontoviks loved their SMG's, esp. for clearing rooms. For small scale offensive actions they were far superior to any other options of the time. And as I pointed out, they are still very popular in that role among special forces. I'm not sure where anyone got the idea they were inferior to semi auto battle rifles.

I don't know about Africa, but I doubt anyone there was attacking dug in positions manned by disciplined troops with water-cooled machineguns.

Absolutely they were. The RLI attacked and took machine gun positions, artillery positions, and everything else they could locate, using sweep lines and precision air support. They used full auto capacity to make up for perpetually small numbers. A few well-trained men with FAL's and a 20mm hovering nearby could, if deployed fast enough and from the right direction, take vastly larger entrenched positions. And even in back in WWI, the Stormtroopers used early submachine guns to advance very quickly whether in combine assaults or in trench raids. Fast moving units with very high firepower can be extremely effective or decisive. That's as true now as it was in 1918. That doesn't mean there's no room for longer range weapons, but there's no basis to discount SMG's and LMG's, or the weapons occupying those roles in a current units.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

I remember DEWAT Chauchats advertised in my dad's veteran organisation magazines in the 1950s.

Wikipedia: "Over 262,000 Chauchat machine rifles were manufactured ...(mostly) 8 mm Lebel .... the most widely-manufactured automatic weapon of World War I .... variant chambered to the US .30-06 cartridge is known as the CSRG M1918 but it soon proved to be unsatisfactory....."

If an 8mm Show-shah failed to work, you threw it away and got a newer one. I did read a history of the Spanish civil war that claimed when guerillas got Chauchats, they would use anything else but, and would not bet their lives on them.

 

[Jim K]

Yes, sometimes tactics and rapid firing weapons can oversome entrenched forces*. But I find it hard to accept that AEF troops, using something like the Pedersen device, could have climbed out of trenches and crossed hundreds of yards of torn up ground, shooting from the hip and hitting nothing with a rifle whose discharge could not be heard and firing a popgun round that made no supersonic boom, and reached the enemy trench line without taking 90% casualties. I doubt enough troops would even have reached enemy trenches alive to do anything when they got there.

I know that some folks are highly impressed when they get to actually fire a SMG. The noise and spray of bullets makes one feel invincible, and it is easy to believe that that TSMG, or STEN, or MP5 is enough to defeat the world. NOT.

Jim

*That close air support would help just a little bit, too.

JK

 

[shotgunjoel]

I love hearing people rattle on, regurgitating whatever they've heard before, with zero personal experience to sound smart on the internet.

 

[Ian]

A friend of mine has one that is awaiting transfer paperwork...I'm really looking forward to trying it out. Heck, I kinda want to buy my own, just out of contrariness.

 

[shotgunjoel]

Yeah Ian, you guys should have an article on it when it clears the ATF. It's not forgotten, but still cool.

 

[Jim K]

An early "awakening" for me came with my first Thompson, an M1928A1. A friend and I set up five GI silhouette targets at about 30 feet, around 5 feet apart. Doing just like in the movies, I loaded up a 30 round stick and swept the targets. ("Trench broom" and all that, if you recall the old Thompson ads.)

Result, one hole in the paper (not in the black) of the last target.

My buddy then upped with his Browning Auto 5 and put out 5 loads of 00 buck in less than the time I took me to shoot 30 rounds. Result? Nine holes in each target.

I later became better with the Thompson, and also with other auto weapons, but I never forgot the lesson that SMG's aren't magic and putting out a lot of bullets does not guarantee hitting anything.

Jim

 

[WardenWolf]

It's amazingly hard to find a Chauchat in working condition these days. Hell, it was even harder when they were new.

 

[Ian]

Yeah Ian, you guys should have an article on it when it clears the ATF. It's not forgotten, but still cool.

Article and video both, you betcha.

Actually, I have a brief blurb on them that'll be posted Tuesday, which I coincidentally wrote shortly before finding this thread.

 

[The Lone Haranguer]

IIRC, We already had the BAR, but didn't take it with us. Something to do with not wanting it to fall into German (or French???) hands?

I think we just didn't have enough of them yet.

 

[Cosmoline]

But I find it hard to accept that AEF troops, using something like the Pedersen device, could have climbed out of trenches and crossed hundreds of yards of torn up ground, shooting from the hip and hitting nothing with a rifle whose discharge could not be heard and firing a popgun round that made no supersonic boom, and reached the enemy trench line without taking 90% casualties. I doubt enough troops would even have reached enemy trenches alive to do anything when they got there.

They suffered those rates *regardless* of what firearms they had, because the tactic of marching in massed groups at the entrenched enemy in daylight was outmoded and insane. The full auto SMG or LMG becomes a useful tool when combined with more modern trench raiding or fast maneuvers. So while a Pederson (and anything else) is all but useless while walking up to the business end of a Maxim, it's extremely effective if you've snuck into the trench and are using raking fire to take out the machine gun crew before they can react.