Landships II

James,  thanks for the contribrution & photograph.   I note again,  the MG is fitted with a shoulder stock.

.. and now two more pics of the Hotchkiss in French service .  The first is interesting because of the early uniforms with what I thought was late war head gear,  but stand corrected; none-the-less a good detail shot of the weapon system.

  Look closely at the second pic and note the MG is on a St.Etienne mount !

-- Edited by 28juni14 on Monday 19th of July 2010 06:00:23 PM

Ironsides wrote:

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Hi Hotchniss Mgs appear to be designed by L.V.Benet and H.A.Mercie you can find patents here...

Hi Ironsides,

Nice finding again! It is really an automised rifle with some accent on rifle, the bolt, lugs, extractor and ejector rather similar to those of the MAS 1936 or the earlier French rifle systems. Not that surprisingly as they are having the same roots I think.

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Hi James very interesting Austrian link..... I find its often the case the invention was actually someone elses......

Benet tripod 1898 Hotchkiss type MG

Benet Wheeled gun mount 1898 with shield, Hotchkiss type MG

A. Odkolek machine gun 1900

A. Odkolek machinr gun 1892  this looks like the pre hotchkiss prototype or one of them.....

A. Odkolek refinement

A. Odkolek ditto


Cheers

-- Edited by Ironsides on Tuesday 20th of July 2010 12:55:19 PM

Hi all,

the St.Etienne was an interesting weapon. Its gas piston rod moved just the other way, forward instead of the backward movement of the Hotchkiss. The motion was reversed by a gear mechanism, ingenious (I think more than 60 parts) but complicated. It was based on its predecessor the Puteaux 1905, not a very effective weapon. The St.Etienne, which wasn't a bad weapon at all suffered by its complicated mechanism, prone to clogging and needing careful cleaning.

I think the first picture shows another interesting thing, the Model 1892 carbines. Exactly why they were made for, being shorter and more handy for machine gunners, mortar squads and of course cavalry where it all came from. And they were light weights too, 3kg.
Also notice the pick axe, the 'pioche portative' behind the haversack of the kneeling man.

regards, Kieffer

These are really great pictures!

collecting casings (and counting them) after training is a habit in many armed forces I guess. But somehow casings, blanks or complete rounds disappear in soldiers pockets, to be taken home as souvenirs, becoming conversation pieces on many birthday parties where dad is telling the stories of his finest hours.
Here the folding bucket is showing up again, the 'seau en toile' as I learned earlier on the forum. The tripod is the older type with the big hand wheel, made of brass. Brass was used extensively in the St.Etienne, with the complex mechanism it must have been a rather expensive weapon to produce.
The cleaning kit: what a nice and rather moving picture. Instead of showing ammo boxes, or their carbines they proudly present the tool box.
I think the T-shaped rod is the cleaning rod, probably extendible by screwing on a second rod. The man on the right seems to be the only one wearing a belt, with I think a model 1886 bayonet.

regards, Kieffer

I'm sure the casings were saved for reloading.   It's a  relatively simple means to economize ammunition expenditures.

.. in the USA the exercise is called "policing brass".    The practice was discontinued some years ago in favor of a civilian contractor who visited firing ranges for the recovery effort.   The contractor then paid X dollars to the Army per pound, and was then free to resell the brass to the civilian market.

28juni14 wrote:

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I'm sure the casings were saved for reloading.   It's a  relatively simple means to economize ammunition expenditures. ...

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Well, I'm sort of guessing but I think while that would be true in many places now, in 'those days' the US-invented Berdan primers were mostly used in military small arms cartridges (except, perhaps, in the USA which was apparently an 'early adopter' of the British-invented Boxer primers in military service) and those then more common (Berdan primers) are not so easily reloaded. The commercial processes used pneumatic pressure to decap/deprime but even then some/a lot of the ammo had the primer crimped and "shellacked" which conspires to make it difficult or impossible.

There was also the matter of cheaper, corrosive (mercuric) priming compounds widely used in military primers which tended to "poison" the brass casings. Of course when it comes to MG ammunition you want maximum reliability of function and reloaded ammunition has drawbacks in that regard - the cartridge case expands and lengthens, requiring re-sizing and (perhaps) trimming leading to thinner walls and maybe re-annealing/differential heat treatment is needed (which mercury poisoning compromises), comparatively the base needs to be hard, the neck soft - and it still ends up weaker (more prone to head separation, primer pocket enlargement and neck splitting). The answer is to re-issue as rifle ammunition but MG ammo may have distinctive head stamps so that form of recycling could compromise/complicate the purpose of such marking.

I really think there was a security aspect involved in the military thinking (otherwise they would have used Boxer priming) but certainly also the supply (and value) of metal - brass in particular - was a critical operational (and economic) factor in wartime which would be an anticipated exigency. I'm supposing that in the WW1 era, and for a considerable period after, most of that brass was re-smelted. Except maybe in the US. All armies strictly control their materiels of course. But if you've read HH Kirst's Gunner Asch Goes to War you may recall a passage where a conscript fires a hoarded round through a building (lavatory maybe) containing an instructor. Find me a conscript who has not felt like doing just the same! Well, maybe without the building in the way.

Going against that argument somewhat, there was a time when even civilian reloaders, individual citizens, routinely reloaded Berdan-primed cases and some reckoned they could de-cap it as quickly as others did Boxer-primed cases but volumes were low, it was a far more skilled and 'fiddly' operation, there was an appreciable wastage rate and case life was not great (maybe the mercury thing). And at the end of the day, Berdans were only reloaded by such people because Boxers weren't available 'there and then'.

I'm not sure what most armies (apart from the USA) use now. In my day (mid 1960s) only the 7.62mm NATO blank was Boxer-primed (the 'case' was plastic and the base was aluminium which doesn't suit Berdan design). I have a vague notion the (earlier) .303 'ballistite' cartridge for use with the rifle grenade projector cup might have been Boxer-primed (but crimped) also but I'm unsure why - well the crimping would be to handle over-pressure, those things had a huge kick and deafening report and presumably developed very high - but fractionally delayed - chamber pressures.

It is a complex field, surprisingly so unless you consider the criticality of it and perhaps overlook the thousands upon thousands of 'man-years' of development effort within the shifting mosaic of 'compromise and practicality'. Even so, logic sometimes seems to have taken a holiday.

-- Edited by Rectalgia on Friday 23rd of July 2010 07:10:38 AM

28juni14 wrote:

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I'm sure the casings were saved for reloading.   It's a  relatively simple means to economize ammunition expenditures.

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Yes, that makes totally sense. I think safety plays a part too, after live ammo shooting any instructing NCO doesn't want to have somebody walking around with an abusively chambered gun.

The zouaves: an interesting theme I think. If I am correct the French zouave units were disbanded in the 60's. They were always elite, and fierced fighters despite their 'clowny' trousers. They had their origins in French colonial support units from Marocco (Berber) but later they were recruited from French (living there) only, if I am right. The men on the picture are wearing that typical fez, a 'chechia' but I don't know if that's the official French military name for it.

In Dutch history they played a remarkable (and not totally forgotten) role as in the Pope's zouave army more than 3000 Dutch young (unmarried) men served. With them (but not so many) French, Flemish and Canadians! All together they formed a fighting force of 11.000. The popal appeal on young catholic men to defend his realm must have been great I guess.  But unlike the French zouaves these were'nt very well trained. Fighting Garibaldi and the Italian monarch, with French support, the case was lost in 1870 when the French were occupied elsewhere. Rome was taken and the zouaves were sent back home.

regards, Kieffer

 

28juni14 Really good pics

Rectalgia, Reinserting the rounds back into the feed tray seems to have been the original design for the Perino HMG 1901.... according to this article in "Small Arms Review" on the Fiat-Revelli HMG 1914....

http://www.smallarmsreview.com/pdf/Fiat.pdf

Notice also the Hotchkiss and St Etienne on this Italian site...

http://www.cimeetrincee.it/mitra.htm


Cheers

Hi 28juni14 it looks like some kind of angle device, it seems to have a hand....

do you know this site?...

http://armesfrancaises.free.fr/Mitr%20Hotchkiss%2014.html

Cheers

Ironsides wrote:

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Rectalgia, Reinserting the rounds back into the feed tray seems to have been the original design for the Perino HMG 1901.... according to this article in "Small Arms Review" on the Fiat-Revelli HMG 1914....

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Excellent Ivor - that is all new to me. The Italians persevered with a number of design features then (cartridge lubrication pump and retention of expended cartridges) finally "getting it right" with the M37 but in their specialised MG 8x59 calibre this time.

So the retention of expended cases was an old idea of uncertain purpose (as I still believe reloading to be a doubtful proposition for all the reasons I have given). As Kieffer has said, retaining the expended cartridges makes good sense for operation in a confined space (also those things are bloody *hot*, trust me) yet when the Italians modified their M37 for tank operation (their M38 Breda) they used a more conventional top-mounted magazine and, it follows, "loose" ejection

The Italian site - I love it that the Italian gunners with the "very unreliable" M1907 Saint Etienne 8mm Lebel (Si trattava di un'arma poco affidabile) had a special blue-white insignia to distinguish them from the Fiat-Revelli gunners with their red-white insignia. I can only imagine the esprit de corps that would engender

Steve

But why is it attached on the gun itself (as far as I can see on the picture) and not on the tripod? Or, how can you 'read' the angle here?

regards, Kieffer

Hi Kiefer,

kieffer wrote:

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But why is it attached on the gun itself (as far as I can see on the picture) and not on the tripod? Or, how can you 'read' the angle here?

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Having some guesses here. It has to reference the bore-line, I guess that was just a convenient attachment point they found. There were much better (or at least more modern-looking) bubble-type quadrants available but they did not handle extreme angles, those were mostly for indirect-fire applications probably.

This one, although it covers the complete range of elevation and depression angles, doesn't look like a combat-ready contrivance and it would need a "spare" member of the gun crew to read off and relay the the dial indications which, in truth, could be better just estimated by an experienced gunner when chasing a rapidly-moving target whose actual range is only approximately known anyway. Maybe that was the point of it, for training - to develop in the the MG crew a "feel" for the range adjustment factors they would have to estimate for themselves in actual combat.

Tracer bullets would be simpler but I guess they are more expensive, they are more a substitute for the sights rather than an aid for the use/offset estimation of the sights and they can't always be used without attracting counter-fire. A bit of clay target/trap shooting is good training for machine gunners too (air-to-air or ground-to-air), but sometimes it is difficult to convince the officers of that.

However the peculiar demands of AA marksmanship training were met, a top-notch MMG crew could deny free use of the skies to enemy aircraft wanting to operate at between 200 - 2,000 feet over an area of maybe 2 square miles, so it was well worth putting in some effort to produce the necessary skills and reflexes. Specialised sights are maybe a better idea for that sort of effectiveness but I guess those were not yet developed. Besides, the use of those still needs a lot of training and practice.

Regards,

Steve

-- Edited by Rectalgia on Saturday 24th of July 2010 06:47:32 PM

28juni14 wrote:

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... This is the only pic I have of the St.Etienne with a shield.   Though it  does not appear to be a field improvision,  I suspect they were not common.   ...

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That will be a rare picture indeed, it is marvellous that you have one (and share it). The shield is a standard fitting, seldom used because its weight limited mobility, but shown (with a drawing) in the French site that Ironsides linked to in his earlier post. The rampart/bulwark mount Affût de rempart modèle 1907. It is mentioned somewhere else too, I have forgotten, but I have never seen a photo of it in use before.

... and now,  the Mle1905 Puteaux.   You will note both photos depict the same team moments apart.   I believe they date from the 1912 manoeuvres.   The brass cooling rings are easily distuiguishable in these crisp old images.

To finish this tread,  I've added the following photos of early MG use with the French Cavalry.   These are all the Mle1905,  and illustrate the limber used with these MGs.

Great pictures indeed!
A little detail: the bar on the tripod (last picture). On some ww2 reels of the Pacific War you can see the practise too, Japanese carrying their MG ( even using bambu..).
The limber: in the Franco-Prussian War the concept of using the Mitrailleuse Montigny as a field artillery piece failed, only at Gravelottes the mitrailleuse was used in the 'proper' way and with an effective outcome.
That seems to be the way these things go: inappropriate use of a new invention taken up by opponents, this time using them with devastating effects (though I don't know if the German army in ww1 already had the tactics but at least they were equipped with MG's in bigger numbers).
The guns: the Etienne, the Puteaux and most off all the Chauchat had their reputation of being unreliable, which of course was true in a military context. But even the Chauchat, called sometimes 'roughly' built is a rather elaborate piece of machinery, a closer look reveals much more innovative technical solutions as one should think at first sight. It didn't work under battle conditions but that's another story.

regards, Kieffer

kieffer wrote:

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Hi Rob, what a nice replica your friend built! Is it possible to reveal some secrets, about the material, and did your friend model the inner parts too?

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 The only secret is extremely good mastership! It's made out of wood, so no inner parts etc - there are some metal parts but mostly wood. I've got a Lewis gun made by him and having a .303 Hotchkiss made too, he's also done MG08's, 8mm Hotchkiss etc