M1915 Chauchat Light Machine Gun

The M1915 Chauchat was the standard French light machine gun for the duration of World War I. It also was widely used by American soldiers who had been sent to France with few machine guns in their possession. The battlefields of World War I underscored the necessity of a portable automatic weapon to provide fire support for advancing infantry riflemen or for sweeping out a trench. Its unreliability left many American Doughboys disgusted with the weapon and using it solely because no other machine gun could be had.
Produced by Chauchat, Sutter, Ribeyrolles, and Gladiator, the machine gun was stamped out of sheet metal and weighed nineteen pounds. The stamped parts did not allow for any interchangeability of parts between guns and a single broken component would make the gun useless. The weapon’s forward handle was located between the trigger and magazine and did not distribute the gun’s weight evenly, making it cumbersome to carry. The attached bipod was nothing more than a pair of pointed metal rods and only provided the minimum of support when firing.

One of the most common problems associated with the Chauchat was it tendency to jam. The weapon’s magazine, which had a cut out on it’s right side so a gunner could see how many rounds remained. This allowed dirt and other debris to enter and jam the firing mechanism. Once jammed, the Chauchat proved to be problematic to return to firing condition, and when it did, often times it performed at a reduced capacity.
The gun fired the standard 8mm Lebel French cartridge, but was eventually modified by the Americans to fire the .30-06 round due to supply problems in obtaining sufficient quantities of 8mm cartridges. Up to twenty rounds could be placed in the gun’s magazine, though some service men noted that only nineteen rounds could fit into the gun’s magazine due to the stiffness of its spring, and fired at a rate near 200 rounds per minute. A selector switch on the left side of the gun allowed a soldier to fire in fully automatic or semi-automatic modes. A safety was also included.

From the Collections of
the First Division Museum at Cantigny