Hotchkiss Modele 1914

Last Updated on Tuesday, 21 July 2009 12:27 Written by Administrator Thursday, 02 July 2009 03:22

The Hotchkiss Modele 1914 was the standard medium machine gun of the French Army during the First World War. It was designed and manufactured at Hotchkiss et Cie from 1897 until 1920. The design of the Mle 1914 was the basis for many of gas actuated machine guns to be designed in the following years.

The Modele 1914 belonged to a series of identical guns namely Mle 1897, Mle 1900 and Mle 1908. By the time of the First World War, the French infantry used the St. Étienne Mle 1907 as its standard machine gun. However, the gun was prone to breakdown under the muddy conditions of trench warfare and thus the Hotchkiss Modele 1914 took its place by 1917. When the Americans landed in France in 1917, they also made extensive use of the gun.

The Hotchkiss Modele 1914 was initially designed by Captain Baron A. Odkolek von Augeza of Vienna. Later the patents were acquired by Hotchkiss et Cie and improvements were made to the original design. The French military purchased the first lot of these guns after extensive field testing in the tear 1897. In the year 1898, Hotchkiss also produced a variant for export to other countries. However, the French Army didn’t purchase the guns in large quantities until 1917 because of political pressures.

The Modele 1914 was air cooled and gas actuated. The barrel had 5 large ribs which helped in preventing overheating of the barrel. The barrel had a regulator under it which was used to adjust the firing rate. The Modele 1914 was capable of firing 450-rounds per minute and fired from an open bolt.

The gun has only 32 parts and didn’t make use of any screws or bolts. This simplified the manufacturing process and at the same time also made it easy to disassemble and maintain. In addition, the various parts of the gun were designed in such a way that it was not possible to assembly them in a wrong way.

The gun needed a three man team to operate. The gun used a 24-round strip based feed system. The 24-round strip proved to be insufficient in the later years and thus a 250-round metal belt feed mechanism was designed in 1917. The Modele 1914 had a maximum effective range of 3,800 meters. It could sustain continuous firing at 120 rounds-per-minute almost indefinitely. However, occasionally it would get overheated and need a barrel change.

One of the main drawbacks of the Modele 1914 was its immense weight. The gun along with the tripod weighed around 110 pounds which made it very difficult to quickly carry and mobilize.

The Hotchkiss Modele 1914 remained in service with the French Army until the Second World War (1940s) way after its production was stopped in 1920. After the Second World War, it saw limited action in Indochina and Algeria. A total of over 65,000 of these guns were manufactured.

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