Hotchkiss 8mm M1914 Firing

The French army's standard heavy tripod mounted machine gun throughout the war was the Hotchkiss 8mm M1914 machine gun. Our Doughboys are shown here firing into Germany.

Visit the Army Heritage and Education Center and stop by our Patron Services Division to check out books to learn more about the machine guns of WWI.

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[laterdudesaint]

my name happens to be Hotchkiss..kinda cool

[GoldBloded]

Lol is it me or does that tune sound like the go compare advert?

[reddyeddy69]

@JSLegoMaster I felt that I should point out to you that with the Hotchkiss, like all weapons, it is the men who use them that makes the difference. In Small Arms Review Vol. 12 # 4 Jan '09, two great articles talk about the Hotchkiss. It also tells how, during the Battle of Verdun 1916, a 2 gun section held off a heavy German attack for 10 days and nights. They fired 150,000(75,000)rounds per gun and both guns were working when they were relieved. The Japanese used it to great affect in WW2.

[reddyeddy69]

@JSLegoMaster Pre-war commercial Hotchkisses could be built for belt feed. The 1909 Hotchkiss belt was an advanced metallic non-disintegrating type. But you couldn't have both belt and strip feed in a Hotchkiss so the French chose the strip(they already had it in their supply system from the failed St. Etienne gun). It was also cheaper and easier to make. A 'strip-belt' made up of 3-rnd mini-strips was produced in 1915 but they were rarely used and few in number(only 3 per gun issued).

[ZombieHunter19]

And that is how your great grandfather lost his hearing Timmy.

[JSLegoMaster]

Well we all can agree that the german MG08 was far more effective when it came up to defending the trench from offensive attacks. And thats not by accuracy in the first place but becuase of long and fast fire. A MG08 can fire continuely for a half minute a Hotchkis can fire like 5 seconds then reload every time

[Kagetora2010]

@JSLegoMaster The issue prewar was that of patents and licensing, as in who pays who for what. The French didn't want to pay royalties to Hyram Maxim for *his* machine gun design that was adopted by the British, Germans, Russians, et al, so the French cooked up their own system which resulted in the Hotchkiss. The French got 'round the sustained fire issue by linking the strips later on for sustained fire. Even relying on the strips a trained crew could and did deliver accurate and lethal fire.

[barliman2001]

The French at that time did not see the heavy machine gun as an infantry weapon, but rather as light artillery and grouped them as such.

[JSLegoMaster]

I wonder why they didnt just use a ammo belt, that 30rd strip they use is useless for a machinegun, you cant put any heavy fire on advancing troops with a such small mag.

[wargod2009]

@pauta9

Just looking for some footage on this superb machine gun and forgot that I posted some misunderstood comment nearly a year ago , lol. Anyways your response was odd and really disproportionate for what I said.