Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com. I'm, Ian and
we're gonna do some shooting with an American Chauchat in 30'06 caliber today.
So I only have two mags. These are both original mags.
They're supposed to hold 16 rounds,
but for the sake of reliability I'm only loading them to 10 and
I'm gonna see how many rounds we can put through this thing before it stops working.
The story is, well, part of the story on these is that they should stop working almost immediately.
But I think it'll go a little bit longer than that. So let's just get right into it
Of course I have to slide that back and we're on full auto
Ten rounds, there's the first mag do another ten
Another ten round mag. Now I have to reload these
So my preference would be to just do mag dumps through this thing until it stops working.
But, until I have magazines
that I can actually run reliably with,
you know, at their full capacity and have more than two of them. That's
tricky, so
Now, the standard story with the Chauchat is that they should be able to run, when clean and well lubricated,
about 300 rounds in rapid-fire or you know, basically mag dumps and
After 300 rounds the gun seizes up and it stops working. And the reason is that there is an aluminum
radiator sleeve on the barrel. This is a long recoil action. And so you have a lot of reciprocating parts inside this tubular receiver.
and
when the inside parts, notably the aluminum ones, start to heat up they expand and
The aluminum expands a lot faster than the steel parts do and after about 300 rounds
The aluminum has expanded enough that it is actually dragging on the steel tube
And that causes the gun to stop cycling
So the solution is... there are two solutions, either you just let it sit for about five or ten minutes
it will cool down and at some random point just go kerchunk back into battery ready to fire again, or
you dump some water on and cool it down more quickly that way. So they're at
this mags 3 & 4 so you can go from
20 fired to
40
30 rounds
40 rounds fired
Next box of ammo. So
the application of this thing in
combat in World War 1
Was kind of like the world's first assault weapon. So I'm firing this prone, but this was also designed to be fired
Well, basically walking fire. Fire while moving, assault sort of style, fire from the hip and
we look at this today and say, "you know boy, this is such a
...such an incredibly terrible gun." But put yourself in the position of having to choose
let's say you're gonna jump into an enemy trench and you can be armed with a
What was in standard practice for the French a 20 round magazine
Full auto machine gun or a bolt-action rifle with a 5 round magazine, maybe a 3 round magazine if you weren't lucky
This thing offered a massive increase in firepower compared to basically all of the other options that were out there
These first saw serious combat service in July of 1916 at the Battle of the Somme
there were a few hundred of them that showed up at Verdun but really the first mass use of them was at the Somme and
As such they they predate German use of submachine guns by like two full years if not more
So you can't look at this and compare it to a submachine gun because there were really none at the time your options were
A bolt action rifle, this, or an MG 08/15 that weighs
Literally more than twice as much so we'll continue talking about this in just a moment, but we need to put rounds
41 through 60 through it
That's 50. By the way, I do have a mini IPSC target out there
That somewhat to my surprise. I'm actually able to hit
There's 60
So the purpose of the 08/15 was
more of a support weapon
You may, well obviously, play video games people, you know run around with those things
But in reality the way you use an 08/15
It's... it's mobile enough that you can actually move it
Forward like you can crawl around a little bit with an 08/15 if you want to
Say set up an assault early in the morning and sneak troops out to be you know
100 yards away from the enemy trenches when they start their attacks
You can sneak some 08/15s out with them and have belt-fed water-cooled really good
supporting machine gunfire, but the idea of
Pick up your 08/15, sprint forward
You know do some some bounding rushes and then drop into an enemy trench and hose down the trench
Doesn't really work with an 08/15. I've carried them they're just
Too heavy for that
The belt feed is a little awkward: big belt hanging off the side of the gun, belt box. It's it's an awkward situation
the Chauchat here was intended to be much more of a portable assault style of weapon and
it was also intended to be a very
Cheap and high-volume weapon. So the French made about two hundred and sixty thousand of these during World War one
Which is more than double the number of the next most common machine gun
Which was in fact the 08/15 there were a ton of these guns out there now
This is going to be rounds through through round 80
Another hit. That's 70 rounds downrange with zero malfunctions
So sometimes this locks open and sometimes it doesn't honestly with these oh you can see some smoke coming out of the barrel shroud now
Let's see if we can get to a hundred rounds total
Now most of the Chauchats manufactured were in 8mm Lebel. That was the French standard version
That was the only version until 1918 and when the United States entered the war
Yeah, we're burning off some of the oil inside there
When the u.s. Entered the war we had basically
squat for machine guns and we ended up borrowing or buying almost everything that we had from the French and
among those were Chauchats the American infantry the American Expeditionary Force and
One of the ideas was that we could simplify some of the logistics by having show shows in standard 30.6
Using standard american ammunition and so contrary to what you'll often hear. These were not converted guns
the gladiator factory the the guys who built the show shop went through and
redesigned the gun for 30 op6
Contrary to another common misconception
the thirty-aught-six cartridge isn't really that much more powerful than
Eight millimeter labelled people will often say the OTT six was just too powerful for these guns to have possibly worked
the reality of the fact the reality is
Eight labelled was a heavier bullet
232 grain bullet traveling slower 30.6
Traveled a little faster. That's a lighter bullet. So there's not that much difference in the cartridges and
the problem that these guns did have was one of simply a
Manufacturer screw up on the barrel chambering they were in a rush to get these things out onto the battle
They apparently they test-fired each gun with 24 rounds
which wasn't enough to get them hot enough to find the extraction issues that a lot of them ended up having so
Let's continue here with our switch clearly has gotten past 24 rounds
This will be numbers 81 through
190 rounds fired
By the way, it's about
It's somewhere in the 90s outside today right now, so
the guns heating up just from sitting in the Sun -
Alright that's 100 rounds downrange
Not some more smoke coming out of the barrel jacket there
See if we can do 120 again not a single malfunction yet
So I know this test isn't totally super appropriate accurate because
The gun is managing to cool down a bit while I'm loading magazines
But at the moment that is my only option
I currently have a friend and gunsmith who is working on converting some johnson light machine gun magazines to work in this
But it'll be at least a couple weeks. If not a couple months before those are ready. So
Until then these two are the best
So one of the other things about the show shot is of course it is a long recoil action
Which is why it jumps around so much. It's it's honestly it's not a great design, but it's a design that existed. This was actually
Adapted from a pre-war
Aircraft observers gun design and as an observers gone on an airplane the heat issues don't really matter
You're not going to be firing it, you know
and it's just in long sustained fire because
If I went fleeting aerial targets and of course you're flying around up in the air and so air-cooling is much more effective up there
Alright before it cools down
This will be number 101 through
120
So by the way, it's easy to fire single shots on full auto because of the slow rate of fire of this thing
And I'm actually trying to hit that target which is why I'm sometimes going a little slower
This one will just dump all cans
It's interesting so it is actually malfunctioning on me now, but what it's doing is only
Mmm smell of burning oil. It is actually firing
single shots
Instead of bursts. So I'm holding the trigger down and then having to release it and pull the trigger again to continue firing
That's an unusual
malfunction normally you get the other thing normally with a
Malfunctioning machine gun you let go of the trigger and it keeps running. Not you hold down the trigger and it stops
All right, so
that's
120 rounds
before we got any sort of malfunction and even at that point the malfunction was one of
You actually have to it actually lets you aim more carefully. And as soon as you pull the trigger again, it keeps shooting
so I think we're gonna go ahead and call this off here because
I am very I
Really like this gun, and I don't want to abuse the crap out of it
These are actually very rare. And as far as show shots go pretty valuable guns these days of the
260 some thousand show shows
actually manufactured only about eighteen thousand of them were these 30.6 caliber ones for the American military and
Most of those did not survive the war so finding one of these in original condition like this is actually a pretty difficult task
Really happy to have found this one and there will definitely be more footage of this coming
Yeah, I definitely plan to do a two gun match with this
I'm sure it'll be pretty dismal, but we're gonna have fun with it
anyway so thank you guys very much for for tuning in and watching hopefully hopefully we broke one of the
Long-standing myths about the American show show which is to say that yeah, they can't actually work
So I got a nice pile of brass here to prove it
Stay tuned next time there will be more coming on the show shot and another cool forgotten weapon for you tomorrow
All right. I'm just curious to see what happens
It's a little toasty
So if the gun overheats on you, that's how you cool it down
You probably normally use more water than that but I want it for myself thanks for watching guys