Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at Galerie de Mars,
a fantastic little gun shop in Paris, taking a look at a
couple of guns out of the owner's private collection.
In particular today we are looking at a Berthier cavalry carbine
converted to use an 18, or allegedly 20, round Chauchat magazine.
Now this is a really cool conversion, and it's not just fantasy.
These were actually formally manufactured, albeit in
very small numbers, early in World War One.
They were intended for use by ... aircraft crews, both fixed-wing powered aircraft and also observation balloons.
There are two different versions that were made.
They converted cavalry carbines like this one, and they also converted full length 1907/15 rifles.
Now ... there are a couple of ... original photos.
One of them shows one of these rifles mounted in an observation balloon.
... The use there was before the widespread adoption of machine guns in aerial flight.
And so at that point what you wanted was, if you had to defend that balloon against a German aircraft,
you needed as much firepower as you could without having to reload.
You wanted to be able to get off as many rounds quickly as possible.
And predating the availability of a machine gun to do that with,
the next best option is going to be a bolt action rifle with a large magazine, and so this was used.
Now, these were also used as a survival rifle for fixed-wing aircrews.
Of course, observation balloons were ... lifted, were used over friendly territory.
So ... if you got shot down in an observation balloon you had to worry about, you know,
surviving that crash landing on the ground. But you didn't really have to worry about
enemy troops capturing you, because you were behind your own lines.
For a fixed-wing pilot or observer, if you crash land behind enemy lines
maybe you have a chance of making it back to your own lines. And some of these planes
were equipped with survival rifles for that reason. And the guns that were used ...
... a very small number of those were conversions of Berthiers to use box magazines.
So let me go ahead and show you up close a little bit about how exactly this works.
And, yeah, very cool to actually see one of these in person.
So on a normal Berthier there is basically a frame down here at the bottom of the magazine well, I suppose you'd call it.
This feeds with a three round clip that you insert from the top, and it falls out the bottom.
So in order to convert this to a magazine...
First off, the only reason that this was feasible was because the Chauchat magazine is a single stack magazine.
So a single stack can mechanically fit inside the receiver of a regular Berthier without a tremendous amount of modification.
Had the Chauchat magazine been a double stack mag, you would have had to dramatically widen
everything in this gun and this conversion simply wouldn't have been feasible.
So, what they did is they cut a big section out of the stock up here, widened it down here,
and substantially modified
the trigger guard and what used to be this housing. Now, you can see the clearing rod in there.
But then the way that the front of this magazine locks in is actually the same way
that this magazine locks into the Chauchat.
... The tab here on the floor plate
extends past the end of the magazine body, and that is used to lock in like so.
And then that snaps into the bottom of the magazine well.
This button on a standard Berthier is the clip release, and it's actually really
well placed to be converted into a magazine catch.
If we look inside there, you can see that that is going to act as a magazine catch.
So if we remove the trigger guard and what used to be the magazine well, you can see the differences here.
This is standard, this is the, well, the magazine conversion version. And this is substantially different.
In fact, I would go so far as to say this is probably a made from scratch trigger guard.
Because if we look at this up close
you can see that the magazine part here, this magazine well, is actually a separate piece that is screwed in place.
So there's a little ... seam down here and you can see the seam.
Basically this part up here is the trigger guard
and everything down here is part of the magazine well.
On the conversion one, there is no relief cut down in here to accommodate it.
So you can see this screw is completely gone because it's unnecessary,
this one is also the pivot pin for the clip release lever. So that's still there but it has been replaced.
It's not one of these armourer disassembly type screws, it's just a pin now.
The geometry up here has stayed the same.
However, the body here has been cut back, so that there's a remaining section up here to act as a magazine stop.
Like so, on the magazine, so.
And then in addition the clip release lever has been completely redesigned.
So ... this is a totally different lever. Different in geometry and then, of course, it has to function differently.
For the same reason there are some fairly significant modifications made to the receiver.
For example, here on our standard Berthier you can see we have these guides for the cartridge
that go relatively deep down into the stock. So you can see the bottom right there.
On the modified version the receiver has been milled off,
actually fairly low down. And it's been widened to accept that Chauchat magazine.
Look inside there you can see that this is just all wood on the inside of the stock,
without any of the metal reinforcing that the standard gun has.
Note that ... the feed ramp here at the front has been ... extended as well,
again to give space for the front of the magazine to go in.
So I know of I think now four of these, total, anywhere.
Two of them are in private reserve collections, one of them is actually on display at the
Musée de l'Armée, here in Paris, and then this one is in this private collection of the shop owner, so.
They do show that they can be found in both patterns, both the long rifle and the carbines,
and they are extremely cool. You may be aware I am having, or have had one, of
these manufactured for me as a reproduction.
So it'll be really interesting to ... take a closer look at that with this in mind
and see how closely we were able to get the mechanism for converting to the magazine.
Anyway, a big thanks to Galerie de Mars for offering me the use of this
awesome carbine on video. Hopefully you guys enjoyed it.
Thanks for watching.