What caliber should the German Chauchat be chambered in? (won’t have any effect on performance, just for naming it)
8mm Lebel
8mm Mauser
0voters
Should there be a German Chauchat?
Yes
No
0voters
The Chauchat LMG was one of the first mass produced examples of a true light machine gun the world had seen, and while it was a rather failure prone and weapon and disliked by it’s users, it was mass produced (there was even a version the US had used prior to the BAR 1918 chambered in 30.06, which saw some service), the most numerous automatic weapon of WW1 in fact, and revolutionized the way infantry fought. After WW1 had ended, France had decided to upgrade their standard LMG and taken the chauchat out of production, but kept many stored. During the interwar years, France had given out or sold a lot of these guns to other nations who needed something to arm their forces, some such countries were Italy and Finland (already counted as Axis nations), and the newly reformed Poland, which received 2,000 just after WW1 had ended, and it saw much use in the Polish-Soviet war. After the war, Poland had decided that it needed many more, and soon they had a grand total of 11,869 examples, under the designation RKM wz 15. About half of these were converted in the mid 1920’s to 7.92x55mm Mauser, now designated RKM wz 15/24. While 1939 had arrived, the Chauchat had been replaced by the Wz.28 Browning as the primary LMG and some were sold off to other countries, plenty were still in stores by the time WW2 started. After the beginning stages of WW2 were over and Germany had occupied both France and Poland, and due to their stocks of Chauchats left over, many in both 8mm Lebel and 8mm Mauser were distributed to second line troops and SS units, and examples from Greece, Belgium, and Serbia of various calibers were also taken into German service, So there were many guns amassed in both 8mm Lebel and 8mm Mauser. While I know the chauchat is a bad gun, I still think it’d be interesting to see for the Axis, as it was historically fairly widely used .
Isn’t that the MG that had a very slow ROF, like 400 or something? I remember it and tested it when it was for sale, but did not buy because I hated the slow ROF.
Axis are already swimming in BR2 LMGs and they have more to add (like Hungarian MG31, MG43, Romanian ZB30) so I dont see why they would need a French LMG.
