St. Étienne Mle 1907
| St. Étienne M1907 | |
|---|---|
_MG_untersuchend.jpg) St. Étienne Mle 07 |
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| Type | Medium machine gun |
| Place of origin |  France |
| Service history | |
| Used by | See Users |
| Wars | World War I World War II |
| Production history | |
| Manufacturer | Manufacture d'Armes de Saint-Etienne (MAS). |
| Variants | Puteaux Mle 1905 Mle 1907 Transformée 1916 |
| Specifications | |
| Weight | 57 lb 5 oz (26.0 kg) |
| Length | 1180 mm |
| Barrel length | 710 mm |
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| Cartridge | 8mm Lebel |
| Caliber | 8 mm |
| Action | Gas-operated |
| Rate of fire | adjustable: 8 to 650 round/min |
| Muzzle velocity | 2,375 ft/s. (724 m/s) |
| Feed system | 25-round metal strips or 300-round fabric belts (1916) |
The St. Étienne Mle 1907 (French: Mitrailleuse Mle 1907 T) was a French air-cooled machine gun which was widely used in the early years of the First World War[1]. It was not derived from the Hotchkiss machine gun, as often stated erroneously, but it was instead a distinctly different mechanical design. The St.Etienne Mle 1907 machine gun had circumvented the Hotchkiss patents of 1900 by using a blow-forward gas piston (the Hotchkiss piston blows back as in all modern gas-operated machine guns), a complex rack and pinion system and a fundamentally different bolt mechanism. Those were all inherited from the Puteaux M1905 machine gun, not from the Hotchkiss designs.
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[edit] History
Around the turn of the century the French military evaluated machine guns made by the private French firm of Hotchkiss et Cie. While the tests were technically convincing, following which Hotchkiss machine-guns were purchased for French alpine and colonial troops, it was decided for political reasons that a machine gun for French line infantry had to originate from state-owned enterprises. A first attempt was the Puteaux APX M1905 machine gun inspired by the gas actuated blow forward Bang rifle system, but it proved totally unsatisfactory. The national arsenal at Saint Étienne (MAS) thoroughly reworked and modified the Puteaux machine gun resulting in some measure of improvement but also increased complexity (64 component parts for the St Etienne Mle 1907 vs only 32 parts for the Hotchkiss Mle 1914). Barrel changes on the St Etienne were much easier than on the M1905 Puteaux and the firing rate could be set at any point between 8 rounds per minute and 650 rounds per minute. Either metal strips or fabric belts, the latter introduced in 1916, for the 8mm Lebel ammunition could be used. However, in the muddy environment of trench warfare the mechanically complex St Étienne Mle 1907 suffered from frequent stoppages and was difficult to maintain by frontline soldiers. A quote from a French post-war military evaluation says it all : " admirable weapon, patented clockwork but quite temperamental and sparing its whims only for the machine-gun virtuosos " ( Revue d"Infanterie No487, p.486, April 1933). The Mle 1907 St Etienne had to be taken away from the front lines, beginning in July 1917, and progressively replaced by the simpler and more reliable Hotchkiss M1914 machine gun. Large numbers of the M1907 St Etienne machine gun were then transferred to military units in the rear, to the French colonies and also to the Italian Army. Many also ended up in the Greek Army during the 1920's. Altogether 39,700 Mle 1907 St Etienne machine guns had been manufactured when the decision to close down their last assembly line was taken in November 1917.
[edit] Users
[edit] See also
Media related to St. Étienne Mle 1907 machine gun at Wikimedia Commons
[edit] Notes and references
- Ian V. Hogg: Military Small Arms of the 20 th Century. Arms & Armour Press, 1982, ISBN 0-910676-87-9.
