In a KZfaq video posted on June 15, 2023, a firearms specialist going by the username Mike Duke has converted and test-fired a Hotchkiss Mle 1914 machine gun that has been rechambered for .30-06 Springfield. As Mike Duke explained to another KZfaq user in the comments, the original parts were damaged 7×57mm Mauser parts which he had repaired to .30-06 specifications. The original barrel has been bored out and a new .30-06 barrel was inserted inside the original. He had also test-fired the .30-06 Springfield rechambered Hotchkiss Mle 1914 using the Hotchkiss articulated belts.

I drove through a small town in Colorado last year named 'Hotchkiss' and I couldn't help but think of this early machine gun. Well done.

The reason the gun was designed to use the strips instead of belts or magazines like other guns was the peculiar design of the 8mm Lebel cartridge. The cartridge case for them is double necked, going from 13mm to 11 mm down to 8mm. The French used the same case design for three different models of guns, just reducing the neck size each time as the bullet size decreased. This meant the things wouldn’t work in a normal cloth belt very well and a magazine for them needed an extreme curve, like the crescent shaped one for the Chauchat light machinegun. The metal strips held them straight enough for the gun to feed them properly.

Interesting Fact: In Johnny's previous video of the Japanese Type 96 and Type 99 LMG, the internals were based on the Type 11, which was based on the Hotchkiss machine gun system.

I remember this gun in BF1, it was a favorite of mine and became one of my most used and preferred LMGs in the game.

my husband told me they found one in the hands of insurgents in the Congo in 2013 most in his unit didn’t know what it was.

I really like the fact that this channel is part historical information, and part movie recommendation! I've gotten some cool info and some great movies from this channel. Keep up the good work Johnny!

Great video! One thing that took me forever to understand is that Hotchkiss was a varied line of weapons based on the same action, and not just one model of gun. Most often the Hotchkiss is mentioned in the ww1 context as the medium machine gun mle 1914. But models ranged from light mgs all the way to autocannons and anti-aircraft guns. When I started reading about ww1 I was very, very confused

0:36 Can confirm. There's two (deactivated) Hotchkiss MGs on display in a WW2 memorial inside the HQ my father served and commanded, the 14º GAC (14th Field Artillery Group), in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Always found them amazing on display since I was a kid.

I remember coming across some photographs of the Japanese version of this machine gun and quickly realised its French origins having previously read about the Hotchkiss M1914. It did surprise me as it would have been somewhat outdated by the time. Having said that the French still had it far beyond its point of obsolescence and into World War II. In fact it saw service with the French Army in Indochina and Algeria and some of them were used by the Viet Minh during their conflict with the French.

Captain Conan is such an overlooked film outside France

Always love learning about new stuff!

Trivia fact: The Japanese Hotchkiss Type 92 Heavy Machine gun was nicknamed by Americans as "The Woodpecker", due to loud pecking sound. The Chinese called it "The Chicken Neck", due to the multiple cooling fins around the barrel.

Love your Vids

Since I was a kid I wondered what the odd-looking MG in "Lawrence of Arabia_ was. Thank you for enlightening me, Johnny. 😁

gotta love Golden Kamuy God tier anime for a god tier gun

I hadn't seen Bullet for the General until earlier this year when it was on TV. It's right up there with some of the darker Spaghetti Westerns yet I hadn't seen it mentioned in many dicussions with my western collecting friends. Highly recommended

C&Rsernal has a great video on the Hotchkiss and it's lightweight "portative" version that goes in depth into the history of the gun.

Nice vid!

A benefit of the strips was that they wouldn’t swell in wet weather as cloth belts would, causing feed issues. The strips hooked together at the ends as well so the loader could combine them as they fed indefinitely in theory. C&Rsenal has a great deep dive video on the 1914.

Wanna give you a "Hot Kiss" for including the scene with that shell-shocked french soldier who self inflicted hand injury to get off the frontline! Thanks mate!

They use this in the 1930 revolution in Brasil

Nice one Johnny. Informative as always.

man, 1870's to late 1930,s was the crazy days of guns, you could find the most interesting designs around these times while being quite weighty and sometimes just straight up ugly it was still such a time of creativity!

I'm here for the early bird special! 😊

I was not expecting the Golden Kamuy clip, man that otter episode.

Just great, as usual. Thanks.

As always, enjoyed very much! Thank you!

If I'm not mistaken, Roland Garos used a Hotchkiss mg on his Morane Saulnier. Being the first person to succesfully arm an airplane with a mg. Instead of an interruptergear, he bolted metal wedges on his propeller to deflect the bullets.

Thanks for another interesting video and more movies to add to the list! 😊

My dad had one on his Clyde river Patrol boat.

Really enjoying so many of these videos focusing on a specific thing and then covering all about it. Can't quite place my thumb on it but the way you do it has a different take on it than others. Ugh lack of words right now! ❤️ just keep it up please heh

I just get my "to watch" list from this guy, and its fun to learn something new everyday

An often overlooked piece of equipment...great summary..cheers, Johnny...E...

Awesome video! I’m happy that you looked into the gun I’ve been asking for a very long time. 😁

4:34 looks luke an Unic P107 , also Wehrmacht used halftrack John. Cool video mister John.✌👁‍🗨

Interesting to say how the Hotchkiss M1914 started in France and spread throughout the world leading to the birth of other weapons.🇫🇷 Even the Republic of China started buying the Hotchkiss M1914 around 1931 and by the time the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War started in 1937, about 2,620 guns had been imported. A further 1,400 guns were ordered, with at least 925 confirmed deliveries by 1939. Even by the time of the Chinese Civil War this gun was still in use no doubt by both the Nationalist and Communist.🇹🇼🇨🇳🇯🇵 Information by “Wikipedia” and also “Images of War: Chiang Kai-Shek versus Mao Tse-Tung The Battle for China 1946 - 1949” - Philip Jowett

Gian Maria Volante! Haven't even heard of that movie! Anyway. As always, terrifically well researched info. Thank you!

The feed system might seem impractical at first but keep in mind the strips would necessitate firing in bursts, a method used by armies today Also, the French deliberately decided against a water cooled machine gun since most of their military operations were in North Africa and as such figures that the water would be best used by the troops rather than a bulky machine gun Honestly, it’s a cool gun, in addition to gas operation, I think it also had a quick change barrel Besides the feed strips, this gun was quite ahead of its time

The Norwegian M/98 had a rather interesting feed, it used a steel belt that were hinged every two rounds for the 6.5x55mm or every round for the larger 10.15x61R. They had a capacity of up to 500 rounds.

I liked playing with this in BF1 the low round count did meant lots of reloading but essentially felt like having a heavy rifle. Still it was an odd beast, I recall the noise it made in COD world at war for the japanese variant. Very meaty. Its kinda funny how now a lot of modern day MG's have systems to accept 30 round magazines

always thougyht these guns looked so damn cool, I always saw them in ww1 depictions but I never knew what they were called! thnx johnny!

Another good one, JJ!

Great vid ad always.

According to the _New Zealand Arms Register_ of October 2012, New Zealand received four of the Hotchkiss Mle 1897 / 1898 chambered in *.303 British* from the W.G. Armstrong-Elswick Armament Company in December 1899. These were used by the Machine Gun Battery of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles in the Second Boer War (1899--1902) from January 1900 until the Battery's disbandment in June 1900.

Really informative, great. You reckon you could do a vid about the helmets of ww1 like the berndorfer?

Nice. You ever think about doing a video on the Soviet/Russian Hind helicopter?

Hey thanks, Johnny

I knew I'd see Golden Kamuy in this video!

A sizable number of French Hotchkiss guns in 8x50 were either sold or given as aid to Ethiopia in the 1930s. It's one of the more common automatic weapons Ethiopia had (for a nation with a low number of weapons in general, less so heavy weapons), and it's also one of the most common to see in both photos and footage of the era. As far as I'm aware, it was the most common HMG in Ethiopian service during WWII.

Have you done a preview on the M36 destroyer tank?

Nice. 👌

good one

Great video Johnny I love your content! I would really appreciate if you did some of your next videos on weapons, tactics, and communication of the age of muskets and linear warfare from the 17th to the early 19th century. I think you should also focus more on this time period as you have not covered it as much as your usual topics from the 2nd half of the 19th century to the present.

I always liked the look of this gun, even tho it showed its teeth by the middle of the century it just has such nice lines for a firearm

Feed-strip machine guns are underrated

I first saw this machine gun in The Lost Battalion

This was a good one. I knew OF the Hotchkiss, but no details. Good movie tips, too.

I have never understood why the Japanese liked the feed strip system over a belt feed.

Revolving cannons? That sounds cool 1:30

Loved this in BF1

Choo Choo Johnny, see ya for the next one.

That one guy that was in early Clint Eastwood movies is a bad ass, he represents!

French guns. Always uniquely weird guns. *Alright, I can see why the gun is dope af. *Just wanted to make my comment more relevant to the topic.

Nice Hotchkiss summary. Don’t think those fins proved to be very efficient cooling the barrel but they give the gun a distinctive look.

Excellent job , seen many of this type of gun in the movies, but always thought it was just French made junk , nice work on the back story

1:50 4:45 YES FINALLY GOLDEN KAMUY HAS BEEN SEEN!

If you want to get technical, Austria came up with smokeless powder for the 1854 Lorenz rifle in 1864 and it was a paper patch cartridge. It was adopted in limited numbers until A forts armory exploded and the chief armorer blamed it instead of anything his men did. It was dropped shortly after. But that's just nit picking.

I remember this gun in Medal of Honor Underground

The makes an interesting appearance in the Book, Trench 1915: The Dawn of Modern Warfare. Available now.

I love how there are at least two iconic scenes of Gian Maria Volonte* involving heavy, less commonly seen in film machine guns. In the other scene I'm thinking of it might be a volley gun or something. It had many barrels arranged in rows and columns and fired one at a time. Not a gatling gun Edit:please upthumb Bentilbury for taking time to look up name when i was too busy to look

how about a vid about some of the lesser known/"unknown" Horchkiss revolving/multibarrel MG vs the Gatling?

This is what my grandfather used against Bulgarian troops in the Balkans in the Salonika campaign. He was a Tonkinese machine gunner attached to the French Army.

I think the finned barrel makes this gun the perfect start to a Star Wars prop gun.

Really interesting movie

good video now make a video on the spas 12

5:28 "To the Ends of the Worlds" original title is "Les Confins du monde".

One of my favorite weapons of ww1 aircooled 🤗🤗🤗🤗

the maker of this gun great grandson was my history teacher back in the 90's

My guesses for the next video: Gustav railway gun, armored trains

keep pushing out vids mate

I was looking for Haskell-class attack transports and got sent to Hotchkiss machine guns. Algorithm jams.

Night sights, those must have been very useful during night raids.

Johnny could you make a video about chains hanging down from the armored truck at 4:47? I think that could be interesting topic.

1:15. My Granpa was a french zouave since 1936 in Algiers when he fought germans in 1939 & 1940 with the FFL in the east of France. He joined what it remains of the french army in North Africa. I In 1942 he had to fight US troops when they reached the shores of that french colonia. He told us that he & his platoon made more than 100 hundred US prisoneers the 1rst day : " They were so bad prepared it was easy to capture them ". 48h later, the french army joined De Gaulle & the Allies...My Granma said to me 1 time in her entire life : " when you are a soldier, you just have to obey. That's all "

Good movies johnny

4:16: "...with the bolt left open to accept the new strip." Correct me if I'm wrong but open bolt guns, especially crew-served MGs, always need to be cocked to resume firing, as the following clip at 4:19 is showing the guy pulling back the handle after expending the stripper clip (just before another one is inserted)

Here in Brazil, itd use was most likely used due to the french doctrine we use to have. But when WW2 broke out and Paris fell, we quickly looked for another philosophy, and thats when we adopted the american doctrine. Nowadays we have a blend between the two doctrines, for exemple, the word tank is considered "worng", the right term is combat car, and on the other hand, the word bullet (from the french balle) is also wrong, out here we call it cartridge. Funny fact: in portuguese bullet is translated to "bala", wich is the same word for those small candies, so in basic training, if you say bala refering to ammunition, an officer will shove a cartridge in your mouth (even though it isn't wrong, the brass just can't decide if they want the french or american way).

Catchy name

Interesting

Make a video about the VW Schwimmwagen.

Despite technically being air-cooled, proper use of the gun during WW1 called for a sponge and bucket of water to cool it down when it overheated in combat.

Japanese army: Write that down! Write that down!

I don't always post a comment, but I ALWAYS give a 👍,and share your vids with others.

was it possible to convert it to fire from belts?

This one rips in bf1

Madsen next please

Well, Pancho Villa had a field day!

I've seen them at gun shows 8 mm labeled was not the first smokeless powder cartridge it was the first one to be adopted by a military 22 was the first ever invented

The Japanese Army produced Mle1897 under licence. 2:02 Then they improved it and mass-produced Type38 MG.