Hotchkiss M1914 Machine Gun

An overview of the Hotchkiss M1914 machine gun featuring appearances in movies.

Movies Games Featured:

A Bullet for the General 1967
March or Die 1977
City of Life and Death 2009
Big Red One 1980
The Guns of Juana Gallo 1961
Golden Kamuy Season 2
Legionnaire 1998
Captain Conan 1996
All Quiet on the Western Front 2022
Lawrence of Arabia 1962
All Quiet on the Western Front 1930
A Very Long Engagement 2004
Ace of Aces 1982
Day of the Falcon 2011
Libertarias 1996
The Lost Battalion 2001
To the Ends of the World 2018

#ww1 #gun #guns

[christopherwang]

In a YouTube 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 YouTube 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.

[PitFriend]

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.

[matthewmcmacken]

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.

[BHuang]

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.

[MayumiC-chan]

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.

[inductivegrunt]

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.

[suddenwall]

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

[WayOutGaming]

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!

[Rafapb]

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.

[bigblue]

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.

[charliefoxtrott]

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!

[youngmasterzhi]

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.

[itsnodawayitustabe]

Captain Conan is such an overlooked film outside France

[rismarck]

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

[mbryson]

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

[ThommyofThenn]

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

[gabespiro]

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

[Hybris]

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.

[Lomi]

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.

[dantralo]

Spain used that machine gun in the COIN war in the north of present-day Morocco, between 1909 and 1927. Between 1895 and 1898 it used a small number of machine guns with leather straps in Cuba. The climate of Cuba spoils the leather and therefore the impression on the machine guns was not good in the Spanish army. That is why it took a long time to adopt a machine gun and when it was done, they looked for one that did not use leather straps.