Comments by "" (@neutronalchemist3241) on "M1915 CSRG Chauchat" video.
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***** Unfortunately there is an attitude between commentators of military equipements, being them "experts" or not, that could be described as "if there is something different to what we are used to, then there has to be something wrong in it". That "wrong" was rapidly "theoretically" identified, and then passed from a commentator to another as a "fact".
An example is the manlicher clip fed system for rifles. Almost every description of it's efficiency contains a statement like "the bottom opening for the discharge of the spent clips was prone to let debris and dirt enter in the mechanism".
Unfortunately, the only real-life comparative study of the efficiency of this system VS the closed magazine (the observations of Vladimir Grigoryevich Fyodorov, the designer of the Fedorov Automat, on the battlefields of the Russo-Japanese War), showed the exact opposite. On the winter battelfields, frozen mud and snow rapidly get stuck into the magazines of the Moisin Nagant, quickly rendering them single shooters, while the passage of the clips kept the action of the Steyr Manlicher clean and functional as repeaters.
All in all the Chauchat was an exceptional design. A design that permitted to produce 262,000 of them during the war in a partly invaded country, VS only 50.000 Lewis Gun produced in both UK and US. As a single soldier, maybe I would prefer to have a Lewis Gun in my hands, but as an army (and as a soldier too) I would greatly prefer to have five times more LMGs on the frontline.
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