Chapter 71: Retaliation and Retribution
As anticipated, the French Army quickly became concerned about the overwhelming amount of Machine Guns which the Germans appeared to be manufacturing. And as a result, they quickly began working on acquiring whatever variants of such weapons they could.
While also working on developing a machine gun of their own that could effectively counter the Germans should they enter the war. Bruno had suspected this would be the case. But while the French had a problem.
The 8mm Lebel cartridge which they made use of was difficult to feed in cloth or metallic belts. Due to the fact that it had been necked down from larger caliber rounds twice, it required a unique feeding system.
Meaning that acquiring maxims which were the most common form of machine gun in the world at the moment, was not a practical measure. After all, it would have to be chambered in a cartridge that was not standard to French Infantry.
This had its own problems. The French would either have to adopt the Maxim and begin the domestic manufacture and procurement of another round to be used exclusively by its machine guns. Which itself created logistical nightmares in the field.
Or it would have to adopt a new rifle with a different cartridge. Either by domestic development and manufacture. Or simply by licensed production from a friendly or non hostile source. Again, this created a multitude of problems for logistics and procurement during a time of war.
This meant that the Browning M1895, and the Maxim gun, which were already available on the international market were not ideal to the French Army. Luckily for the French, there was already a Machine Gun in development for the army.
It was the Puteaux Model 1905 machine gun, and the makers of this weapon were under a lot of pressure by the French Government to finish its design and begin production. There was, of course one problem with this one that would heavily favor Bruno and the German Army should the French actually mass produce these machine guns for war.
The Puteaux Model 1905 machine gun operated off of the legendary bang gas system. If one were to know a thing or two about the history of automatic and semi-automatic weapons. Especially those which fired rifle caliber projectiles. This would be a name they would immediately face palm upon hearing.
As previously mentioned, there was a common fear that drilling a hole in the barrel for the purpose of acting as a gas port would cause irregular erosion, and would limit the service life of the weapon in question.