More Mud and Blood with Chain of Command

[Emir of Askaristan]

I'd be happy to give it a try though.

Well if you're ever passing the door, pop in past 

I'll take a shufty at the rules and see. I've some picklehaube germans and no real interest in trenches, but you know how it is, once you start.....
I tried out some mods for Bolt Action, which weren't bad and I have WHGW kicking about as you can tell I prefer dice to cards too, hence not fancying TtM&B.

Cheers!

[monk2002uk]

...the MG08 and the MG08/15, being used in demonstrations. During the short segments for both machine guns, the former suffered three stoppages and the latter four stoppages during filming under ideal battlefield conditions.

Just as a minor aside, the designation '08/15' translates as 'nullachtfünfzehn'. The term has become more widely used in the German language, translated back into English variously as 'run-of-the-mill', 'pretty ordinary', etc. Nullachtfünfzehn=Arbeit refers to something that is a lower quality workaround. This is not to say that the MG08/15 was a rubbish machine gun; clearly it played an important role on the battlefield.

Robert

[scrivs]

Well if you're ever passing the door, pop in past 

I am guessing you no longer live in the Vic Centre

[Metternich]

I add this link primarily for the amazing picture which I have never seen before - what appears to be three Germans wearing Sappenpanzer (the trench armor  breastplates) and Stahlhelms, two of whom are posed as if aiming Chauchats (one clearly smiling at the camera) and one aiming a bolt action rifle.  If so, this is the first appearance of Germans using the Chauchat - I can't think of any other evidence for that (although we have numerous photos of Germans using Lewis guns, and a factory was set up in Belgium to convert them to 7.7mm caliber so they could be used with German ammunition. The Chauchat was in such bad repute that the Germans didn't use the captured guns (despite having thousands of them).   I tend to think these are actually Doughboys, dressed in trophy helmets and Sappenpanzer (much like the famous picture of a few British soldiers dressed in Sappenpanzer found after they had cleared a trench).

http://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2012/9/17/that-damned-jammed-chauchat/

[Metternich]

Monk, while it is possible to fire a heavy machine gun ("light," when talking about the MG 08/15) from the hip, there is a difference between what would be normal usage and what a Hercules can accomplish.  And yes, the 08/15 did consume a lot of ammunition, but in practice it was served by an entire squad, not just the two-to-three man team (so there would be an additional six or seven men available to lug extra ammunition).  And one of the principal uses of a machine gun (light or medium) is suppressive fire, not just the causation of casualties - its a lot easier to get closer to a trenchline (close enough to throw in a grenade) if its' occupants are doing a close-terrain analysis of the bottom due to your machine gun bullets zipping over their heads.
 Below is the Wikipedia article on the Chauchat.  As noted below, its tendency for stoppages were due mostly to the terrible half-moon magazines; but that said, this was undeniably still part of the characteristics of the weapon in combat (the horatory comments to keep it clean and oiled notwithstanding, the circumstances in which it was used did not lend themselves to easy maintenance of a tempermental weapon).  The other preventative measure to avoid jams -  extremely short bursts or single shots, vitiates the advantages of an automatic weapon.   I still contend that the Chauchat (like the Madsen, used by the Russians and Germans, and the later BAR) should be rated an "automatic rifle" while the 08/15   


 Battlefield performance.Chauchat Mle 1915. 8mm Lebel[edit]

Illustration of the Chauchat machine rifle in action
The Mle 1915 Chauchat's performance on the battlefield drew decidedly mixed reviews from the users when the war was stagnating in the mud of the trenches in 1916. This brought about a survey, regiment by regiment, requested by General Pétain in late 1916; the survey's essential conclusion was that the open-sided half-moon magazines were defective and caused about two thirds of all stoppages. For instance, it was a common practice for the gunners to oil up the inside of the magazines to facilitate movement of the 8mm Lebel rounds. Also, loose earth, grit, and other particles easily entered the gun through these open-sided magazines, an ever-present risk in the muddy environment of the trenches. An insistence on using only good, undeformed magazines with strong springs was the most practical solution to this problem. Chauchat gunners were also known to load their magazines with 18 or 19 rounds, instead of the maximum 20, in order to avoid the dreaded first-round failure to feed. The Chauchat's long recoil system is often cited as a source of excessive stress on the gunner when he fired this weapon. However, recent and extensive firing tests have demonstrated that it is the Chauchat's ergonomics and its loose bipod, rather than its recoil, that makes it a difficult gun to keep on target beyond very short bursts. On most of the Gladiator-made guns, the sights also made the Chauchat shoot systematically too low and to the right, a failing which was soon recognized, but never corrected. Overheating during uninterrupted periods of full automatic fire (about 120 rounds with the 8mm Lebel version) often resulted in the barrel sleeve assembly locking in the rear position due to thermal expansion, causing stoppage of fire until the gun had cooled off. Hence, French and US Army manuals recommended firing in short bursts or semi-auto only. In essence, the Chauchat was a rather heavy ( 20lbs ) but portable assault rifle with limited full auto capability, rather than a true "light machine gun". So, in 1918, the A.E.F. did not miss that point by officially labeling the Chauchat in its user manuals as an "Automatic Rifle".

Battlefield Performance. Chauchat Mle 1918. US 30-06[edit]
While rate of fire restrictions (250 rounds/minute) made the gun manageable in its 8mm Lebel version, the U.S. .30-06 version fired more powerful cartridges that exacerbated the problems of overheating. Furthermore, the 18,000 Chauchats in .30-06 caliber delivered to the A.E.F. were not conversions of the French model. Rather, they were newly manufactured guns which had been delivered directly to the A.E.F. by the Gladiator factory. As documented from the original American and French military archives, most of these Mle 1918 Chauchats in .30-06 were flawed from the beginning due to incomplete chamber reaming and other dimensional defects acquired during the manufacturing process at the Gladiator factory. Very few .30-06 Chauchats reached the front lines of northern France; however, when they did, it was reportedly not uncommon for U.S. units to simply discard their Chauchats in favor of M1903 Springfield rifles and cease to function as an auto-rifle squad altogether.[7] Whereas instruction manuals in both French and English for the 8mm Lebel Chauchat are still commonly found today, instruction manuals for the US 30-06 "American Chauchat" have never been seen in U.S. and French military archives or in private collections.

Improvements[edit]
Several prototypes of dirt-proof, fully enclosed Chauchat magazines were successfully tested in May and June 1918, but came too late to be placed into service. Stronger open-sided standard magazines, as well as tailored canvas gun covers protecting the gun against mud during transport, had previously been issued in late 1917. The initial two-man Chauchat team was also found insufficient and eventually grew to a four-man squad by October 1917 (the squad leader, the gunner, the assistant gunner who handled the magazines plus one additional magazine carrier). Both the gunner and the assistant gunner carried at all times a .32 ACP Ruby pistol with three magazines, each one loaded with 9 rounds, as part of their regular equipment. The squad leader and the magazine carrier were both equipped with a rifle or with a Berthier carbine. While the additional men provided assistance in carrying loaded magazines, helping manage malfunctions, and protecting the gunner, it also negated one of the Chauchat's primary innovations: the ability to provide highly mobile automatic fire without the need for the 4-man team inherent to the Hotchkiss M1914 machine gun.

Later on, during the German spring offensive of 1918, the war had moved out of the mud of the trenches and into open fields, thus making the guns more reliable and easier to maintain. Furthermore, French infantry regiments had been reorganized into multiple small (18 men) combat groups ("Demi-Sections de Combat"). Those were made up of a full Chauchat squad plus four VB (Viven-Bessiere) rifle grenade specialists and eight conventional grenadiers/riflemen. At this point in time, in 1918, the French regimental records and the statistics of medals given to Chauchat gunners document that they were an essential contribution to the success of these updated infantry tactics. Those were applied to suppress enemy machine gun nests by the combined action of Chauchat automatic fire coming from the sides and VB rifle grenades lobbed from the front, within less than 200 yards (182.9 meters).

[monk2002uk]

I add this link primarily for the amazing picture which I have never seen before - what appears to be three Germans wearing Sappenpanzer (the trench armor  breastplates) and Stahlhelms, two of whom are posed as if aiming Chauchats (one clearly smiling at the camera) and one aiming a bolt action rifle.  If so, this is the first appearance of Germans using the Chauchat - I can't think of any other evidence for that...

Thanks Metternich. The photograph is of American soldiers wearing captured equipment and fielding captured weapons. The Chauchat on the right, as you look at the photo, is missing its magazine. The one on the left, however, has the German-modified magazine. It had an appearance similar to the magazine of a WW2 Sturmgewehr 44 assault rifle. The Germans also rechambered Chauchats, just like the Lewis guns, hence the difference purpose-built magazine. This photograph here shows the German-modified Chauchat. The father of a friend of mine served in a specialist German assault unit. He talked about how highly prized the Chauchats were, to the extent that rewards were given if anyone captured one for use in the unit.

Robert

[Metternich]

Thanks Monk, I figured they probably were Doughboys (the area where the puttees met the trousers somehow didn't look quite right for Germans).  I found another picture of the same three men, with the addition of a fourth holding the 1918 Mauser T-Gewehr anti-tank rifle, all wearing Sappenpanzer and Stahlhelms and all standing.  In this picture the cut of the trousers better gives them away as Doughboys, as do the leggings of the second figure from the left  - so a staged photo of trophies. The picture is from US National Archives photo n° 111-SC 23684

http://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/index.php?/topic/99012-germans-or-doughboys/

Further to the captured Chauchat story, I also attach the below picture of German troops posing with several captured Doughboys (note the overcoats, Brodie Helmets and hangdog expressions), before them a trophy of captured weapons (including a Chauchat and several of the distinctive half-moon magazines). 

http://www.operatorchan.org/w/src/138924715815.jpg

As for a German even holding a Chauchat, I've only ever seen one photo (below) (and I own several books full of WWI German photo - I've been interested in WWI for over 40 years and have seen hundreds of WW 1 photos)and that is of an individual at an assault school (Sturmschule), where he probably would have been instructed on use of captured weapons.  (This photo was posted on a board that also contains some erroneous information, you have to scroll down to see the photo).

http://forums.gunboards.com/showthread.php?200220-German-Use-of-the-Chauchat