St. Étienne Mle 1907

The French St. Étienne Mle 1907 (French: Mitrailleuse Mle 1907 T) was a gas operated air-cooled machine gun in 8mm Lebel which was widely used in the early years of the First World War. It was not derived from the Hotchkiss machine-gun, as often repeated erroneously. It was instead a gas operated blow-forward design borrowed from the semi-automatic Bang rifle of 1903. The Bang system was transposed in 1905 to the French "Puteaux" APX machine-gun which soon proved to be unsatisfactory. Then, two years later, the Mle 1907 "St-Etienne" machine gun followed as an improved redesign of the "Puteaux" machine gun. However the Mle 1907 "Saint Etienne" was only a partial redesign : the original blow-forward gas piston, rack-and-pinion system and bolt mechanism of the Mle 1905 " Puteaux" machine gun had all been kept unmodified inside the newer weapon . Eventually a total of over 39,000 "St-Etienne" Mle 1907 machine guns were manufactured between 1908 and late 1917. They were widely used by French infantry during the early part of WW-1 until their replacement by the simpler and more reliable Hotchkiss M1914 machine-gun.