← Back to the front page

Incompetence That Shaped History

Khalid Elhassan March 9, 2020 33 min

Nineteenth century Washington Metropolitan Police Force officers. Washington Metropolitan Police

14. History’s Worst Machine Gun

The French army’s light machine gun, the Chauchat, entered service during World War I and proved itself to be a disaster. It became infamous as one of the worst firearms to have ever gone into mass production and gotten inflicted upon an army as a standard-issue weapon.

The Chauchat was introduced in 1915, and immediately began showing problems caused by both a defective design, plus poor workmanship. The design and manufacturing defects were made worse by reliance on low-quality metals to produce the Chauchat.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.