Featuring contemporary photographs and full-color artwork, this title
explores the action-packed history of the Hotchkiss machine gun and its
derivatives, which were used around the globe for nearly fifty years.
Created by a long-forgotten Austrian nobleman, Adolf Odkolek von Augezd,
the air-cooled Hotchkiss machine gun was the first to function
effectively by tapping propellant gas from the bore as the gun fired.
Although the Hotchkiss would be overshadowed by the water-cooled Maxim
and Vickers Guns, it proved its effectiveness during the Russo-Japanese
War. The gun, quirky though it was, was successful enough to persuade
Laurence Benét and Henri Mercié to develop the Modèle Portative: a
man-portable version which, it was hoped, could move with infantrymen as
they advanced. Later mounted on tanks and aircraft, it became the first
automatic weapon to obtain a kill in aerial combat.
Though it served the French and US armies during World War I (and also
the British in areas where French and British units fought alongside
each other), the Odkolek-Hotchkiss system was to have its longest-term
effect in Japan. Here, a succession of derivatives found favor in
theaters of operations in which water-cooling could be more of a
liability than an asset. When US forces landed on Saipan, Guam, and Iwo
Jima, battling their way from island to island across the Pacific, it
was the Woodpecker--the Type 92 Hotchkiss, with its characteristically
slow rate of fire--which cut swathes through their ranks. Supported by
contemporary photographs and full-color illustrations, this title
explores the exciting and eventful history of the first successful
gas-operated machine gun.
