page_title: Hotchkiss Mle 1914 machine gun
section_title: In Poland
hierarchical_section_title: Hotchkiss Mle 1914 machine gun / Service history / In Poland
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Artylerzyści z ckm Hotchkiss wz.25 prowadzą ogień używając taśmy sztywnej. Amunicyjny łapie łuski w wiadro kawaleryjskie.
context_page_description: The Mle 1914 Hotchkiss machine gun chambered for the 8mm Lebel cartridge became the standard machine gun of the French Army during the latter half of World War I. It was manufactured by the French arms company Hotchkiss et Cie, which had been established in the 1860s by American industrialist Benjamin B. Hotchkiss. The gas-actuated Hotchkiss system was first formulated in 1893 by Odkolek von Ujezda and improved into its final form by Hotchkiss armament engineers, American Laurence Benét and his French assistant Henri Mercié.
  The Mle 1914 was the last version of a series of nearly identical Hotchkiss designs: the Mle 1897, Mle 1900 and the Mle 1909. The Hotchkiss Mle 1914 became the French infantry standard in late 1917, replacing the unreliable St. Étienne Mle 1907. The American Expeditionary Forces in France also purchased 7,000 Mle 1914 Hotchkiss machine guns in 8mm Lebel, and used them extensively at the front in 1917 and 1918. Hotchkiss heavy machine guns, some being of earlier types, were also used in combat by Japan, Chile, Mexico, Spain, Belgium, Brazil, and Poland.
context_section_description: Poland received its first Mle 1914 Hotchkiss machine guns together with the arrival of the Blue Army in 1919. During and after the Polish-Bolshevik War the Polish Army bought additional guns in France and by 1936 there were 2,620 guns in Polish service (used under the ckm wz. 14 - "HMG Mk. 1914"). In the mid-1920s the army ordered 1,250 guns of a slightly modified version rechambered to the standard 7.92×57mm Mauser calibre. However, the army found that the newly delivered machine guns, dubbed ckm wz.25 Hotchkiss were substandard: the barrel was prone to overheating and the accuracy was found to be too low.
  Instead of trying to renegotiate the contract with Hotchkiss, the Polish General Staff ordered large numbers of Ckm wz.30 machine guns instead and both 1914 and 1925 models of Hotchkiss were withdrawn from infantry service by 1936. Some were sold abroad; many were modified to arm the Renault FT tanks, TK-3 and TKS tankettes, and Samochód pancerny wz. 29 and wz. 34 armored cars. During the Invasion of Poland of 1939, the wz. 25 and wz. 14 machine guns were nevertheless used in combat by some Polish infantry units, notably the Border Defence Corps and National Defense.
caption: ckm wz. 25 machine gun crew during exercise, 1931
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