Puteaux machine gun

Designed by officers at the Atelier de Construction de Puteaux (APX), it was a gas operated, air-cooled, full automatic weapon that fired from an open bolt.

With an adjustable firing rate of thirty to six hundred rounds per minute, the Puteaux fired the 8mm Lebel round, the same used in the Hotchkiss M1914 machine gun (Mle 1900).

The feed system consisted of several metal strips of ammunition fed in, also the same as the Hotchkiss, but with several modifications.

This system proved to be complicated and unreliable compared to the contemporary Hotchkiss machine guns.

It was immediately redesigned as the St. Étienne Mle 1907 machine gun, which only provided a marginal improvement.