Huot machine gun. (Army Museum in Halifax, Nova Scotia)
As you know, it is easier to improve than to create anew. As a rule, in the process of operation, many people notice the flaws of a particular design and, as talent and ability, try to correct them. But it also happens that someone's idea inspires another person to create a structure that is already so “something new” that it deserves a fundamentally new attitude towards itself. And the need in such cases is usually the “best teacher”, since it is it that makes the “gray cells” work with more tension than usual!
And it so happened that when the Canadian units went to Europe to fight for the interests of the British crown during the First World War, it immediately became clear on the battlefields that the Ross rifle, although it shoots accurately, is completely unsuitable for army service. Its straight-action bolt turned out to be very sensitive to pollution and often, in order to distort it, it was necessary to beat it with the handle of a sapper shovel! Many other annoying incidents happened to her, because of which Canadian soldiers began to simply steal Anfield rifles from their English "colleagues", or even buy for money. Anything - just not Ross! Moreover, there were no difficulties with ammunition supply, since they had the same cartridges. And it ended up that the Ross rifles were left only to snipers, and in the linear units they were replaced by "Lee-Enfield".
But now a new problem has arisen. They began to miss the light machine guns. Light machine guns "Lewis" were required by everyone - the British and Russian infantry, aviators, tankmen (the latter, however, not for long), Indian sepoys, as well as all other parts of the dominions. And no matter how the British industry tried, the production volumes of these machine guns were not enough.
Huot (above) and Lewis (below). Top views. The characteristic flat "boxes" on the shutters contained: the Lewis had a system of magazine rotation levers, the Huot had a gas piston damper and details for connecting the shutter to the piston. (Photo from the Seaforth Highlanders Regiment Museum in Vancouver)
And it just so happened that the first to figure out how to get out of this difficult situation was Joseph Alphonse Hoot (Wat, Huot), a machinist and blacksmith from Quebec. Born in 1878, he was a large and strong man (not surprising for a blacksmith), over six feet tall and weighing 210 pounds. A man, as they write about him, he was not only strong, but also hardworking, stubborn, but too gullible to people, which in business does not always help, but more often, on the contrary, hurts!
Joseph Alphonse Huot (1918)
At first, he viewed his work on the automatic rifle as a hobby. But when World War I broke out, his interest in weapons became more serious. He began working on his project in mid-1914 and worked until the end of 1916, continuously improving it. Its development was protected by patents of Canada, №193,724 and №193,725 (but to my great regret, not a single text, nor images from any of them through the online archive of Canada on the Internet is currently not available).
His idea was to attach a gas pipe with a gas piston to the Charles Ross rifle on the left side of the barrel. This would make it possible to use this mechanism to actuate the bolt of the Ross rifle, which, as you know, had a reloading handle on the right. Such an alteration would be quite simple from a purely technical point of view (although the devil is always hiding in the details, because you still need to make such a mechanism work smoothly and reliably). In addition to the gas piston, Huot designed the ratchet and ammunition feed from a 25-round drum mechanism. He also took care of the barrel cooling system, but here he did not overwork too much, but simply took and used the ingeniously invented Lewis machine gun system: a thin-walled casing with a narrowing at the muzzle of the barrel, recessed inside this casing. When fired in a "pipe" of this design, air thrust always occurs (on which all inhalers are based), so if a radiator is installed on the barrel, this air flow will cool it. On the Lewis machine gun, it was made of aluminum and had longitudinal fins. And Huot repeated all this on his own model.
Huot (top) and Lewis (bottom). (Photo from the Seaforth Highlanders Regiment Museum in Vancouver)
Until September 1916, Huot improved his model, and on September 8, 1916, he met with Colonel Matish in Ottawa, after which he was hired as a civilian mechanic in the Experimental Small Arms Division. True, while this ensured the continuation of work on his weapons, working for the government also meant disaster for any hope of commercial gain from this work. That is, now he could not sell his sample to the government, since he worked for him for a salary! The situation, as we know, has already taken place in Russia with Captain Mosin, who also created his own rifle during working hours, being released from service as such.
As a result, Huot completed the creation of a prototype and demonstrated it to military officials in December 1916. On February 15, 1917, an improved version of the machine gun was demonstrated, having a rate of fire of 650 rounds per minute. Then at least 11,000 rounds of ammunition were fired from the machine gun - this is how it passed the survivability test. Finally, in October 1917, Huot and Major Robert Blair were sent to England to test it there, so that this machine gun would be approved by the British military.
They sailed to England at the end of November, arrived at the beginning of December 1917, and the first tests were started on January 10, 1918 at the Royal Small Arms Factory in Anfield. They were repeated in March, and they showed that the Huot light machine gun has clear advantages over the Lewis, Farquhar Hill and Hotchkiss machine guns. Tests and demonstrations continued until early August 1918, although on July 11, 1918, the British military officially rejected this sample.
Huot light machine gun automation device. (Photo from the Seaforth Highlanders Regiment Museum in Vancouver)
Despite the fact that it was decided to reject the Huot machine gun, compared to the Lewis machine gun, it was recognized as quite competitive. It was more convenient when firing from a trench and could be activated faster. Huot's machine gun was easier to disassemble. It was found to be less accurate than the Lewis, although this was likely due to the fact that both the scope and front sight were attached to the cooler shroud, which was found to vibrate a lot when fired. At Anfield, they complained about the shape of the butt, which made it difficult to hold the weapon well (which is not surprising, given the volume and location of the gas vent cover, which protruded far back). As a disadvantage, a magazine with only 25 rounds was noted, which was emptied in 3.2 seconds! To speed up the magazine's equipment, special 25-round clips were provided, so it was not difficult to reload it. True, there was no fire translator, so it was impossible to fire single shots from a machine gun! On the other hand, it was noted that he is smaller than the "Lewis", and can shoot in an inverted position, while he could not! It was noted that this was the only weapon tested, capable of remaining in working order after immersion in water. Lieutenant General Arthur Curry, the commander of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, reported that every soldier who tried Huot's automatic rifle was satisfied with it, so on October 1, 1918, he wrote a request for the purchase of 5,000 copies, arguing that his soldiers had nothing at the front oppose a large number of German light machine guns.
Huot machine gun. (Photo from the Sitforth Highlanders Regiment Museum in Vancouver)
It was also very profitable for production that the Huot machine gun had 33 parts that were directly interchangeable with the parts of the Ross M1910 rifle, plus 11 rifle parts that would have to be redone a little, and another 56 parts that would have to be made from scratch. In 1918, the cost of one copy was only 50 Canadian dollars, while the "Lewis" cost 1000! Its mass was 5, 9 kg (without cartridges) and 8, 6 (with a loaded magazine). Length - 1190 mm, barrel length - 635 mm. Rate of fire: rounds / min 475 (technical) and 155 (combat). Muzzle velocity 730 m / s.
But why, then, was the weapon rejected, despite such promising test results? The answer is simple: for all its positive data, it was not much better than the "Lewis" to justify the costs of re-equipment of manufacturing plants and retraining of soldiers. And, of course, after the end of the war, it immediately turned out that the peacetime army's Lewis machine guns were quite enough, and there was no need to look for additional such weapons.
Major Robert Blair with Huot's rifle, 1917. (Photo from the Seaforth Highlanders Regiment Museum in Vancouver)
Unfortunately, Huot's personal condition, owing to all these circumstances, was in a deplorable state. Any royalty agreement by the Canadian government depended on the formal adoption of the weapon, so when it was rejected, he was left with only the salary he received while working on his brainchild. The investment in the amount of his own $ 35,000, which he invested in this project, in fact, went down the drain. Huot demanded at least that the money be returned to him and eventually received compensation in the amount of $ 25,000, but only in 1936. His first wife died a few days after giving birth in 1915, and he remarried after the war, marrying a woman with 5 children. He worked as a laborer and builder in Ottawa. He lived until June 1947, continuing to invent, but never again achieved the success that he achieved with his light machine gun!
It is known that in total 5-6 pieces of Huot machine guns were made and today they are all in museums.
