St. Étienne Mle 1907

St. Étienne M1907
German soldier examining a captured St. Étienne Mle 07.
Type	Medium machine gun
Place of origin	France
Service history
Used by	See Users
Wars	World War I World War II
Production history
Manufacturer	Manufacture d'Armes de Saint-Etienne (MAS).
No. built	39,700
Variants	Puteaux Mle 1905 Mle 1907 Transformée 1916
Specifications
Weight	57 lb 5 oz (26.0 kg)
Length	1180 mm
Barrel length	710 mm
Cartridge	8mm Lebel
Caliber	8 mm
Action	Gas-operated
Rate of fire	adjustable: 80 to 650 round/min
Muzzle velocity	2,375 ft/s. (724 m/s)
Feed system	25-round metal strips or 300-round fabric belts (1916)

The French St. Étienne Mle 1907 (French: Mitrailleuse Mle 1907 T) was a gas operated air-cooled machine gun in 8mm Lebel which was widely used in the early years of the First World War. The "St.Etienne Mle 1907" was not derived from the Hotchkiss machine gun. Instead it was an entirely different gas operated blow-forward design borrowed from the semi-automatic Bang rifle of 1903. This Bang system was first transposed in 1905 to the French Puteaux APX Machine Gun which soon proved to be unsatisfactory. Then, two years later, the Mle 1907 "St-Etienne" machine gun followed as an improved redesign of the "Puteaux" machine gun. However the Mle 1907 "Saint Etienne" was only a partial redesign : the original blow-forward gas piston, rack-and-pinion system, and bolt mechanism of the Mle 1905 " Puteaux" machine gun had all been kept only slightly modified inside the newer weapon. Eventually a total of over 39,700 "St-Etienne" Mle 1907 machine guns were manufactured between 1908 and late 1917. They were widely used by French infantry during the early part of World War I until their replacement by the distinctly more reliable Hotchkiss M1914 machine-gun.

Around the turn of the century the French military evaluated machine guns made by the private French firm of Hotchkiss et Cie. While the tests were technically convincing, following which Hotchkiss machine-guns were purchased for French alpine and colonial troops, it was decided for political reasons that a machine gun for French line infantry had to originate from state-owned arms manufacturers. A first attempt by a French government arsenal near Paris (APX) was the Puteaux M1905 machine gun inspired by the first gas actuated blow forward Bang rifle system of 1903. It was a deliberate attempt to develop an infantry machine gun that would be mechanically different from the patented Hotchkiss Mle 1900 machine gun design. However, the M1905 Puteaux machine gun soon proved to be unsatisfactory. Consequently, the national arsenal at Saint Étienne (MAS) thoroughly reworked and modified the Puteaux machine gun resulting in some measure of improvement but also increased complexity—64 component parts for the St. Etienne Mle 1907 vs. only 32 parts for the Hotchkiss Mle 1914. Barrel changes on the Mle 1907 St. Etienne were much easier than on the M1905 Puteaux and its firing rate could be set at any point between eight rounds per minute and about 600 rounds per minute. Either metal strips different from those used on the Hotchkiss machine gun or else fabric belts, the latter introduced in 1916, for the 8mm Lebel ammunition could be used.