Dan Morton
A Fixture
This is the New Order Model Designs 1/15th scale 120 mm French 8 mm Hotchkiss MG 1914. This is the fourth NOMD kit I’ve purchased from this Canadian/Russian (?) firm. On all of these kits, the Hotchkiss included, the sculpting has been uniformly very good, but the all resin moldings have been good to not so great. There is a moderate amount of flash and some bits that are tricky to get to fit with the Hotchkiss. Not insurmountable, mind you, but a bit finicky.
The kit comes in a not very sturdy box with all parts in a plastic bag. There is no parts reinforcement. As a consequence, you should be able to see in the photo what happened to the barrel. I can straighten it, but why do that to your customer when a nickel’s worth of tape and cardboard would have guaranteed a straight barrel?
Of the three more famous WWI machine guns, the Hotchkiss has the most interesting design but not the best performance. It was air-cooled, strip-fed, and gas operated. Its rate-of-fire was about the same as the Vickers or Maxim at 400 to 600 rpm but its range was only about 1800 m versus 2400 m for the Vickers.(1)
In capable hands it was effective, if a bit tricky to keep in good working order. Here’s an illuminating quote from Sgt. Maj. Georges Lafond, French Colonial Infantry, 1918: “And the machine gun is a coquette, too. Under its appearance of delicacy and grace it conceals a terrible power of domination and strength…Fashioned like a work of art, the brilliancy of its polished steel and the voluptuous roundness of the brass invite caresses…It is delicate and costly, needing a hundred things for its adornment, skilled care for its toilette and a hundred men to serve it – is not the machine gun a coquette?”
The French sometimes do carry on a bit.
There is one page of numbered b x w photos of parts indicating a rough order of assembly and a color box photo. $27.00 for the kit from Red Lancers. If you’d like a wonderful reference book to go along with it, check out (1) Machine Guns of World War I by Robert Bruce, ISBN 1859150780
The kit comes in a not very sturdy box with all parts in a plastic bag. There is no parts reinforcement. As a consequence, you should be able to see in the photo what happened to the barrel. I can straighten it, but why do that to your customer when a nickel’s worth of tape and cardboard would have guaranteed a straight barrel?
Of the three more famous WWI machine guns, the Hotchkiss has the most interesting design but not the best performance. It was air-cooled, strip-fed, and gas operated. Its rate-of-fire was about the same as the Vickers or Maxim at 400 to 600 rpm but its range was only about 1800 m versus 2400 m for the Vickers.(1)
In capable hands it was effective, if a bit tricky to keep in good working order. Here’s an illuminating quote from Sgt. Maj. Georges Lafond, French Colonial Infantry, 1918: “And the machine gun is a coquette, too. Under its appearance of delicacy and grace it conceals a terrible power of domination and strength…Fashioned like a work of art, the brilliancy of its polished steel and the voluptuous roundness of the brass invite caresses…It is delicate and costly, needing a hundred things for its adornment, skilled care for its toilette and a hundred men to serve it – is not the machine gun a coquette?”
The French sometimes do carry on a bit.
There is one page of numbered b x w photos of parts indicating a rough order of assembly and a color box photo. $27.00 for the kit from Red Lancers. If you’d like a wonderful reference book to go along with it, check out (1) Machine Guns of World War I by Robert Bruce, ISBN 1859150780
