Beyond French Army use, the M1909 found a home in the inventories of armies overseas including that of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Ireland, New Zealand, Spain, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the United States. In Britain, the M1909 was known as the "Gun, Machine, Hotchkiss Mark I" with production by Enfield (chambered for the .303 British cartridge) while, in the United States, it became the "Machine Rifle, Benet-Mercie, Caliber 30 M1909" (naturally chambered for the .30-06 Springfield cartridge). For the former, the weapon served alongside the established Vickers and Lewis marks while, for the latter, the weapon replaced the outgoing Gatling family of firearms so prevalent during the Civil War years and beyond. Production of US Army-bound M1909s was handled by both Colt and the Springfield Armory.
The M1909 was on hand in some number by the time of World War 1 (1914-1918) and soldiered on through the conflict, eventually seeing limited service during World War 2 (1939-1945). By this time, the weapon was certainly an outdated, though still lethal, machine gun design. M1909s were not perfect weapons by any stretch but managed a foothold in the inventory of several militaries of the world for decades since their inception. Jams were common as were fractured parts. For some of the participating armies mentioned, the M1909 was something of a "first taste" concerning automatic machine gun fire. Revisions to the system eventually saw use of belt-fed ammunition in the design over that of the limited strip-magazines initially utilized.
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