In 1916, the
Canadian Expeditionary Force was desperately short of light machine guns. Since the
Ross rifle had finally been taken out of service, there were large numbers of surplus rifles. That year,
Joseph Huot, an engineer from
Richmond, Quebec, adapted the Ross' straight-pull
bolt action. His sample model, which shared 33 parts with the Ross Mark III, had a
pneumatic piston parallel to the barrel, which moved a sleeve on the bolt backwards, operating the action. To absorb excess energy, the bolt was buffered. The entire mechanism was sheathed in sheet metal. Huot copied the cooling system from the
Lewis Gun, then standard in
British Army service. It fed from a 25-round
drum magazine. He filed Canadian
patents; #193724 on 8 March 1917 (granted 4 November 1919) and #193725 on 13 November 1917. Blair noted it was the only weapon on the trial able to suffer immersion and do so. In firing 10,000 rounds through the Huot, Enfield uncovered fouling of the gas cylinder at 4,000 rounds, and the barrel worn out at 10,000. In a 22 October 1917 letter to the British
Minister of Munitions, Blair said tooling existed in Canada and the Dominion Factory was ready to begin manufacturing the Huot, using parts from Rosses scheduled for scrapping. One drawback was the Huot was
fully automatic only, with no provision for
semi-automatic fire. The magazine could be emptied in just 3.2 seconds (a drawback shared by the
Browning Automatic Rifle); however, the rate of fire was low, much like a
Bren Gun's, so that was not a problem. A magazine could be changed in four seconds, and an empty magazine could be filled with ammunition in 30 seconds. Enfield noted 13 flaws, all with simple fixes, The war ended before it entered service, and the idea was dropped. Huot was out of pocket about C$30,000. Four specimens are known to exist (2015). Serial # 1 - The Army Museum at the Halifax Citadel, Nova Scotia. Serial # 2 - The Seaforth Highlanders of Canada Museum and Archives, Vancouver, British Columbia. This was Colonel Blair's personal souvenir and is complete with the stripper clip and heavy leather carrying/shipping case. Shipping company stickers on this case indicate that this is one of the Huots taken overseas for testing. Serial # 4 - Canadian War Museum, Ottawa, Ontario. Serial # 5 - Canadian War Museum, Ottawa, Ontario. Serial # 3 has not been located and it is uncertain how many were built. ==See also==