Hotchkiss Universal: The Most Folding Gun Made
This video delves into the Hotchkiss Universal, a compact 9mm submachine gun designed in the late 1940s for French military trials. Despite its innovative folding design, including a folding stock, grip, magazine well, and telescoping barrel, it was ultimately rejected for being too expensive and complex, losing out to the MAT-49. The video details its design, manufacturing variations (CMH and CMH2), and limited sales to countries like Venezuela and Morocco, as well as its testing by the French Foreign Legion in Indochina. It's presented as a fascinating example of prioritizing extreme compactness, perhaps at the expense of practicality.












