While most hunters know the Darne brand, few military history enthusiasts know the Darne machine gun.
All can cite the major brands of machine guns: Maxim, Vickers, Hotchkiss, Browning, MG 34 or 42; but very few of them have seen or heard of the Darne machine gun. Born in a period of crisis, in full war of 1914-1918, it results from the inventive spirit of two armourers Etienne. In fact, they managed to develop a real weapons system in a short time, allowing a single mechanism to be applied to a whole family of automatic machines: machine guns and machine guns for infantry or aviation.
Their achievements had attracted the attention of the military high command, which had even placed large orders. The cessation of hostilities leads to the conversion of the market for a sector in full development: aeronautics. The house Darne quickly manages to develop a model allowing the synchronized shooting through the field of the propeller, which French arsenals will never be able to do. The builder quickly finds outlets abroad, but he has trouble convincing the Technical Section of aeronautics qualities of its equipment. Finally the Air Force will use little Darne machine guns, preferring the MAC 34 machine gun from the Manufacture Nationale d'Armes de Chatellerault. This will not be the case of the Naval Aeronautics which keeps Darne machine guns on some of its aircraft until the end of the Indochina war.
