Japanese small arms

Shortround6 said:

Try looking up the actual ballistics.
BTW the 8mm Nambu replaced a 9mm Revolver in Japanese service.

The Japanese had the majority of their officers purchasing their personnel pistol(firearm) from their own private funds. Very few of the pistols were actually government issue although the ammo was.
Using substandard ammo/cartridges is never a really good idea. Better than nothing is faint praise indeed when with a little more foresight a better cartridge/weapon could easily have been obtained. And in the late 30s/early 40s not a lot of foresight was needed to figure out that a cartridge using a bigger, heavier bullet at higher velocities than the 8mm Nambu would be an advantage in a submachine gun. The 9mm Parabellum was only 36 years old in 1938 so it's not like asking for cartridges from the future. As far as supply goes, The Japanese, as noted above, where NOT handing out pistols to cooks, truck drivers, artillery crewmen and the like some some other armies. These troops got type 38 carbines with 487mm barrel( 19.7in) so while the 8mm Nambu cartridge was government issue the scale of issue was small compared to some western nations. If you are really going to issue submachine guns in quantity then the need for ammo is in the tens of millions of rounds if not hundreds of millions of rounds for a 6.5 million man army.
Such numbers would totally swamp existing production facilities so any "savings" in using exiting tooling would soon disappear. Drawing dies do wear out and have to be replaced on occasion anyway so the original 8mm tooling wouldn't last that long either.

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http://www.gunsandammo.com/historic...ambu/http://www.ballistics101.com/380_acp.php

Nambu 8mm pushing a 102gr round at 960fps seems to be very similar to .380/9mm Kurtz.

I wonder if the fact that Japan did not get involved in ww1 maybe coloured their perception of thier weapons and tactics.

Perhaps but then many Western nations failed to take note of the lessons of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05.
Machine guns, trenches (siege warfare), hand grenades, hidden artillery instead of blazing away in open fields and even the use of 28cm Howitzers dragged into position to bombard the Russian fleet in harbor. Even radio and search lights.
Even a few Western Nations thought that WW I was an aberration and the next war would go back to "normal" (Cavalry charges?)

I don't know that its all that clear about the nature of warfare after WWI.

Cavalry charges is the case in point. truth is that in WWII cavalry charges continued to have a significant place in certain TOs. What made cavalry and open warfare tactics obsolete when banging up against fixed positions, wasn't so much the hardware, though these were a part of the issue. the issue was far more complex than that. it depended on how many MGs and heavy weapons a given unit possessed, and even more importantly the level of supply and logistic support that could be provided.

When operating close to your home borders, or in areas where the rail net was extremely dense (ie western Europe), or In situations where there was an extensive truck pool to support operations, the older archaic methods like cavalry and swords were probably worse than useless. SMGs with their relatively high ammunition demand were also not such a problem.

In situations where the equipment issue was low (eg fighting the chinese), and/or the logistic network supporting an army too sparse to properly support a modern army (East front in winter, or just about anywhere outside north America or Western Europe) the lessons learnt from WWI with high demands on logistics and firepower were supreme, and mechanisation a must, the older methods remained valid and often deadly. the most feared formations on the eastern front December to march were not mechanized, they were the numerous horsed cavalry units that frequently were used to ride down or encircle fleeing German Infantry units. Same applied to the Japanese in China. their most efficient killers were their cavalry units in china.

In the pacific, where the Japanese lacked any proper logistic support, smgs would have been largely a waste of time. ammunition in the PTO for the IJA was nearly always in short supply. The number of casualties being suffered by the attacking US forces was not a function of IJA firepower, as the IJA being able to survive long enough to force the US army into close assault situations where Japanese cold steel was usually the only weapon they could use due to supply issues.

A war with USA in 1930s-1941 timeframe is certainly not the suicide run people take it for and Japan was a world power in its own right.
So it does make sense to have a swing at USA in 1941. As the USA of 1945 was not the same as 1941.
In my view a short sharp war was certainly winnable and the Japanese achieved great military campaigns and victories.
Problem is Japan was in a world of poop as soon as the American juggernaut started rolling. As it was simply more tanks more planes more men and more guns which Japan could never match.
Never fight an opponent who is going to kick your ass all day long. Even if you knock em down with your first punch.

It has come to my attention that last ditch weapons in the defensive of the Japanese mainland included spears.

I hope this is not the case.

It certainly was the case

OPERATION KETSU-GO

"The defensive plan called for the use of the Civilian Volunteer Corps, a mobilization not of volunteers but of all boys and men 15 to 60 and all girls and women 17 to 40, except for those exempted as unfit. They were trained with hand grenades, swords, sickles, knives, fire hooks, and bamboo spears. These civilians, led by regular forces, were to make extensive use of night infiltration patrols armed with light weapons and demolitions. Also, the Japanese had not prepared, and did not intend to prepare, any plan for the evacuation of civilians or for the declaration of open cities. The southern third of Kyushu had a population of 2,400,000 within the 3,500 square miles included in the Prefectures of Kagoshima and Miyazaki. The defensive plan was to actively defend the few selected beach areas at the beach, and then to mass reserves for an all-out counterattack if the invasion forces succeeded in winning a beachhead.

The Japanese were determined to fight the final and decisive battle on Kyushu. At whatever the cost, Japanese military leaders were planning to repel any U.S. landing attempt. The defense of the Japanese home islands centered on two primary operations: the Army's fanatical defense of the beaches, and the employment of Kamikaze planes and suicide boats against transports. The Japanese plans for suicide attacks were much more extensive than anything the U.S. had yet experienced in the war. The Japanese special suicide forces were seen as a "Divine Wind" which was to save their nation just as the "Divine Wind" had driven the Mongol hordes back in the thirteenth century".

This reflects the desperation of the Japanese to defend the Home Islands. At Okinawa, the US forces had suffered 93,682 casualties, including 71000 wounded, who would take an average of about 200 days to return to service and a discharge medically unfit rate close to 40%. Total permanent casualties for the US on Okinawa was about 50-60,000. Against this the IJA had lost about 80-115000 men (we just don't have a final tally even today), and about 120000 civilian casualties , many of whom had died as members of the civil defence units, equipped with spears and agricultural implements. with a population 2.4million, and a potential military force of say 1.5million, US casualties in the capture of Kyushu were expected to run to in excess of 1 million men, which on the basis of the Okinawa experience, would probably mean the permanent loss of around 500000 men. this was a cost the US army simply could not afford. it wasn't just a convenience that led to the atomic bombs being dropped. it was a necessity, if the war were not allowed to drag on for at least another year whilst japan was starved into submission and the Russians took over most of asia.

Type 94 don't look so bad now do it?

Crap is crap.
In the US the .22 rimfire as of the 1960s or 70s had killed more people than any other caliber in civilian shootings. Yet nobody in their right mind would suggest using the .22 rimfire as a combat or police cartridge.
The .22 rimfire established this "record" in two ways. One was that it was involved in more civilian shootings than any other cartridge/caliber (the .22 short dating back to 1857). The other was that it's outside lubricated (greased) bullet tended to carry dirt and crud into the would causing infections (in pre-antibiotic days) that turned fatal 3-4 days after the shooting. Hardly the result one wants in a combat situation.
Expensive pistols made of machined parts firing questionable cartridges are not a very good choice for a "last ditch weapon".
The Japanese had faced these (or similar) in the Philippines.


Basically two tubes, one within the other that held a shotgun shell and fired when the inner tube was pulled back hard onto a fixed firing pin (nail).

The Basket said:

The Japanese did use a variation of the panzerfaust which involves man running at tank with explosive charge.

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This is both hilarious and perfectly illustrates why more effective small arms were a small priority for the Japanese. Bushido and their innate superiority over the gaijin barbarians would carry the day. If it sounds racist, it's because it was. Obviously a mistaken philosophy in hindsight, although morale tended to run high as a consequence.

Shortround6 said:

The MG 42 was a good gun but perhaps not so good for the Japanese. It's high cycle rate was in part due to the requirement to be used as an AA gun. It was of little practical help in ground fire. Keeping them feed could present a problem and the way they worked in tripod mounts was a frequent replacement of the barrel. Several barrels in rotation to keep from burning out the rifling.

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The problems you mention of ammo, barrels, etc were there. But honestly, the weapon was purposefully designed around a high firing rate, based on the realizations:

1. that enemy troopers under fire tended to advance in spurts,
2. that there was a lag time for bullet travel
3. the time that enemy troops were out of cover either in the initial engagement or while being suppressed was actually rather small

It was therefore decided that it was advantageous for their main weapon system to deliver as many bullets in one spot, as quickly as possible, while that short time out of cover was occurring. Thus the very high rate of fire. In fact the entire grenadier squad was organized around this weapon (contrast to the equivalent American squad organization) and when used as defensive HMG emplacements they were often constructed in a "defense in depth" fashion similar to defensive anti-tank gun fortifications, and often had telescopic sights mounted to the HMG tripod (the LMG version did not have a tripod). The GIs feared it for a good reason.

The MG34 which it replaced in general use had a lower rate of fire.

Agree that the MG42 might have been suboptimal for the Japanese situation, also was unlikely to be adopted for philosophical reasons per the above.

A primary reason for the high rate of fire was AA use. The MG 34 was already firing at around 900rpm which is about 50% faster than most other bipod mounted machineguns. The idea behind the MG 34 and MG 42 was to use the same machine gun in variety of roles with the least modifications to the gun itself even if the kit/s of spare parts for mounts and such were rather extensive.

This twin mount for the MG 34 was pretty widespread and a few photos can be found of MG 42s in a similar mount (post war twin mounts are different.)


The single AA mount/tripod was also widespread


Please remember that the Germans had very, very few 13mm/15mm AA guns so it was either 7.92s or 20mm guns.
Bren gun when set up for AA use fired at 900-1000rpm (largest port on gas regulator and a clean gun)

I am certainly no expert machinegunner but a kind owner once let me fire a 50 round belt from an MG 42 at a range once. I managed to make the 50 round belt last for 7 pulls of the trigger. Average spread of shots at about 100 yrds was 4-5 feet from lower left of "target" to above and beyond target on the right (target was a large cardboard box). I was firing from prone using the bipod on a macadam surface. The owner was able to fire 4 round bursts.
Keeping an MG 42 on 'target' for very long was not easy.

The MG 42 wasn't quite as easy to make as it is sometimes made out. Yes the receiver is "stamped" but the German company responsible was well versed in making stamped parts and making MG 42 receivers requires a knowledge of how to design stamped parts, use the proper alloys, use the proper heat treatment in order to make a sturdy, long lasting receiver that doesn't crack at the bends with use or distort while being spot welded. It also requires an investment in stamping dies and stamping presses.