[ Japanese Type 97 Sniper ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on Forgotten Weapons.
I'm Ian, and I'm here today with a Type 97 sniper rifle.
This was the ... most common sniper rifle used by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War Two.
And it's basically a Type 38 Arisaka.
... The Japanese government did some experiments with sniper rifle designs.
And what they determined was basically if they used a standard Type 38 long rifle,
put a scope mount on the side of it, they'd end up with a very nice marksman's rifle.
Now the scope on this is particularly small,
it's a 2.5x power with a 10 degree field of view on it.
Extremely tiny objective lens, probably 6-7mm,
very small, but it does actually have a pretty nice field of view.
And it's pretty clear, it works fairly well.
The scope mount is a removable one.
We ... pull this detent out, and then pivot the lever. Forward is our disassembly position.
And then I can slide the scope right off the rifle.
When I pivot this, what I'm actually doing is using a cam to rotate this block up and down,
and that's what locks the scope into its rail.
Now the scopes came with a separate hard canvas pouch,
and you'd carry the scope in the pouch when you weren't using it.
Then when you are ready to shoot, mount it onto the rifle and away you go.
About ... 22,200 of these in total were made.
About 8,000 by the Kokura Arsenal from 1937 to 1939.
And then the other 14,200 were made by the Nagoya Arsenal from 1939 until about 1943.
This particular one is one of the very last ones,
its serial number is 12,000 and change out of 14,000.
So it's probably late 1942 or 1943 production.
As such it does not have a monopod, a lot of the early Type 97 snipers did have monopods.
A few other details to note.
It does have a bent bolt handle,
one of the only Arisakas correctly found with a bent bolt handle.
The markings on the top of the receiver are 9-7-type.
And normally you would find the serial number
and the arsenal mark of an Arisaka right here on the side of the receiver.
Well, because there's a scope mount there,
they instead put the serial number and arsenal marks right up here at the front.
... There is one other type of Japanese sniper, there's also a Type 99 sniper.
Which is, as the name implies, it's a Type 99 rifle in 7.7
that was adapted with a similar scope mount.
On those guys you'll find the markings back here on the rear bridge of the receiver.
Now, here's one of the weird things about these guns.
The scope is serial numbered, and in theory that serial number should match the rifle.
In this case we're only a few dozen numbers off.
My scope is 483 and my rifle is 517.
However, they are not matching,
and it's virtually unheard of to find a Japanese sniper with the matching scope.
That becomes a problem because there's no external adjustment on this scope whatsoever.
These were zeroed at the factory with a specific scope and rifle combination.
And we've been out here shooting this one today,
and determined that the windage is like 18 inches off at 100 yards,
because it's a mismatched scope and rifle.
And there's no way to adjust for that on the scope,
which makes this, from a military perspective, kind of useless.
The question is how they all managed to get mismatched
in the process of being brought home as war trophies.
So if you do ever find one with a matched scope, jump on it,
because that is a rare bird and should shoot quite well.
Now we did some accuracy testing with the iron sights on this,
and we're getting about a 3.5 inch group in field conditions like this.
Which is not bad, that's probably about what you would expect.
The bore on this rifle is pretty well worn, not in particularly good condition.
When it was new it probably would have been better.
So the Japanese sniper tactics were a little bit different than a lot of other countries.
In particular US records make a number of notes of Japanese snipers commonly hiding in trees,
even tying themselves into trees.
That's a practice that's kind of considered suicidal in a lot of militaries.
The problem with a tree is that once you're spotted you can't move.
And that didn't seem to really be an issue for the Japanese.
In general when they used snipers,
when they weren't being used specifically as rear-guard soldiers to hold up an American advance,
... in a proper operation, snipers were deployed around the flanks of units,
and to protect emplaced weapons.
So really more like designated marksmen than what we would think of today as snipers.
And in that role being in a tree isn't necessarily suicidal.
If you're in a protected position and you're not going to be surrounded,
being up in a tree gives you a large field of view.
One of the other advantages of the Type 97 here
is that it's chambered in 6.5x50 semi-rimmed Japanese, which is a nice mild cartridge.
And in the long barrel that these rifles have,
that cartridge produces effectively no smoke and no muzzle flash,
and frankly the report is quieter than most other guns around.
So you can't necessarily spot a sniper with one of these rifles very easily just from their firing.
With, for example, a Type 99 sniper you would be producing smoke and flash,
because of the larger cartridge and the shorter barrel.
The 97, it's not necessarily easy to spot someone,
and US historical military notes make mention of that.
So the reticle in this scope is an interesting thing in and of itself.
It's got a horizontal line and a vertical.
The first interesting thing is that where the two intersect is not the zero mark,
it's actually the 300 metre mark.
Kind of like how the iron sights are set to a battle sight zero of 300,
the scope is the same way.
So if you don't have time to really determine your range, and you just need to get a quick shot off,
the crosshair in the reticle is 300 metres.
Now there is a 200 and a 100 metre mark above that,
so that you can make precise shots at those ranges.
And then the vertical goes all the way down to 1,400.
It does also have stadia lines on the horizontal so that you can adjust with windage.
And one other very interesting subtle detail of it is that the vertical line in the reticle
is actually not quite vertical, it's canted slightly off to one side.
And that's to adjust for the fact that the scope is offset from the bore.
So the reticle (once you're zeroed) as you go out to longer ranges
the reticle actually takes care of your windage dope for you.
One other thing I should point out, there's normally a rubber eye cup on this.
It's missing on this one.
At this point in their age these are often cracked, brittle, or missing entirely.
So normally you'd find a rubber eye cap.
Well, I think that's about all there is to say with one of these guys.
So I'm just going to go ahead and put another couple of rounds through it,
because it's a very pleasant gun to shoot.