Hi guys, thanks for tuning in another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, I am here today at the Rock Island Auction Company.
I'm taking a look at some of the guns that they're going to be
selling in their upcoming April of 2016 Premier Auction.
And we've been doing a number of Japanese guns on
this series of videos, and I have another one for you today.
This is a Type 100, or sometimes called a Type 0, Japanese paratroop rifle.
So the Japanese, actually both the Japanese Army and Navy,
independently developed paratroop organisations,
paratrooper units and tactics and supplies during the late 1930s.
And in fact they did this largely with ... technical assistance from Germany.
So it's kind of interesting they adopted some of the same
techniques that the German paratrooper system used,
especially early on. Most notable of these is
they actually dropped all of their heavy weapons in weapons containers alongside the actual troops.
And just as the Germans had trouble with some early drops, notably Crete,
with their weapons containers landing over there, and their troops landing over there,
the Japanese actually had some similar problems on some of their early drops.
However that issue aside, what we're looking at today is not any of the light weapons, this is a standard shoulder rifle.
As the Japanese Paratroop Corps was developing, the Ordnance Department started looking into different
weapons that they could give them that would be kind of optimised for paratroops.
Mainly things that would come apart into a ... couple of small pieces, so that they would be easy to strap into a pack, or a leg bag,
or otherwise be shorter than a big full-length rifle strapped to your chest while you're jumping out of an airplane.
And they came up with several different experimental ideas. And this is actually one of the very first.
This is a Type 100, ... the "00" refers to the the Japanese calendar year 2600, which is 1940.
And the idea here was to take existing Type 99 rifles, which by the way the Type 99 was adopted in 1939,
so this was the brand new high-tech nice rifle of the Japanese military.
Well they took existing Type 99 rifles and converted them to come apart at the chamber.
Like so.
And they use this early interrupted thread and latch system that we'll take a closer look at in just a moment.
These rifles were taken straight off the rack at the Nagoya Arsenal.
They don't ... have their own serial number range, they kind of all fall into a sort of
set of serial numbers, but they're not a sequential batch of guns.
They only built about 500 of these, maybe even less, may have been like 300.
But I think more likely they did get 500 for testing and evaluation.
And they just grabbed a couple hundred rifles off the racks as they were being produced at Nagoya, and made this conversion to them.
So you'll see in a minute that some of the original markings are just half covered by some of the added metal components.
These weren't purpose-built, they were converted rifles of the standard type.
So, they tried these, and they tried some other ideas at the same time. ... Also the next year in 1941
they manufactured a couple hundred of what were called Type 1,
Test Type 1 Paratroop rifles, which were Type 38 carbines.
So they were in 6.5 calibre, instead of the 7.7 like this.
And those they actually took basically a saw to the buttstock and put a big hinge right here,
so the buttstock would fold. And that was a different way to make the gun a little more compact.
Those had some problems as well. I have a separate video on one of those rifles if you're interested in it.
And then they came up with a third idea, the Type 2 Paratrooper, 1942.
So we're starting to wind our way through World War Two here without a formal weapon being adopted for this role.
The Type 2 was actually very similar to this Type 00,
except instead of using an interrupted thread system it has a big long locking wedge.
You put the two pieces together and then drive the wedge through and lock it in place,
and that holds the gun together.
The Type 2 is what was ultimately formally adopted for the paratroops.
And thousands of those were manufactured. They are very interesting and definitely very collectible,
but they are much more available than either the Type 1 or this Type 100 (or Type 0).
So let's take a closer look at this. The takedown mechanism is kind of cool, I always like takedown rifles.
So here's the rifle broken into its two sections.
You will notice it does still have a monopod, this was standard equipment on an early Type 99 rifle.
It also still has the full complement of anti-aircraft wings on the flip-up rear sight.
All the goodies, with the exception of a dust cover.
In fact, this still has the grooves for the dust cover, I suspect this would have been issued
with a dust cover which has been lost at some point in the subsequent years.
Now you can see here, this originally is the 99 Type marking on the receiver of the rifle.
This was a standard run of the mill Type 99 that they took off the rack and added this big
conversion block to. They just stuck it right over the top of the original markings.
That round hole is the gas relief hole, which drills down through the original gas relief hole in the receiver.
A similar piece was added to the front section of the rifle here.
Then we have this spring-loaded plunger latch here,
this is connected to a round steel peg inside, about a quarter inch in diameter.
So what I do to disassemble the rifle is pull this back to disengage it, rotate 60 degrees,
and wiggle it loose. There we go.
So you can obviously see our interrupted threads here.
Inside the back half of the gun you can see we've got those interrupted threads cut into the receiver here.
And there is our locking pin, when I pull this latch back,
that retracts. So the threads are what actually lock the two sections together and are precisely fitted.
This peg just prevents the ... front half from rotating on the back half so that it can't come loose.
Now there is another cool feature to this.
You know, even if you've got two pieces that come apart like this, you've still got this bolt handle sticking out the side.
The observant among you will have already noticed that this bolt handle looks rather odd.
The reason for that is that this bolt handle actually is threaded and comes off.
Now originally you can see that this is two pieces right here. This would have been a spring tensioned pair of little teeth,
so that the bolt handle would have kind of snapped in place and been held tight
in the bolt itself. Those have been bent together, and they no longer provide any tension.
But this base is still threaded
and we have this threaded stub that was added to the bolt handle.
So ... obviously they cut off the original bolt, milled it round, threaded the inside, and then fabricated new bolt handles.
There is a little knurled or striped groove here to give you a little bit of traction on it.
And that fits right on there
and threads on.
Now the ... other types of paratroop rifles, most notably the Type 2 that was ultimately adopted,
does not have this feature. And while I have not seen any documentation explaining why,
it seems pretty clear to me that this is just asking for a lot of guys to
accidentally lose their bolt handle and then end up with a gun that is extremely difficult to operate.
I think the benefit you get from being able to take this off during a jump
is far outweighed by the likelihood of accidentally losing your bolt handle and being screwed.
So I am not the least bit surprised that this feature didn't make it onto the final type of gun.
So I mentioned these were pulled randomly off the rack at the Nagoya Arsenal. You can see this has a Nagoya Arsenal mark.
This is a first series rifle. And this serial number is in the right range, in the ... mid to late 50,000s.
You will also find these ... from the 21st and 22nd series of rifles.
... One other thing to note. The only actual marking that was added to these Type 100 rifles
was an assembly number on the back half of this added block.
Now in this case it is 395, which matches the receiver serial number.
I think that is usually, but not necessarily always, the case.
There aren't a whole lot of these out there have been documented, so it's a little tough to say exactly what the pattern is.
But here it's a pretty simple one, that the number on that block matches the serial number.
Thank you for watching guys, I hope you've enjoyed the video.
As I said, very few of these were made and of course even fewer actually got into the United States.
Definitely a cool addition to any collection of Japanese firearms. If you'd like to add it to yours,
take a look below the video at the description text. You'll find a link to Rock Island's catalogue page on this particular rifle.
You can check out their photos and their description, and place a bid right there through their website if you're interested in it.
Thanks for watching.