Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, I'm here today at the Rock Island Auction Company
taking a look at one of the pistols that is going to be
in their upcoming April of 2020 Premier Auction.
And because American gun collectors can't read Japanese,
this is called a Papa Nambu.
There are four different major variations of sort of this family of pistol,
and the actual year designations for them,
and the actual Japanese designations for them,
were, well, it took a while for them to become really known in English language literature.
And in the meantime a bunch of colloquial reference names started to be used.
So the oldest one, the very first Nambu pistols, became known as the Grandpa Nambu.
This is actually, technically, the Nambu Automatic Pistol, Modified, Type A,
which became known as the Papa Nambu.
There was a miniaturised version that was called the Baby Nambu.
And then we have kind of the standard World War Two era Type 14 Nambu,
which didn't get its own unique name for whatever reason. It's just the normal Nambu.
And then there is also the Type 94, ... actually developed ... closer to World War Two.
But those are all subjects for other videos, what we want to take a look at today is a Papa.
So this is actually less its own unique development than it is an improvement on Kijiro Nambu's
original pistol design, which was introduced in 1902.
These kinda were developed between 1904 and 1906. They went into production first in 1906,
continuing the existing serial number range from the original Grandpas.
So about 2,400 or 2,450 you start seeing Papa Nambus.
And well I'll tell you what, why don't we go ahead and take a look at this up close,
and we'll compare it to a Grandpa. And I'll show you all of the changes that were made
because they are substantial, and a bunch of them are pretty important improvements to the design.
We'll start with a basic overview and some markings.
The [Papa] is still chambered for 8mm Nambu, that is 8x22, it's a little bottlenecked cartridge.
Luger-like ... detachable box magazine, right there.
On the top of the chamber we have the marking of the Tokyo Artillery Arsenal, which is where this was manufactured.
And on the right side we have the serial number. For the Tokyo Arsenal
these picked up from the end of the Grandpa Nambu serial range,
so they'll start at about 2,450. This is a very early example.
Guns made at TG&E, we'll talk about those in a minute, those will start at serial number 1.
We also have this three character marking up there, and that translates to "Nambu Type".
On the opposite side then we have a two character marking and that translates to "Army Type".
These were not actually formally adopted by the Japanese Army,
although they were adopted by the Japanese Navy in 1909, which is when TG&E started making them.
But Nambu went ahead and marked this as Army Type kind of just as a marketing thing.
We have an adjustable tangent rear sight, goes out to 500 metres back there.
I know folks are gonna ask about these characters and I do not know what those translate to, but it's not uncommon.
I think a lot of ... Papa Nambus were re-imported out of China and have markings like this on the grips.
I've seen a bunch of others. Whether those are Japanese markings or Chinese markings I am not sure.
Now, let's take a look at the differences between the early Grandpa and the later Papa.
Just to reiterate: the Grandpa was introduced in 1902, the Papa designed in 1904 and went into production in 1906.
So, at first glance you'll see that the trigger guard has been substantially enlarged on the Papa.
That's important. This is like actually a really, really small trigger guard,
and if you're wearing gloves, well, good luck.
The Grandpas all had stock slots, that was removed on the Papa Nambus.
There are a couple of examples out there that are basically all special presentation models where they
did equip them with shoulder stocks, but as a standard production item, the stock slot went away.
You can also see that there was a little bit of a change to the profile of the grip.
Not all that much, but enough to necessitate new tooling to produce them.
These pistols all have lanyard loops on them. On the Grandpa it was a fixed lanyard staple there.
On the Papa it now swivels, which makes it a little more flexible.
The magazines were also changed.
This is most distinctive because the Grandpas had a wooden base plate
where the Papas had an aluminium base plate.
And the actual geometry of the magazine changed as well, and these are not interchangeable. ...
Mechanically the Nambu pistols are all locked-breech, short-recoil pistols.
So when you fire, this is going to reciprocate backwards and that unlocks the gun.
And then your bolt cycles, similar to a C96 in a few ways.
These do lock open on an empty magazine.
However when you take the magazine out
the bolt drops home, because the only thing holding it open is the magazine.
Now to disassemble this the procedure is a little funky.
If you've seen the Grandpa Nambu video you already know how this works,
but we'll go through it again here.
Start by taking the firing pin, push it in a little bit, rotate it 90 degrees counter-clockwise.
That allows us to remove the guide rod and firing pin spring.
Then this is kind of a three handed affair, so what you have to do is
unlock the gun by pushing the barrel back,
and that's best done by pushing the muzzle down on a non-marring surface like this.
Then you're going to push the magazine catch in and pull the trigger guard down.
The trigger guard is actually an independent part that's in a pair of rails on the front of the frame.
And pulling it down allows the slide to come back. So if I
push down there, and then push that in.
There we go. Alright, then we can slide this down a little.
This is I think actually unique in pistol disassembly. Then we can pull
the whole barrel and slide assembly out of the frame of the gun.
Once we have this
we have the actual locking block, this pivots up and down, locks this into the action.
That comes off, and then we can pull the bolt out the back.
... And our firing pin was left inside the frame.
Something to be aware of on these pistols, this firing pin is very fragile.
Do not dry fire these pistols unless you really need to, because they do have a tendency to break firing pins.
So, there is the top half. There's a little bit more we can do on the frame.
The recoil spring for the gun is held in this tube in the side.
Now that we have the bolt out we can unscrew this rear piece.
That comes off, and then I gently let out the mainspring and its guide rod
right there.
And now you can see that empty tube where they went.
The trigger is a rather unusual system on the Nambu where when you pull the trigger, it's actually going to push this up.
This is the rear end of the trigger bar. So when I push it up at the front, it drops down at the rear,
and what it's actually doing there is holding this tab.
... The tab comes out to the side and it gets held in place by this bar, so when this goes down,
the firing pin is released and can strike forward.
... There's a lot of unusual stuff about the Nambu, this was not copied directly from any ... European design.
So there is a Papa Nambu disassembled.
This is all conceptually the same as both the Type 14 Nambu that came after it,
and the Grandpa Nambu that came before it, as well as, of course, the Baby Nambu.
Now the Type 94 was a completely different mechanism, different pistol altogether.
But that would be many years after the development of this.
All in all, just over 10,000 of these pistols were produced between 1906 and 1928.
They were made by two different firms. One of them was the Tokyo Artillery Arsenal
(which would be later renamed the Tokyo Army Arsenal), they started production in 1906
they were the first to make them, and production there ended in 1923.
They were actually in the middle of some reorganisation of the manufacturing
when the Great Tokyo earthquake of 1923 did tremendous damage to the Arsenal,
and production of the Papa Nambu never restarted there.
The other factory was Tokyo Gas and Electric, a private company, that also made pistols both for foreign contract
(they're the ones who made them for Thailand), and also for sale to Army officers or Navy officers.
They started production in 1909 and they would produce them until right about 1928.
So what ultimately led to the end of this pistol is that the Japanese Army adopted the Type 14 Nambu in 1925,
and the Japanese Navy followed suit, adopting it in 1927. So once the Navy had also adopted it
there was no longer any real market for these pistols to be ... sold to officers,
they'd much rather have the newer, better version, the Type 14. And so TG&E stopped manufacturing them.
So there were 10,000 made. A lot of them lost in the fighting in China, as well as World War Two against the United States
There are very few of them left today and they're very cool.
I think they're one of the cool and distinctive, unique early automatic pistol designs.
So, if you would like this one, or if you'd like a Papa Nambu, this one, as well as at least one other,
are in Rock Island's upcoming auction. You can check out their description and pictures,
and the other guns that are available, in their catalogue via their website.
Thanks for watching.
[ cc by sk cn2 ]