[ Prototype Arisaka Type 99 ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are taking a look
at a super-cool Japanese trials carbine.
This is one of the carbines from the Japanese
testing that resulted in the Type 99 rifle.
So the Japanese of course started out with a 6.5mm rifle cartridge.
There was interest in bumping that up to something a little more powerful
for several decades, potentially dating back as far as the Russo-Japanese War.
But they didn't really get serious about it until the very beginning of 1938.
Part of this is institutional inertia. Part of it is probably due to the giant Tokyo Earthquake
which essentially destroyed the Tokyo Army Arsenal complex.
And that put a lot of developmental and manufacturing small arms projects on hiatus.
But ultimately it's 1938 before they really get going with this.
And by the way, there are a couple of really interesting questions
that I think this rifle embodies about long rifles, short rifles,
different calibres for machine guns and rifles. We'll cover those in a separate video.
What I want to look at today is just this gun itself, because it's got so much weird cool stuff going on.
So at the very beginning of 1938 the Kokura Arsenal converts
300 generic Type 38 Arisaka rifles to the new 7.7x58mm cartridge.
7.7 by the way is essentially .30 calibre, that's the same bore diameter as .303 British.
These are 0.311 inch bullets.
58mm, same length as the Mauser cartridge.
They've essentially created a standard full-power rifle cartridge.
The Kokura conversions of Type 38s, everything works pretty well,
like no fundamental problems are revealed.
And so in April of 1938 the Japanese military promulgates a requirement
for the specific details that they want in testing for a new standard rifle.
The rifle has to be less than 4 kilos, so less than 8.8 pounds.
They specifically want it to have a lighter stock than the Type 38.
It needs to be easy to manufacture, kind of an obvious requirement.
And then the most interesting single technical requirement there is
they want it to have an aperture sight. And that's something that will set
the Type 99 apart from most of the other World War Two era bolt action rifles.
They use an aperture sight set forward on the barrel.
Normally we're used to an aperture sight on the back of the receiver
or an open V-notch on the barrel.
The Japanese opt for a larger aperture sight out on the barrel.
So there are a series of different rifles
that are built by the Kokura and the Nagoya arsenals to meet these requirements.
And in particular at this point they're carrying over the practice from the Type 38
of having a long rifle, ...
a long, long rifle for the infantry and a short carbine for the cavalry.
And so they develop ... paired systems like that.
And what we have here is, I believe, the Plan Number 2.
Specific detailed information on these trials is extremely limited to find.
But I believe this is Plan Number 2, the cavalry carbine version,
... it was originally made along with a partner infantry rifle.
We actually by the way, have pictures of the companion rifle
that were published in an Ordnance Report by the US Army in like 1946.
And you can see the similarities to several of the unique features here, on that rifle.
So that's one of our really good touchstone points of data on this gun.
At any rate, a couple of different versions go in for testing.
And let's take a look at what this one is, and then we'll come back
and talk about how this actually fared in testing.
Let's start here with the action. This is essentially a standard Type 38 Arisaka action,
they didn't make any fundamental changes to it.
They did make a few non-fundamental changes to it.
One of them is the fact that this has a long extended bent bolt handle.
This is the sort of bolt handle you would typically only see on the sniper versions
where it needs a longer, bent bolt handle to clear the scope.
However, we see them actually trying this on both the carbine and the partner long rifle.
It of course has the standard dust cover that was used on the 38 and later the 99.
If we take a look at the side rail of the receiver where the standard Arisaka markings are,
we can see a Nagoya Arsenal symbol here, serial number on this particular carbine is 4,
and we have a couple of trials proof marks there.
Several of the other parts are also serialised 4.
Up here on the muzzle device as well.
The bolt is actually mismatched, the bolt is serial number 2.
And Arisaka bolts are usually numbered on the bottom face of the bolt stem.
This one's on the back face, ... just a little bit different.
A couple of interesting features here on the front of the receiver.
It has this added band, and I honestly have no idea why that's there.
It originally had a chrysanthemum. Now this particular rifle was actually taken as a souvenir
by an American soldier on Luzon in December of 1945.
So after the war had ended he found this somehow in the Philippines and took it.
And that's why the chrysanthemum has been defaced,
that was part of the capture/souvenir process.
Worth pointing out we have two holes here, those are gas relief holes.
So if a cartridge case ruptures, the gas will vent out the top of the receiver
instead of coming back towards the shooter. That's an important safety factor.
The Type 38 had two holes like this,
the eventual Type 99 that was adopted had only a single vent hole.
This is marked "nine nine type" or "nine nine model".
But again it's done in the style of the Type 38 where the characters were vertical.
On the actual later adopted Type 99s
it's marked from left to right, "nine nine type" in a horizontal row.
So very nerdy, little detailed differences there.
There is a recoil cross bolt in this rifle.
The long rifle partner to it did not have a recoil bolt.
One of the things that the trials were testing
was whether ... the rifles needed to have recoil bolts.
It appears all of the carbine pattern guns were given them
because the carbines are going to have effectively more felt recoil because they're lighter.
The barrel is of course [chambered for] 7.7mm.
The cartridge was developed first so they had the standard cartridge
when they went and developed these test rifles.
Now the rear sight is totally different from a Type 38.
The Type 38 uses a ladder sight that's pinned in the back
that you lift up vertically for long range use.
This uses much more of a Mauser-style tangent sight.
Push the button in and we can adjust out to 1,500 metres here.
And it has a rear aperture.
And it's mounted on this interesting sort of 45 degree angle.
Again we have a really good reference for this, because the one US Ordnance
photo of the long rifle shows what is clearly the same style of sight.
It also has a slightly different style of handguard than the standard Type 38s
that matches up with the architecture for that rear sight.
The magazine release mechanism has been changed.
Normally on the 38s you actually have a release button back here, they moved it to the front.
It's unclear to me if this was intended to be actuated by the tip of a bullet,
or if there was perhaps like a knurled thumb pad that's got lost.
But ... this is spring-loaded here. ...
This is really tight, but if I pull that all the way forward I can actually pop this out.
... Yeah, it's tight enough this has actually stuck itself in the forward position now.
Really no functional difference at all between this and a standard Type 99
follower and floor plate assembly, just a different method of removing them.
One of the most visually distinctive elements on the gun here is this
really funky muzzle device on the front. This is essentially a muzzle brake.
You'll notice there's no port on the bottom, but we do have three ports on the top and the two sides.
And then a front plate here to ensure that essentially the muzzle gases hit this plate
and push the rifle forward to counteract recoil force.
There are two notches cut out of the plate, the top one is so that you have a clear line of sight.
The bottom one is so that you can access the cleaning rod.
Here we go into some more really nerdy Arisaka trivia.
The cleaning rod on this was a new unique style of cleaning rod,
because it's actually threaded into the nose cap there.
... Well, the threading wasn't used on standard rifles.
I can actually take off this muzzle brake, it's held in place by just a split pin.
So I can pull that pin out.
And then the muzzle brake just threads off.
And there we go.
That's one of the more interesting and unique
muzzle devices that I have seen on an actual military rifle before.
You can see there's a hole in the threading there for your cross pin to lock this in place.
And then the final really unique feature on here is a spring-loaded butt plate.
Kind of like that on an FG-42, but really just specifically there to absorb recoil.
So there ... are two springs inside here.
You can actually see from the wear on the wood
exactly how deep the stock reciprocates into that butt plate.
The wood's swollen and this doesn't really move very well any more.
It doesn't depress at the top at all, in fact it's kind of dented up there.
But I can actually move it just a little bit down here at the bottom.
And the intention of this was simply to absorb some of the hefty, hefty recoil
of a light carbine firing a full-power (essentially 8mm) 7.7mm rifle cartridge.
I want to point out, even with this strange-looking muzzle device on there,
this will fit a standard Japanese Type 30 Arisaka bayonet.
There's enough clearance on everything, that drops on there just fine.
One extra cool detail about this gun is we actually know a lot about where it came back from
because the veteran who brought this back kept a bunch of the relevant paperwork.
And so this is the original document here written by his commanding officer,
one First-Lieutenant Palmer, ... this is dated December 28 1945.
"The following named items of Japanese equipment were procured on Luzon, Philippine Islands,
and Jager, Kenneth C., Technical Sergeant, service number such,
is hereby authorised to keep it in his possession, one bayonet (that), one Japanese carbine (that guy)."
Now just a couple of days later on January 1st 1946,
our Kenneth Jager got himself an
Official Certificate of Retention and Customs Declaration for souvenirs.
"As his commanding officer I certify that the above-named enlisted man
has the authority of this theatre commander being authorised to retain
the following items of captured enemy material."
Specifically "sabre", he has now in the last couple of days also acquired himself
a Japanese non-commissioned officer's
a "Jap carbine" and a bayonet, signed by commanding officer.
And this by the way, is the standard sort of bringback capture paperwork
that you would get in World War Two if you're a soldier who is bringing home
souvenir firearms or other weapons.
So it's really cool that we have this original material from our ...
Technical Sergeant Kenneth C. Jager who brought this rifle home.
Presumably as far as I can tell, not recognising that it was anything particularly unusual.
... Obviously he recognised that it looked different, but as far as we can tell
he never ... was aware of the really remarkable nature of its trials background.
This rifle came into the collector's ... market basically
when he passed away and his family wanted to get rid of it.
A little disappointingly, ... not only did they have no interest in the souvenirs themselves,
but it wasn't just this paperwork, ... all sorts of paperwork from his service record
were sold to a collector along with the gun, the bayonet and the sword.
I should also point out the sling here probably is not period to the trials.
This was probably added by a Japanese soldier at some point.
We have no idea how this rifle got to Luzon.
Whether it was actually used by a Japanese soldier there,
or perhaps the guy who brought it back traded it ... from someone else
who had come from some other island, or perhaps from
the Japanese home islands, the occupation force there.
At any rate, it is an original World War Two Japanese rubberised canvas sling.
The problem with these slings is they harden over time,
and this one is permanently set in this position.
And there is absolutely no way it can be removed any more.
So this is not that uncommon to find on Japanese rifles,
rubberised slings that are essentially frozen in whatever position they were stored in.
So ... I can't recreate exactly how,
but this tells us how this rifle was stored for many years probably in a closet or a box.
This rifle, and the other ones that were built at the same time,
were formally tested in October of 1938.
And one of the big takeaways was that the rifles were pretty much good,
the carbines were very unpleasant to shoot.
The muzzle blast was substantial, the recoil was substantial,
And even though this is a carbine that was
specifically built out to address those issues with a muzzle brake
(although the muzzle brake in helping the recoil is going to really accentuate the muzzle blast),
the spring-loaded butt plate, this stuff, it just wasn't sufficient.
And they came out of these trials deciding to scrap the idea of a carbine,
and instead come up with a short rifle for cavalry and other specialist troops.
And in this way the Japanese are a little bit unique in that
they come up with the short rifle concept,
but at the same time they're still also planning to adopt a long rifle for the infantry.
Pretty much every other country, once they come to that intermediate-length short-rifle conclusion
(and that would be guns like the 1903 Springfield, the German Kar98k, the British SMLEs),
once they come to that conclusion they scrap the long and the short versions
and they stick with just this intermediate length rifle for everyone.
The Japanese would actually start manufacturing the Type 99
as both a long rifle and an intermediate length short rifle, but not a carbine.
Anyway, that's getting ahead of myself a little bit, that's a story for another day.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed taking a look at this, ... as far as I know
it's the only surviving example of this pattern of the trials carbine.
So very, very cool to get a chance to take a look at it.