Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, I'm here today once again at the Rock Island Auction House, taking a look at
some of the machine guns that are coming up for sale in their September of 2015 Premier auction.
What I have here in front of me today are two examples of
what could definitely be argued to be the best light machine gun of the Second World War.
These are Nambu light machine guns, a Type 96 and a Type 99.
They're mechanically pretty much identical, so I figured we should take a look at both of them together.
Now the first light machine gun that the Japanese military had was the Type 11.
And this was a really funky, unusual, cool gun that actually fed from a hopper full of standard
rifle stripper clips. We've done a video on one of those before, so you can take a look at that if you're interested.
Now in 1936 they adopted a replacement for it, the Nambu Type 96.
This is still in 6.5x50 semi-rimmed Japanese, standard Japanese rifle ammunition at the time.
And it was designed by Kijiro Nambu, who at that time was a retired Lieutenant-General.
He actually owned a rifle factory, and he kind of came out of retirement to design this gun
for the Japanese. Though the war in China was really picking up
and they needed something a little bit more modern than the old Type 11.
So a lot of people look at these guns and assume that they're copies of the Bren guns,
because frankly they share a number of aesthetic features. The basic layout of the gun
is the same as the Bren, and most obviously this top mounted magazine.
In fact, the guns mechanically really don't have anything significantly in common with the Bren.
They both use a long stroke gas piston, but the locking mechanisms are totally different,
the ejectors are different, we'll take a look at the internals in just a minute.
The Type 96, as I said, was introduced in 1936, and adopted. It didn't really get into
significant production until 1938, and it was produced through 1943.
The Type 99, which is the other gun we have here, followed it just a few years later.
The Japanese military had ... been concerned that the 6.5mm cartridge wasn't lethal enough,
and so they wanted to upgrade to a 7.7mm cartridge, that's a .30 calibre cartridge.
So they did this and ... if they're going to have all their Type 99 rifles in 7.7,
they needed a light machine gun in the same cartridge for logistical reasons.
So they basically slightly scaled up the Type 96 to use 7.7mm ammo,
and the result was the Type 99. It also took a couple years to actually get into production.
It was formally adopted in 1939, didn't actually go into production until '41.
And then these were produced from '41 until the end of the war.
The obvious significant difference is the calibre change. There are a couple of other smaller
differences that we'll take a look at in just a moment.
I do also want to point out the Japanese are pretty much the only nation in the Second World War
that went to the extent of mounting bayonets on their light machine guns.
The Japanese really liked edged weapons, and well, they put bayonets on pretty much everything,
and the light machine guns were no exception.
These guns in general were very highly regarded by American troops who had to actually face them.
These would typically comprise the main base of fire for a Japanese defensive position.
... They would aim low, they would be used in very close range, and typically in ambush.
So you'd be looking at a 25 to maybe 50 yard engagement range. And a
long burst from one of these Nambus would be absolutely deadly at that range.
And they were, to a great many American servicemen.
It's probably accurate to say that the Nambu light machine guns caused more casualties
for Americans in the Pacific than any other single type of Japanese small arm.
Alright, I'm going to start us out with the Type 96. This was the early gun.
This one has a protective muzzle cover, you don't always find those.
These guns have an adjustable gas regulator, so if the gun gets dirty
or you're in particularly harsh conditions, or you have a bad lot of ammunition,
you can adjust the amount of gas pressure to keep the gun running effectively and reliably.
They have a nice big charging handle here.
These guns do fire from an open bolt,
and they have a non reciprocating charging handle. So when you need to cock the gun,
pull the handle back, and then latch it forward, and it will stay there until you're done shooting.
They do have a quick-change barrel.
This is a plunger, you would pull the pin out, rotate this 90 degrees up.
Now this is a deactivated gun, a DEWAT, and this lever has been welded in place.
So I can't take the barrel out to demonstrate that unfortunately.
But it's interesting to note that typically a spare barrel would be carried with these guns,
but they don't appear to have been used very much, and they were often abandoned.
In the tactics that Japanese used with these guns, frankly, the spare barrel wasn't
all that important, at least in the Pacific theatre fighting the US.
The barrels you'll see have a spiral cooling fin on them.
That of course is to increase surface area, help the gun cool.
The carry handle is mounted on the barrel,
so if you do decide to change the barrel (it would of course be quite hot), you can use this handle
to hold on to it and do that without needing, say, an asbestos glove.
And then of course the carry handle is quite well balanced for carrying the gun regularly.
A safety is located here. Up is safe, which does also lock the bolt. Down is fire, pretty simple.
There is no semi-auto setting on the Nambu, it is simply safe or full-auto, and it fires from an open bolt.
The sights on the 99 and the 96 Nambu are pretty slick. The 96 has this drum rear sight,
you simply dial in to raise the rear sight.
And it has a nice little window here telling you what your elevation is in hundreds of metres, pretty cool.
They also all came with a dovetail on the top of the receiver to fit this 2.5 power optical sight.
It's a periscopic sight, (... move the camera so you can see that).
So the optical sight here is a periscope type sight.
Of course, because the magazine is centred on the gun you need to be able to sight around it.
So the iron sights are offset to the left and then the optic has a prism and is offset to the right.
This is a 2.5 power magnification scope, it gives you a 13 degree field of view,
it's actually a pretty impressively wide field of view.
The reticle has ranging stadia out to 1,400 yards,
and it actually also has circular stadia for giving lead to aerial targets, moving aircraft.
Now the scopes were removable, what you would do (this one's pretty tight on there),
you would lift this locking tab up, unscrew the knob, and then the scope slides backwards off the dovetail.
They're pretty light scopes, they're pretty durable, pretty light,
not a whole lot of reason you would need to take one off. But in jungle warfare
they did often get removed because ranges were just so close that they were unnecessary.
Alright, moving to the Type 99, there are only a couple significant differences.
One that's pretty obvious is the magazine. It is distinctively less curved than the 96 magazine.
That's the easiest way to tell them apart.
I should point out these guns both have automatic dust covers.
The spring on this one is set up slightly wrong, it can be fixed, but I haven't done it.
This dust cover is actually permanently being forced down onto (or when it's set up right),
forced down onto the ejection port to cover it,
and the action of ... the ejector pushes it open to allow ... a spent case to clear out.
It's a very good dust cover.
Our magazine catch is very easy to operate, the magazines are nose in, rock back,
and they're very smooth and easy to change, even from the prone position, which is important.
We do also have
a magazine cover, so these guns were pretty well protected from the elements. Nambu was a smart guy.
Now the 99 also added a conical flash hider,
and, although it's missing on this gun, a rear monopod. How useful that monopod is in practice?
Nyah, it's kind of a question. In theory it's nice to be able to make the gun fully supported,
and it gives it a little bit more long-range pseudo-heavy machine gun capability.
Alright, one other change to the Type 99 that is widely misunderstood is the barrel changing mechanism.
Instead of having a simple lever that you can open and pull the barrel off,
the 99 has this adjustable tightening nut. And in order to change the barrel
(this one again is very tight, so I'm not going to pull the barrel off),
but you unthread this, pull it out, and this is your barrel locking wedge.
When you put this back in and tighten the nut down, you are actually tightening the barrel into the receiver
and a lot of people think you can just take any standard Nambu 99 barrel, drop it in,
crank this down with a wrench (as with many, you'll see that this one has a lot of evidence of wrenching on it),
and be good to go. That's not actually how this system is supposed to work.
This was done in order to simplify manufacture.
Each individual barrel would be head spaced to a gun with the use of thin washers.
Once the barrel was head spaced (matched to the gun), then you put it in,
push the locking wedge in and tighten it down simply to pull ... the barrel effectively back into the receiver.
But you have to have matching head spaced barrels.
The idea was by allowing each barrel to be individually head spaced,
you no longer had to have the machining precision to make all of the barrels interchangeable.
That made them cheaper and faster to manufacture.
Alright, how about some disassembly?
In order to take one of these guns down, the first thing we are going to do
(this one is again a very tight gun, so I kind of pre-did a little bit of this),
you pull this plunger out, rotate this lever up, and then we pull it horizontally out of the gun.
That releases this rear cap.
We can then pull that out along with our very long recoil spring.
Once the rear cap is off, then we can go ahead and use the charging handle to pull out our bolt and carrier
(the charging handle stays on for basic field stripping), but then the bolt and the bolt carrier come sliding
right out the back of the gun.
Now here's where this gets a little bit unusual.
The Nambu is locked by a vertically sliding block, and we access that underneath the gun.
I'm going to flip the gun over here, and then I have
this
spring-loaded cover that pops up, and then I can reach inside and take out a locking block.
Alright, so getting back to this notion that the Nambu is a copy of the Bren gun, this is where it is very much different.
The Bren gun has a tilting bolt that pivots up and down at the back and locks into the receiver.
The Nambu has this sliding wedge.
This is the locked position, this is the unlocked position.
So this travels up and down in the receiver. When the piston goes all the way forward ...
actually what happens (remember this is firing from an open bolt), so as the bolt is going forward,
it's coming forward like this, it hits this ramp, that pushes the locking wedge up,
the locking wedge is now locked into the sidewalls of the receiver,
and locked into the bolt. That's what keeps everything solidly in the breech, solidly in place when the gun fires.
In addition, so you can see here it's locked, but it has a little bit more travel.
That last bit of travel is what engages the firing pin.
So if I take this off, our firing pin
is this component right here. It's all the way forward, it protrudes out, fires the gun.
So again, because this is an open bolt gun, ... as soon as it fully locks,
(there we go),
as soon as it fully locks, the firing pin protrudes out, and it fires.
At that point the gas piston starts to move backwards, it does this, and a camming surface
pulls the locking block down. And now the bolt and carrier can travel backwards freely.
That ejects the empty case and then loads a new one.
So another element that I really think is pretty cool on the Nambus is the ejector.
Instead of being a typical little kind of flimsy piece of metal, it's this gigantic thing.
So it's under its own little dust cover here, it is a really long ... the whole thing is about this long,
pinned in the centre here, and what it does is simply mechanically actuated by the bolt.
It's got a foot back here inside the receiver, and when the bolt travels backward,
the bolt hits the rear of this lever and just cams it in this way,
and this acts as a big boot that just kicks the cartridge out the side of the gun.
So when I pull the charging handle back, you can see it coming out right there.
That is a serious ejector.
Alright, two last things I want to mention here. The first is Japanese use of lubricated ammunition.
On a lot of the early Japanese machine guns, there were mechanisms in place to oil cartridges as they were fed.
Nambu was never a big fan of this practice, and by the time the 96 and the 99 came out they really don't need it.
Now it doesn't actually hurt, until you drop lubricated ammo in the dust and it gets covered with dirt.
The 99 and the 96 did not have any function built into the gun for oiling,
Although my understanding is that they did have oiler pads built into the magazine loading tools.
Shooters today report that you really don't need the oil. Doesn't hurt, it will help extraction,
especially when the guns get gunky and dirty and slow down a bit, but it's not actually necessary.
The other thing I want to point out is on these magazines
there is actually a bit of a cartridge counter. Now it only goes up to four,
it's sitting on the back of the follower.
... And so when you have more than four rounds you see brass through this viewing hole.
When you're just about out of ammo, you'll start to see a cartridge counter that counts down 4, 3, 2, 1 and 0.
How practical this was in the field? I'm not sure,
but from a theoretical point of view it's a nice little feature to add. If you're not sure,
this is kind of the equivalent of loading a couple of tracers at the end of a magazine
to tell you when you're almost out. At a glance, you can tell if you're close to being out.
So I said at the beginning of this video that these are arguably the best light machine gun
of the Second World War, and I'll stand by that claim.
The Nambus were extremely reliable, they were light, ... they're very ergonomic.
Frankly, they run circles around the US BAR, they are far more effective guns
as light machine guns than the BAR. The only thing that would come close to competing
with them would be the Bren gun, and frankly the Nambu has some advantages over the Bren.
They are certainly lighter, they're set up with optical sights like we saw.
The Bren probably is a slightly more durable gun, it's a little more heavily built.
And at that point it's kind of a toss-up which one do you think is better.
Me? If I have the choice it would be hard, it'd be a hard decision for me.
The Type 96 Nambu in particular is a very light and very handy and very effective gun.
Now if you'd like to add either of these to your own collection,
they are of course both for sale here at Rock Island.
These are both registered machine guns, so you would have to go through an NFA transfer to own them.
That's the downside, the upside is they're registered machine guns,
so you get to play with cool machine guns once they're in your possession.
The 99 here is a fully functional gun, the 96 is a registered DEWAT, meaning you would have to
get the barrel either fixed or replaced. I should also point out the 96 has a ... resin fake magazine.
Magazines are very difficult to come by for these two guns, so something to be aware of.
If you take a look in the description text below, you'll find links to both of these guns
here in the Rock Island auction. You can check out their pictures, their description text,
and if you decide that you just can't live without these, place a bid online,
or you can come down here to Rock Island in person and participate in the auction.
Thanks for watching. I hope you guys enjoyed the video.