Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and obviously we need to address some
misconceptions about the Japanese Type 94 Nambu.
If there is a gun that is more egregiously misrepresented
and misunderstood than the Chauchat, it's probably this guy.
So, pretty much all of the misunderstandings about this gun
centre on the fact that it has an exposed sear.
Which leads to a variety of interesting theories about how it can
discharge at random, or how it was perhaps designed that way
specifically for shooting people while surrendering.
And all of this is basically completely untrue.
So let's start with the easy one, that it was designed this way for surrendering.
Well, the fact of the matter is it was requested in early 1934.
It was based on patents that Kijiro Nambu ... was granted in ... like 1930,
and it was actually adopted into service in late 1934 and went into production in 1935.
In 1934 and '35 the Japanese Imperial Army was surrendering to exactly nobody, and had no intentions of ever doing so.
They did not by any means design a pistol specifically so that you could hold it flat in your hand,
and push on the side, and shoot one last American soldier as you were surrendering.
A fanciful story. Whether it actually happened or not is a different matter.
Obviously the pistol wasn't designed for that, not in 1934.
Just as a quick aside, I would submit that the CZ 38 is in fact a worse pistol than the 94 Nambu in almost every way.
It has a worse trigger pull. It has the same system of the slide will lock open when it's empty,
but nothing holds it open except the magazine.
So as soon as you pull the magazine, you have to re-rack the slide when you reload it.
This actually has a grip that is substantially less comfortable to hold onto than the 94 Nambu.
It fires a cartridge that is pretty well on par with the Nambu in .380.
Not exactly, you know, the world's greatest service pistol cartridge.
As a quick aside, one might wonder what was this pistol designed for because it looks kind of ugly.
Well, the fact of the matter is it was designed specifically for air crews.
The Type 14 Nambu was a substantially longer and heavier pistol.
Two inches longer than this and about five ounces, like more than a quarter pound heavier.
The Army Air Force wanted something that was lighter and more convenient. This did the job very well.
It also addressed a couple of shortcomings of the Type 14, predominantly its tendency to have light strikes.
It had a relatively weak striker spring and that was probably the biggest failing of the pistol. That and breaking firing pins.
Well, the Type 94 has a hammer firing system, not a striker, and it ... gives a far sharper, far stronger blow to primers
and it does not suffer from the sort of light strikes that the Type 14 did.
In addition, it is shorter and lighter. It became very popular with airmen as well as tank crews and paratroopers.
So it really did its job quite well. There are indications that among large swaths of the Japanese Army
this was actually a more popular pistol than the Type 14 because it actually operates more reliably.
And despite the weird look of the grip, it's actually pretty comfortable to handle.
Alright, so the deal with the sear bar. The sear is this long bar right here.
I'm gonna pull the magazine for the moment just to get it out of the way, because the gun does lock open on it.
And there you go, it's empty.
Well, if you push on this sear bar you can in fact discharge the gun.
Come on, there we go.
Pushing this in is how the pistol actually works. When you pull the trigger
the same thing happens, or it would if it didn't have a magazine safety. There we go.
So when I pull the trigger that bar pivots.
Now the safety for the pistol (make sure we've got it cocked), the safety is right back here.
And the way the safety actually works is that it prevents that bar from lifting up at all. It physically blocks it.
Of course the way this pistol was intended to be used, you would load the thing,
rack a round into the chamber, and engage the safety and then holster it.
And if you do that it's entirely, completely safe.
As safe as any other single-action hammer-fired pistol with a manual safety.
And this isn't even a manual safety that's particularly easy to accidentally disengage.
It's got a nice deep detent there that it locks into, and it takes a specific deliberate effort to disengage.
So as this was carried by the Japanese it was in no way an unsafe pistol.
Once you take that thing off, you're ready to start shooting.
There are people who will say that you can push on the frame and cause the gun to fire.
That's simply patently untrue. You have to push on this centre bar and it's at the same height as the frame.
So if something just pushes on the frame, say the inside of the holster if you decide to holster it cocked,
you know, loaded, cocked and unsafed, which is a dumb thing to do in the first place.
But even then the holster is not going to discharge this.
In fact if there's any problem with holstering, it is that the magazine button is a little bit high
and holstering it you might disengage the mag release and pop the magazine out.
This not so much. Now can you hold it this way
and fire it by pushing on that lever?
Yeah, yeah, you can and it'll work, and I am sure that at least one or two Japanese soldiers
did indeed do that when pretending to surrender.
... Not because the gun was designed for it, but rather because it was an innovative way
to surprise someone with a gun that they didn't expect to be deadly in that position.
But this was in no way a design feature. I suspect that the reason that it was done this way
was to simplify construction and operation of the safety.
This is a real simple, easy part to make compared to a lot of safeties that require close fitting in with the fire control parts.
All this has to do is be a pin through the frame and then physically block that sear bar from lifting up.
So if the sear were concealed within the gun, it would be a lot harder to do that.
And this was probably seen as an effective manufacturing and design method because
when it's carried with the safety on it's completely safe.
Hopefully we've cleared up a few of the myths and misunderstandings about the Type 94.
It was by no means the world's greatest pistol, it was maybe not even in the top 50%.
But it was not nearly as bad as what most people tend to represent it as.
And it is certainly not nearly as unsafe as people tend to represent it.
So, hopefully you got something out of the video.
Thanks for watching.