[ Type 99 Arisaka Snipers ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, I am here today at the Rock Island
Auction House taking a look at a couple of the guns
that they are going to be selling in their
December of 2016 Premier Auction.
Specifically today we're taking a look at two different
types of Japanese Type 99 Arisaka sniper rifles.
Now the more common sniper variant of the Arisaka that's out there is the Type 97.
That was manufactured in 6.5mm, it's basically a Type 38 Arisaka with a scope on it.
And they made in total about 22,000 of those.
Well in 1941, a couple of years later, the Japanese military decided
that it needed to add a 7.7 calibre sniper rifle.
The Type 99 was going to replace the 38 as the standard Japanese infantry rifle,
so they wanted a scoped version of it to match.
Now through 1941 they did a bunch of testing on different configurations of rifle.
They tried a couple of different types of optic.
2.5x power, there [were] ... a couple of different 4x power scopes that were tested.
And they also tested these with both the Type 99 short rifles and the Type 99 long rifles.
So ... early in the manufacture of the Type 99 Arisaka,
they originally had a full-length version that was as long as a Type 38.
And they rather quickly decided that that extra length wasn't really necessary,
and they standardised on a shorter pattern of gun.
Well, when they did the testing with the scoped rifles, they came to the exact same conclusion.
I believe the Japanese study found that if you put a scope on a Type 99 long rifle,
at 300 metres you would see an accuracy improvement of 35%.
I'm presuming they're talking about like a reduction in group size, but
I don't know the specifics of how exactly they arrived at that number.
Well, if you do the same thing and put that scope on a short rifle,
at 300 yards you get a 34% improvement in accuracy.
So a 1% difference between the long rifle and the short.
And they looked at that, and they said,
"Well, that's a pretty trivial difference, we'll just go with the short rifles.
That was what was becoming the standard for the infantry rifles anyway.
They're shorter, they're handier, they're cheaper.
Why not, we'll just make the snipers short rifles too."
Now interestingly when they manufactured these guns there was actually no hand picking,
or special gauging, or anything, they just pulled the ... rifles off the rack
and built them - some as regular guns, and some as sniper rifles.
So ... there's no special accuracy element to a ... Type 99 Arisaka sniper.
The idea was not that the gun was more accurate,
they were quite happy with the accuracy of the rifles in general,
the idea was that by adding a scope you're allowing the shooter to get a better sight picture.
They are able to aim at smaller things that they wouldn't otherwise be able to see.
And they're able to get a more precise shot with the telescopic optic
rather than aligning two sets of iron sights.
So these really are not sniper rifles, so to speak, as we today would think about snipers.
These are precision rifles, or designated marksman rifles.
The terminology is all kind of vague because ... to be honest,
I don't know what the original term would have been in Japanese,
and how one might choose to translate it into English.
At any rate, they are the optics rifles here.
So these were manufactured by two different Japanese arsenals, Kokura and Nagoya.
Nagoya made the vast majority of them, like 10,000 of them made at Nagoya.
The highest serial number that's been recorded from Kokura is 826,
so probably about 1,000 of them made there.
And they actually used two different types of scopes.
They used a 2.5x power scope, all of the Kokura guns have these 2.5x power scopes,
... not many, obviously.
Nagoya actually ... started making guns with 4x power scopes up to about serial number 5,000.
And then from 5,000 to 7,000 they used 2.5x power.
Probably because Kokura stopped making them, Nagoya got all of the leftover supply of scopes,
so they used them until they ran out.
And then from 7,000 to 10,000 Nagoya went back to using 4x power scopes.
Now the end of this period of manufacture they did also experiment with
an externally adjustable 4x power scope, which is pretty cool.
We've got one of those here to take a look at.
So the sniper versions of the Arisaka were all made with offset scopes
so you could still use your iron sights, and more importantly,
you could still use stripper clips for reloading.
They all have bent bolt handles
so that you can still get a good grasp on the bolt handle despite having a scope right there.
And then this is the standard 2.5x power scope.
These were used on the 6.5 guns,
and also on the Kokura and a small number of the Nagoya 7.7 guns.
You may notice that there are no controls on this thing externally,
these were zeroed at the factory.
Now my understanding is if you've got the armourer's tools, you can actually pull the lenses out.
And ... you can actually adjust the zero on these without having a full factory setup.
But it is not a trivial task.
And it's not something that soldiers were expected, or probably allowed, to do in the field.
The idea is this rifle would be zeroed at the factory,
and you would keep your scope with your rifle, and then there's nothing to go wrong.
There was nothing to accidentally bump and lose zero,
there's nothing that a stupid soldier could mess up.
The problem is when these rifles came into the US after World War Two
they virtually all ended up with mismatched scopes.
So it's extremely rare, if not unheard of, to actually find one with a matching scope.
Now to take the scope off, we have a lever lock here.
We're going to lift this button up and then rotate to the front.
And then we have a little spring-loaded button right there, push that down,
and the scope just slides nicely off the back.
Got a good little dovetail there, locked in with this.
This centre bar is
the locking piece. So it rotates up and down.
These scopes are marked with their rifle's serial number on the inside.
This is 7022, so this is actually the scope from a Nagoya gun mounted on this Kokura rifle.
As I said, they are virtually always mismatched.
It's a 2.5x power magnification by a 10 degree field of view, got a serial number there.
There are actually six, or maybe even more than six,
different companies that manufactured optics for these.
They did come with a rubber eye cup, most of those are either gone
or totally crusty and hardened. There are reproductions,
this one's nice enough that I suspect it's a reproduction, although I don't know for sure.
So here is one of the adjustable 4x power scopes.
It's substantially larger, you can see there a 2.5x there for comparison's sake.
... Most of the 4x power scopes were a fixed 4x power,
with, well honestly, with a mounting very much like this one.
They did experiment with some externally adjustable scopes
towards the end of production though, this is one of them.
Removal is done the same way, we're going to rotate the locking lever to the front,
push the button, and this slides very nicely off the back.
It is also serial numbered here, this one is 4870,
which does not match the serial number of this rifle unfortunately.
They pretty much never do.
Now even though it is externally adjustable,
this is not a trivial thing. This ... has three square headed bolts under these caps.
And ... what you would do is ... you'd kind of have to loosen all three of them,
and then put pressure on depending on which way you are trying to move the scope.
This is something you would definitely want to do with a jig.
It may be technically adjustable, but it's not the sort of thing that you're going to go out there
and just re-zero your rifle in the morning off ... a little shooting rest.
No, you'd want a fixture to put the rifle in,
and, yeugh, this would be kind of a nightmare to re-zero.
Better than not being able to do it, but it's not great.
A couple of other details to take note of here.
The serial numbers on these rifles are put on the rear receiver bridge, as are the arsenal marks.
Normally you would have those on the side of the receiver right under where the scope mount is.
So since that would make them completely illegible they moved those markings to the top.
That's at the top there, that's a nice way to be able to distinguish
between an Arisaka that someone has added a scope to
and a true factory Arisaka is the location of those marks.
Now with the 6.5 guns they actually re-designated the rifle to ... be the Type 97,
with the 99s they did not.
The 99 snipers and the 99 infantry rifles both have these markings that say 9-9-type, 9-9-shiki.
The chrysanthemum is the same as all the other Japanese rifles.
On there is the mark of the Emperor, typically obliterated after the surrender of Japan.
Because these were manufactured relatively early in the war,
they do have pretty much all early features, so you'll find things like the anti-aircraft sights.
Typically you would also find them with monopods, although this one does not have a monopod.
Thank you for watching guys, I hope you enjoyed the video.
Pretty cool to take a look at these, there are about half as many of these ...
originally made as there were Type 97 snipers.
So they are pretty scarce guns to run across today, and hopefully now you have a better idea
for some of the different variances, and what the Japanese were doing with these.
If you'd like to own either of these, take a look at the description text below.
You'll find links there to Rock Island's catalogue pages on both of them.
And in fact there are a number of other Type 97 and Type 99 snipers in this upcoming auction.
So if you're interested in acquiring one or more of these,
definitely take a look through the rest of the catalogue
to check out the others that they have as well.
And thanks for watching.