Japanese Trials Gas-Operated Pedersen Rifle | Tokyo
Information | History | View | Sightseeing | Video
http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons Sold at auction for $8,625. The Japanese semiauto rifle trials of the early 1930s had a total of four entrants - Kijiro Nambu and his company, Tokyo Gas & Electric, the Tokyo Army Arsenal, and Nippon Special Steel. This rifle is one of the third iteration of the design from Nippon Special Steel. It is a design based originally on the Pedersen, but with substantial changes. It is a toggle-locked and gas-operated action with a gas piston that moves forward upon firing. It feeds from a ten-round detachable box magazine, which is unfortunately missing on this example. In total, 13 of these rifles were made for trials, with 4 of them actually being tested (and firing over 100,000 round between them without any extraction problems, apparently). This rifle did have some accuracy problems, though, which would be fixed by its designer for the fourth and final trials, at which point it and the Tokyo Army Arsenal rifle were determined to be of equal quality - and then the whole program was dropped as the Marco Polo Bridge incident caused the Sino-Japanese War to quickly intensify.
Comments
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Thank god this rifle didn't take. The Japanese were scary enough with their Arisaka rifle.
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from the closer look the gas operating lever has from bottom to top 小 中 大 meaning little, medium and large
so maybe how much gas would have to be ejected (I know little of firearm mechanics) a bit of gas, somewhere in the middle, and large amounts of gas
if this is a semi automatic weapon then I guess it's a firing mode switch? single shot, burst shot? and full auto? -
Pretty amazing that this sold for less than $9,000, when the Japanese "Garand" that you reviewed sold for over $63,000. And there were fewer of these made too! :P
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Sigh, I do love toggle actions....
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The AK of semi automatics here?
Shame the entire system in Japan was rotten to the core by militaristic delusions or else they would have had much better equipment in general and not been in stupid wars they could not win. -
Looks like a mix between a m1 garand, a6 browning, luger, and a m1918a2 bar.
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A WILD JAPANESE ARMY RIFLE HAS APPEARED!
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What happened with rock island auction?
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Least good looking? This gun looks badass.
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Meanwhile at the Japanese high command 1940
"Ok men, what do our soldiers need?"
"Bayonets!"
"Tankettes!"
"How about more firepower?"
Stares deeply
"That's it Satoshi, go commit seppuku!" -
The three characters on the gas regulator are 大, 中, and 小, which mean "large," "middle," and "small," respectively. I don't think any of those three cuts off the gas entirely.
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Do you happen to know the name of the Nambu semi-automatic rifle you mentioned at the start of video? Just curious what the prototype looked like.
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Fascinating story. That poor Colonel. Rather like the Cochran turret revolver actually more interesting than the gun on show. Despite the gun itself being very interesting of its own regard.
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Looks like a Rube Goldberg device. Even looks like a mousetrap. That aside, the early tendency of the Japanese offensive movements was to use a all out charge with bayonets. US troops on Guadalcanal wondered what in hell are they doing? Machine gun emplacements killed them in droves. A semi-automatic rifle in that situation would be of little use. The Japanese troops learned a lesson but still never abandoned the charge.
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You guys have the greatest oddball guns. I can just waste hours watching you talk about the stories behind these arms
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its actually not as ugly as i thought it would be, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. i love it.
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Wow! Gas operated? The only reason I'd have that big thing coming up every time is because it has to. If you are going to change it to gas operated, I'de get rid of the whole blow-back mechanism i the first place. No wonder Nambu bailed.
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I actually really like the look of the thing
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Aside from the .276 Garand prototype, this is probably the most interesting rifle you have profiled, in terms of its mechanical design and execution. THAT is the one I would have bought at the auction, and of course, it was one of the cheaper ones, too...
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So I'm just getting into the firearm scene (finally got disposable income, yay!) and I've spent the last year-ish getting to know my SKS inside and out. Seeing this rifle apart really blew my mind with it's elegance. Time to track down a Type 38 to scratch my itch for imperial japanese engineering.