Posted on 08/05/2016 7:44:54 AM PDT by w1n1
The Idea looked better on Paper
In World War Two Japan had a paratroop corps, Germany provided the technical assistance with equipment implementation in the late 1930’s. One of the methods was the use of parachute-equipped containers housing the firearms, this was dropped separately from the paratrooper. In the combat drop at Sumatra (Japanese) and Crete (Germany), both drop zones had problems of weapons containers landing far from troops, resulting being out gunned.
At the outcome the Japanese obviously thought this wasn't a good idea, and looked at alternatives methods. One idea is to have the paratroops jump with a compact gun. This resulted in a modified Type 99 Arisaka rifle and a folding-stock version. The first proposed plan was not so good.
The first proposed rifle was called Type 1, it was a Type 38 Arisaka carbine with the stock sawed off behind the trigger and had big hinge screwed into the side. The hinge used a latch and wing nut on the left side of the rifle to hold the stock in place.
Archives recorded that several hundred folding rifles were used for trials and performance was not very good. Such as the latch system was not very tight, stocks would wobble around, the threaded stud and wing nut would often catch on things and become damaged. See the Japanese Type 1 rifle video here.
Attacking America at Pearl Harbor - another not so good idea.
Jap Type 94...the original "glockcidental"-like discharge pistol.
Forgotten weapons is the place to check out weapons
That particular one was made in Dec 1944. Note the horrible finishes and the wooden slab grips. By then both Type 94 and Type 14 pistols were made with any parts they could scrounge, often using previously rejected parts.
My Father-in-Law gave me a type 14 which was about as well finished as a gun gets. Back then it was next to impossible to get ammo for them.
Mine was made in November 1928. Also came with a holster, spare mag and cleaning rod. Many years later I sold it to a collector and always regretted doing so.
Actually not a terrible idea at all. The Canadians use just such a rifle (I think a Ruger M77 in 30-06) in their jet ejection pack as protection against polar bears.
I suspect the biggest reason it wasn’t pushed is that paratroopers were not a huge part of Japanese doctrine. I do doubt it was as good as a standard Arisaka, but better than an smg.
The pistol is dated Dec. 1944 (Sho[wa] 19, 12[Dec}) on the far left. t is difficult to imagine anything being built by Japan at that time being of any reasonable level of quality.
No, it was a good idea.
They missed the fuel tanks.
They failed to return a third time that morning to destroy what was not already blown up.
They failed to STAY around Pearl harbor and get the carriers when they did come back on Monday or Tuesday that week.
That the carriers were out at sea on that Sunday morning could not be predicted - they tried, but failed to get the message out. Would Monday have been successful?
By the way, at that time, battleships WERE still the sea power. carriers were not yet proven. Close to be being effective, as Europe showed, but Brit carriers were NOT impressive early on! (As shown by the Brit carrier sunk by gunfire!) One swordfish hitting the Bismark rudder on one lucky shot after dozens of other torpedoes missed, does not a campaign make.
That the Brit carriers WERE successful in shallow water harbor attacks on moored battleships is what the japanese learned from the Med fighting.
According to Saburo Sakai, the Japanese did fear the B-17 early in the war. He said it was the only plane they feared until they learned it was much less effective against ships than they had thought.
I think the main reason they proved ineffective was they tried to bomb at high altitude. Those B-17s were one reason they did not stick around.
” ... They failed to return a third time that morning to destroy what was not already blown up.
They failed to STAY around Pearl harbor and get the carriers ...
... battleships WERE still the sea power. carriers were not yet proven. ...”
VADM Chuichi Nagumo, commanding the IJN strike force that hit Pearl Harbor, was known among colleagues as cautious and methodical and measured; he was not air-minded in the least. He had no inclination to the run the risks that a third wave of IJN aircraft against Hawaii’s defenses might have entailed. Very lucky for the Americans, as they had no organized air defense - no way to alert, launch, direct, recover, rearm, and otherwise coordinate any fighter force that might have been assembled. Not even in peacetime.
A bolder, more innovative Japanese commander might have risked another throw of the dice, causing far greater losses to American forces.
ADM Husband Kimmel, commanding US fleet at Hawaii, was an equally conventional thinker, one of a long line of what were later called “battleship admirals” who knew little about air power.
LTGEN Walter Short, commanding US Army forces in Hawaii (including Army Air Corps units, where the feared B-17s were assigned), was no less a stereotypical ground-forces commander. His lack of understanding of air power (a power still mostly theoretical in 1941, as Robert Cooke pointed out) rivaled that of Kimmel and Nagumo.
Even the briefest of excursions through the written orders and correspondence originating from the offices of Kimmel and Short reveal that both were indeed concerned about a Japanese attack. But the former thought only in terms of a naval (surface) attack, while the latter was preoccupied strictly with an amphibious landing and subsequent ground campaign.
Neither was air-minded, making them the chiefly responsible for the non-existent US response, as the late Gordon Prange showed conclusively in _At Dawn We Slept_. And under the less-than-imaginative leadership of Nagumo, the IJN scarcely knew what to do with the complete surprise they achieved.
Brilliant tactical execution, driven by poor grasp of the US national character and insufficient strategic depth to truly exploit the sweeping victories racked up by Imperial Japanese forces during the first six months of US involvement in the war, or to consolidate gains made. A drawback of protracted war, foreseen by Admiral Yamamoto.
Bad idea;
I rest my case.
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