Article about: I do not collect edged weapons, but used to regard ground blades on bayonets and sabers as mostly post war mutilation, at least from the point of view of a collector. But ever since getting
For instance, the rank of Master Sergeant (特務曹長) was discontinued in 1932 to be renamed Warrant Officer (准尉, meaning “Semi-Lt”), treating them more as officers.
Here , you seem to tell that W.O. "switch" to a final Commissioned Officer role in 1932, so in 1935 (and above) they should use an officer sword Type 94 instead a NCO sword Type 95...
This is what I mean in my previous post...
So, if they really had NCO sword I don't understand something, but where I'm wrong ?
It means that their rank names got changed, but upgrades in how they were treated in terms of pay, equipment, living quarters only came gradually, because they were officially not yet regarded as officers. When the Type 95 swords were introduced, they were not yet entitled to wear officer's swords. Though they eventually joined the ranks of officers, they were still treated with prejudice by other officers.
They were soldiers who had been too long in military service and too experienced to treat as NCOs, but did not have officer level education backgrounds. So not really welcomed into the ranks of officers.
Though a navy example, Miyabe, the protagonist of the film Eternal Zero was such an officer, which was another reason he was treated so poorly by other officers.
Readers are already aware that the Western saber-style sword designs adopted by the IJA, like the Type 32 sword proved itself to be woefully ineffective against the Chinese, wearing heavily padded winter uniforms, typical for the Manchurian Incident of 1931/32, and that caused the revival of the Nihontoh designs for gunto.
The truth, however, was that the IJA were already quite disillusioned by the limitations of the sabers even before the Manchurian Incident and the Incident served merely as the last straw to drop the saber design.
Even before 1930, the Army’s Technical HQ (陸軍技術本部) was trying to make the saber a more lethal weapon by combining a handgun into the saber. These people were like Section Q in the James Bond movies and they had been experimenting with several prototypes towards creating a Gunto Gun.
This is documented fact, as their internal monthly progress report on ongoing weapons development projects finally drew the conclusion in end of May 1930 that the combination of a pistol and sword was not practically viable and the project was officially scrapped on 24th May 1930.
The page shown below is from this development status report.
The project was officially called the development of “ sword with built-in pistol (拳銃附軍刀)”, and several prototypes were actually built and tested. However, further development efforts were now deemed futile for the following reasons.
1. A Gunto with a handgun built into the grip simply became too awkward to wield as a sword.
2. A pistol built into a sword, by nature, will need to be small and thus be of limited effect, while the weight of the sword blade unavoidably compromised the gun’s handling.
3. A combination that worked as both was not compatible with robustness of construction and would cause maintenance difficulties.
“For those reasons we have drawn the conclusion that it would be technically unfeasible to achieve a satisfactory combination of both functions, and hereby discontinue further development on the project”
Thus the Type Q Gunto was officially abandoned and they moved on to discuss the main topic of that day, which was the concluded development of the new Type 90 helmet, so things were not all bad for Section Q that day in May.
It is ironic that the Nihontoh traditional sword design was the result of a technological U-turn from 007-like ultra-modern to traditional warcraft.
Last edited by Nick Komiya; 06-19-2018 at 04:58 PM.
Ever since running into the gunto-gun papers nearly 10 years ago, I had always been curious what the prototypes looked like, but that is literally an ugly son-of-a-gun. I wonder how the bolt worked with the blade sticking out from the chamber area like that?
Tried to find earlier documents on the project for more background, but so far no luck.
Last edited by Nick Komiya; 06-19-2018 at 05:06 PM.
Still no trace of earlier documents on the sword gun, but here's the cover of a 34 page document from Army Technical HQ seeking official approval for establishing two sword models as Provisional Standard Models (仮制式). They called the first sword a Type 91 Horse-riding Sword (九一式乗馬刀) and the second model a Type 91 On-foot Sword (九一式徒歩刀).
As far as Technical HQs were concerned, they finally had completed the development work for a new NCO sword to replace the Type 32, so they made this official request to have them approved as provisional standards on 27th February 1932. The swords were pretty much of Nihontoh design by this point, but still split into an infantry model and cavalry model. They were, however, in for a huge disappointment when the Army finally decided on 26th June, not to grant Type approval and shelved the project.
This was the first try to officially launch what later got launched as the Type 95 Sword. Also shown are prototype photos attached to the failed approval request.
While clarifying production statistics for the Type 100 submachine gun for Arisaka, I also finally figured out the total production volumes of the Type 95 swords during the war years. Production statistics were by fiscal year, so it starts in April and ends in March of the following year. So here it is------
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by nick komiya
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