FOR MY SOURCES
I used different websites, the most well-known being Wikipedia but in japanese, then you just have to use google translate on the page, and you have a lot of informations that the english Wikipedia doesn’t have.
But also some not well-known website, like Lone Sentry, where I found pics of the mortar Type 3 and the spigot grenade launchers: Japanese – Catalog of Enemy Ordnance
This new Lone Sentry link is a goldmine too, I found some interesting stuff there. Here you can clearly see the differences between the Type 38 rifle, short rifle and carbine:
What I did is: I went to wikipedia in japanese, translated the page in english and went to the classification table at the end of any japanese WW2 weapon page, where you see all the other links to the other japanese weapons of WW2, then I went to the articles, and copy pasted the title (the name of the weapons in this case) of the pages in japanese language, and found the results in the pictures section of google.
Here are the wikipedia links in japanese:
MG: 試製四式車載重機関銃 - Wikipedia
AT Rifle: 十三粍手動銃 - Wikipedia
Hmm Nice I found somthing,too though it is not good for TT since it would cause a red revoulotion but imma say it Japanese had captured AVS-36s and AF(Avtomat Federov)
"December 22, 1938. Order signed by Rikyu Hiroshi, Army Supply Adjutant (at Air Army Headquarters) to the Technical Supply Department. “Conduct a general inspection, description, measurements and drawings, and operating diagrams of the mechanisms of the received sample of automatic rifle. Received on December 8, 1938 from the Department of Registration and Collection of Captured Weapons in a set: automatic rifle “Fuedorofu” type 1925 (フェドロフ 1925式), signal pistol (flare gun), automatic pistol type “Korofuin”, pistol type “Nagant””. Automatic rifle (as it is written) “Fuedorofu” has damage.
Also there was a testing result in this entry under the name “Sakarōfu” which is Simonov in Japanese
It would be useful to know if it was ever built, because I’m really not into paper guns. It would be even better if there was a pic of it.
For the 13.2mm AT rifle, the wikipedia article in japanese says that it was tested and performed well, but the development was stopped because the cartridge was considered as not powerful enough. The only “pics” I have found are the ones on the japanese 3D models website, that’s why I said that I am not sure if these “pics” are legit or not.
The type 96 AT gun wasnt made there is just the paper like I said it was dismissed it was considered too dangerous for shooter Imma do some more research for interesting things since Im tired now gonna see what I can find tomorrow
About foreign weapons, I am not really against it, some are already in the tree after all, like the KE7 and the chinese-bought SIG Bergmann, but I would like these weapons to have at least seen some use in the japanese armed forces, just like the ZB26 for example, which was unofficially adopted. The simple “test weapons” like you have suggested are a bit too much in my opinion, because every nation in the world has always tested the weapons made by the other nations, and if we follow that logic, all the nations could pretty much have all the weapons made during WW2.
So I would still prefer unique japanese prototypes, to keep the tree unique, or foreign weapons which were “unofficially adopted”.
Maybe, it depends. Were they bought to equip some japanese units, like the S1-100 or the SIG Bergmann ? Or did they just buy 2 or 3 units to just test them and never use them again after that ? I think we should stay with the foreign weapons used by some military units, but that’s just my opinion.
I edited a few posts: slightly modified the Type Hei (late) and Type Su/Type Be suggestions for more clarity, added a mortars illustration, and added links to other topics in my first post.
Do you all prefer to add the missing suggestions of other topics here ? Or are you fine with just links to other topics ?
Btw, I found another goldmine about japanese grenades/rifle grenades/mines here: TM 9-1985-4; Inhaltsverzeichnis
I’ll study more this link later, I’m too tired now.
Edited the Rocket launchers/antitank rifles and rifle grenades/grenade launchers post with more content and adjustments for more clarity.
I also edited the Mortars part for more clarity.
Finished to edit all the suggestion posts for more clarity, and added pictures for scoped MGs.
Added a pic of another Type 38 short rifle.
Re-edit: I removed my first picture of this rifle, because I could only find the version I removed on one website (and I don’t like to post things if I am not too sure about these), so the new pics I added show at least the most common version of the short rifle if there were more than one version of it.
Should I add the other prototypes of SMGs and MGs, and the old Murata/Arisaka variants that are on the other suggestion topics ?
So, it seems that Profile - SzepWaxweiler - Enlisted is very interested in foreign weapons used by the japanese, so I thought that this could be a good idea to show some pictures of my encyclopedia of weapons called “Encyclopédie de l’armement mondial” by Jean Huon, and it is a 7 tomes collection about every weapon used by all countries in the world. The author began to publish these books in 2012 iirc, so some informations might not be up to date, but it is a VERY complete collection. Here is the book:
I will show you the pictures of the lists of foreign weapons used by the japanese. I’m on mobile, so this might not be perfect. This book must be read in columns: each page has 2 columns, you read the left column, and you read the right column after it. It is in french, so we are not interested in the sections where it says “après 1945” or “depuis 1945”, which are post-WW2, obviously.
