- For the machine gun, see Type 100 machine gun.
The Type 100 (一〇〇式機関短銃 Hyaku-shiki Kikan Tanjū) was a Japanese submachine gun that was designed by Kijirō Nambu and used by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II. It was the most widely-produced of Japan's indigenous submachine gun designs during the war.
History[]
Prior to World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army had no submachine guns and the Navy had only limited amounts of SIG Type Be submachine guns. The official military attitude towards submachine guns in Japan was generally dismissive and there were initially no concerted efforts to investigate the adoption of such a weapon prior. However, the effective use of submachine guns by Chinese forces at Shanghai, in addition to their extensive use in the European theater, forced the IJA to reconsider their stance. The late 1930s they commissioned Lt. Gen. Kijirō Nambu's Tokyo company, Nambu Arms, to develop a new submachine gun. Nambu himself acted as lead designer on the project. The resultant weapon was known as the Type 3 (as it was one of three submachine gun prototypes that Nambu had developed), and was adopted in 1940 as the Type 100.
Nambu produced the Type 100 in low volumes and it was accepted into military service, seeing very limited issue with Japanese Marines in China. In 1942, the Japanese government acquired the production rights to the weapon and ordered a further production run at the Kokura and Nagoya Arsenals. Despite this, the Type 100 was always considered a low priority and there was no demand for large numbers of the gun. Some 10,000 were made at Kokura for the IJA and were issued only to officers, while Nagoya produced a few thousand hinged-stock models for the Navy and paratroopers.
By 1944, the strain on Japan's manufacturing capacity led to the introduction of a simplified model of the Type 100, commonly known as the Type 100/44, produced at Nagoya Arsenal. The quality of the Type 100/44 was considerably poorer than the original version, but it was produced at much greater speed. Towards the end of the war, issue of the Type 100 became more common in response to increased demand from Japanese troops. Production finally ceased upon Japan's surrender in September 1945 and by the end of the war, about 25,000 Type 100s had been manufactured in total.
Surplus Type 100s saw further, albeit limited, use during the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
Design[]
The Type 100 was a blowback-operated submachine gun that fired from an open bolt. The action was based heavily on the Bergmann action used by the IJN's earlier Type Be submachine gun, but scaled down to accommodate the smaller 8×22mm cartridge. The weapon's feeding system was reported to give trouble and stoppages were relatively common. Early examples of the Type 100 featured bayonet fittings and bipods, features that were later dropped to drive down the production cost.
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