The Type 11 (十一年式軽機関銃; Jū-ichi Nen Shiki Kei kikan-jū) is a Japanese light machine gun that was designed by Kijirō Nambu. It was the first indigenously-designed light machine gun to see service in the Imperial Japanese Army.
History[]
The Type 11 was developed in the early 1920s in response to the Imperial Japanese Army's desire for a domestically-produced light machine gun. The design of the weapon, as with most indigenous Japanese small arms of the period, was handled by Kijirō Nambu, although it was heavily derived from the French Hotchkiss M1914. Production of the Type 11 was handled by the state arsenal at Kokura and began in 1922. It saw use during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Soviet-Japanese border conflicts of the 1930s, but was gradually replaced by the newer Type 96 and Type 99 light machine guns. By 1941, production of the Type 11 had ceased, with only around 29,000 units manufactured during a 19-year period. Existing models continued to see limited use during World War II.
Design[]
The Type 11 was a derivative of the gas-operated Hotchkiss light machine gun, with some major modifications made to the design, primarily to facilitate the Japanese 6.5x50mm rifle cartridge. The standard strip-feed mechanism of the Hotchkiss was replaced by a more complex hopper feed. To load the weapon, six stripper clips of ammunition, each holding five rounds, would be pressed into the hopper. The hopper had two claws inside of it which would grab the cartridges and pull them into the firing chamber, where they would be in battery. The stripper clip would fall out the bottom of the hopper after all five bullets are fired.
As was standard with most Japanese machine guns, the 6.5mm cartridges needed to be lubricated before being loaded into the gun. This was because the semi-rimless design of the Japanese cartridge was prone to feeding friction. Although the lubrication assisted the feed, it also attracted dirt to be stuck to the cartridges, potentially fouling up the internal mechanism of the gun. There were also instances in which the lubrication could collate within the chamber, creating a thick paste that would prevent the next cartridges from being fed properly.
The stock is offset to the right to work with the offset sights and to aid in disassembly by allowing all the internal parts to slide right out.[1]
Gallery[]
