The real "crooked handle" machine gun: only 120 rounds per minute, even the Japanese themselves dislike

Z0z mentioned the firearms and equipment used by the Japanese invaders in World War II. The Chinese are familiar with the 38 large cover rifle and the crooked handle machine gun. The two weapons are actually the 38 type rifle and the Taisho type 11 light machine gun. The film and television works on the theme of the Anti-Japanese War portray these two weapons, usually 38 large caps are powerful and accurate, as the main Japanese rifle. The crooked machine gun is the favorite Japanese weapon captured by the guerrillas and the Eighth Route Army. It can exert extremely fierce firepower in both the hands of the Japanese and the Eighth Route Army. However, the fierce firepower of the crooked machine gun is actually mostly the effect of the film and television works for the scene. The Japanese army themselves disliked the crooked machine gun in actual combat. The name of

crooked handle sub-machine gun is derived from the fact that the butt is bent to the right in order to aim at the cheek, so the Chinese vividly call it crooked handle. In the Japanese army, this light machine gun was issued to front-line infantry squads and used as the lowest level of automatic firepower in the Japanese army, and it assumed the task of fire protection. In order to be compatible with the 38-type rifle ammunition commonly used by the Japanese army, this machine gun uses the same 6.5 mm rifle ammunition. Of course, there are also special 6.5 mm machine gun ammunition available. You can choose between 5 rounds of magazines or 30 rounds of ammunition. The gun has a length of 1100 mm, a theoretical rate of fire of 500 rounds per minute, and a weight of 10.2 kg. The advantages of this machine gun

are high shooting accuracy, good ammunition versatility, and good continuous shooting ability due to the low actual rate of fire. The description of the advantages of the crooked sub machine gun can basically be summarized in the above sentence. Its highlights are not too many. Except for the fact that it can be used with rifles to reduce the shortage of ammunition supply on the battlefield, this machine gun has nothing to do. A bright spot in front of you. But when it comes to shortcomings, it’s not a matter of one or two sentences. To be fair, the crooked sub-machine gun is essentially a weapon that the Japanese army itself dislikes. There are many problems in its design, and many defects greatly limit its use. Use in actual combat.

First of all, the design of the crooked sub-machine gun conforms to the Japanese Army's ammunition saving principle, the rate of fire is not high, and the lack of large-capacity ammunition equipment. In actual combat, the actual rate of fire of the Crooked sub-machine gun is generally below 120 rounds per minute. As a machine gun, such a rate of fire makes its firepower suppression effect insufficient. What's more terrible is that the actual loading of the skewed sub-machine gun is so difficult that it needs to be equipped with an additional loader in addition to the machine gunner. When loading the bullet, open the elastic lever above the hopper, fill in the 6 magazines, and then use the elastic lever to hold down the bullet. This process is time-consuming and laborious, and the use of rifle bullets is not smooth, so special lubricants are required. In addition, once its huge ammunition is damaged, the full gun will be unusable, which further limits the reliability of the crooked sub-machine gun in combat.

In the film and television works, holding a crooked handle to shoot violently, it is actually impossible to happen, and the difficulty of loading determines that this machine gun is more used for precise shooting. Even if the firepower is suppressed, a very complicated bomb change operation must be performed after a few minutes. Therefore, the person holding the crooked handle and rushing out to shoot either has a bad brain or an immortal body.

(the picture shows the Czech ZB-26 light machine gun)

In addition to the above problems, the disadvantages of the crooked sub-machine gun include: the 6.5mm bullet is not powerful enough to effectively strike targets behind wooden boards or brick walls. When the machine gun tripod is mounted on the ground, the distance between the axis of the barrel and the ground is 400mm, and the shooter needs to lean out to shoot and it is very safe. The man-machine function is not good, the shooter tilts his head to aim and the position of the shoulder shooting is not good. The existence of these shortcomings is the reason why the crooked sub-machine gun is not favored by the Japanese army. In fact, the machine gun widely used by the Japanese army is actually a Type 96 light machine gun. The proportion of crooked handles in the Japanese army is much smaller than that of the Type 96. Even the Chinese army, when it can use the Czech ZB-26 light machine gun, will try to eliminate the crooked handle light machine gun, and the seized crooked handle is actually used in the militia.