1944 Japanese Type 94 Nambu

[Rulz]

Ok, so here I go again with one of my silly threads about a gun that many on here either don't know about or prolly don't care about lol...this little gun kinda fell in my lap recently. It was made in February of 1944, so it's a late war gun for Japan, and that's why it has the very "rough" appearance, like other countries towards the end of the war that were focused on speed of production rather than quality, these guns were turned out with fairly rough features. I placed my S&W model 327 night guard next to it just to show how small the gun is, it's definitely made for smaller hands.

The 8 mm Nambu round is an odd duck, not very powerful despite is looking like a shortened 30 Remington cartridge. I fired this gun the other night, stupid me, I had cleaned it a bit but didn't use much lube, so it failed to eject the spent case. After I lubed it more, it began to function just fine and shot 3 rounds nicely. The original holster had seen better days, its missing the flap closure, but still retains the extra magazine holder.

I later disassembled the gun and found that all the numbers matched. The magazine doesn't match, but that's just fine with me. Magazines are listed for sale at times with the numbers and I might be able to find one with the last three digits of the serial number at some pount.

Anyway, I thought it was a neat old WW2 piece to add to my collection, might try and find a Type 14 Nambu at some point, those are in greater abundance than these 94s. One more thing...this gun is notoriously known as the "suicide pistol"...if you are interested in that, look it up...it has to do with the design of the sear being external...
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[Rulz]

Well, the old gun worked about as well as I thought it would. The mag holds 6, but it really doesn't like to function with that many, it performed flawlessly with 5. Don't have too many ammo options, so it could be either that, the old mag itself, or it could due to how rough the gun is, the slide isn't exactly smooth like a Kimber or fine Colt 1911 lol.

I managed to get all 6 shots into a group of about 6 inches at 15 yards, the sights are fixed and canted a bit to the right. The trigger is awful of course. And the grip is tiny in my hands. My wife would probably be able to fire it better than I can, her hands are tiny.

I did manage to hit paper from 50 yards on a small stick on Hornady target about 1 foot square. I thought that was pretty cool considering. The recoil is very light, 8mm Nambu isn't going to stop a large person unless you have good shot placement. I could tell by the holes it made that it wasn't hitting that hard, didn't have a chance to hit my paddle target because the brass near that end of the shooting bay was substantial on the ground, and I ended up losing one case because I couldn't find it among all the cases on the ground. Didn't want to chance losing more (that's why I started shooting at 50 lol).

Pretty pleasant gun to plink with, I'm surprised that these haven't had more of a following in the WW2 collector realm. Not many around, and I doubt many have a flawless barrel like this one. It's like a mirror down the bore.

 

[TexasCowPoke]

Rulz, I've never seen one, but I do enjoy your vintage finds, unusual birds and history/range reports!!!! Interesting gun!

 

[Rulz]

Thanks, TCP, I enjoy gun discussions and whatnot, particularly old milsurp items. I really love all guns but the oddities are the most fun to discover.


My next "search" is for a Steyr-Hahn "Hammer", its chambered in 9mm Steyr, WW1 auto pistol, looks like a 1911 with a straiter grip.

 

[panhndlpoke]

I have a local guy here who is very into WWII Japanese firearms. He has a pretty extensive collection, and I've seen a lot of it. It's been several years, but I don't remember being shown one of those.

 

[Rulz]

Precision Cartridge is producing a run of 8mm Nambu ammo for this gun now, I just got 350 rounds to have on hand. They are also making 9mm Steyr ammo at this time as well, one of the reasons I want to get my ands on a Steyr Hammer soon. Well, besides the fact I have always thought those were just bad ass looking hand guns. Google Steyr Hahn or Steyr Hammer and it will come up. Stripper clip fed, no mag.

The whole "defect" issue with the 8mm Nambu doesn't appear to me to be an issue at all. Yeah, the sear is external...big effin deal. The safety effectly blocks the travel of the sear, so the gun can be holstered without fear. The safety functions directionally just like a 1911. Whip this little bastard out, thumb down the safety all in one motion...yeah, it could be a little carry gun lol.

The little gun is starting to grow on me, The more I disassemble it and work with it, the more I can reason with its design. But again...I have a 1915 Remington model 8 among other things, I love older guns (anything John Browning designed is appealing...that's a large category), their little nuances are interesting to me.

Yeah, I could see a collector not having one of these for a couple of reasons. One would be the perceived safety issues, the other is availability. I don't see a lot of information regarding the importation of these pistols, I assume the majority of them floating around might be "bring back" guns. Perhaps there were some imported at one time, maybe they were recently imported, but I haven't seen any info on that yet (and I haven't looked that hard yet either).