Type 92 Heavy Machine Gun

Origins

Japan's first machine guns were French Hotchkiss guns, bought abroad and then built under license, and they served in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905. In 1914 the army adopted the Type 3, a 6.5 mm heavy machine gun that the arms designer Kijiro Nambu had developed from the Hotchkiss pattern. It was a close relative of the French Hotchkiss M1914. During the 1920s the army concluded that the 6.5 mm bullet was too light for long-range machine gun fire. It introduced a more powerful 7.7 mm semi-rimmed cartridge and reworked the Type 3 to fire it. The result was named the Type 92 after the year 2592 of the Japanese imperial calendar, 1932 in the Western one. It entered service in the early 1930s and remained the army's standard heavy machine gun until 1945. Production figures are uncertain, but about 45,000 are usually said to have been made.

Design & Construction

The Type 92 was gas-operated and air-cooled, with a heavy barrel covered in cooling fins. It fired only on automatic. Like the Hotchkiss, it was fed from the left by rigid metal strips, each holding 30 rounds, rather than by a belt. A loader pushed in one strip after another. A small oil reservoir on the receiver brushed oil onto each cartridge as it fed, to help the fired cases extract cleanly. The oil worked, but in the field it also collected dust and grit. The rate of fire was about 450 rounds a minute, slow for a machine gun, and the gun's steady, stuttering sound led Allied soldiers to nickname it the woodpecker.

In place of the spade grips of the Type 3, the Type 92 had two folding pistol-type grips and a thumb trigger. The gun weighed about 27.6 kg and its tripod about as much again, so the complete weapon came to roughly 55 kg. The tripod's legs ended in sockets that took carrying poles. With the poles fitted, three or four men could lift the gun and mount together and move it without taking it apart. Telescopic sights were often fitted, and the gun had a reputation for accuracy at long range. An anti-aircraft adapter was issued for the tripod. A lighter derivative, the Type 1, appeared during the war but was made in much smaller numbers.

Combat Use

The Type 92 served through the war in China from 1937, against the Soviet Union at Khalkhin Gol in 1939, and in every Pacific campaign. Japanese infantry battalions each had a machine gun company, typically of eight to twelve guns, and commanders used them for precise supporting fire in the attack. The infantry they supported carried the Type 99 Rifle, the Type 96 Light Machine Gun and the Type 89 Grenade Discharger.

As Japan went over to the defensive, the Type 92 became above all a weapon of fixed positions. Crews placed it in log bunkers, pillboxes and cave mouths, sited so that the fire of several guns crossed. At Tarawa, Peleliu and the Battle of Iwo Jima, American assaults had to destroy these positions one by one. In the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, Type 92 guns covered the ridges of the Shuri defenses from caves and reverse slopes. They were often placed to fire along the front of a position from the flank, where attackers could not easily see them. American accounts credit the gun with accuracy and reliability. Its weaknesses were its weight and the 30-round strip, which limited sustained fire compared with belt-fed guns.

Legacy

After Japan's surrender, large numbers of Type 92 guns passed into other hands. Both Nationalist and Communist forces used them in the Chinese Civil War, and they appeared with Chinese and North Korean troops in the Korean War. Indonesian forces used captured guns in their war of independence, and so did the Viet Minh in the early years of the fighting in Indochina. The Type 92 was one of the last service machine guns of the Hotchkiss strip-fed line. After 1945 lighter belt-fed guns replaced tripod-mounted heavy machine guns of its kind in most armies. Surviving examples are displayed in military museums in Japan, the United States and elsewhere. It is described with other Japanese Arms & Weapons of the period.