“Handbook on Japanese Military Forces” Extract

Here are the pages on Japanese handguns from “Handbook on Japanese Military Forces”, Technical Manual TM 30-480, published on September 21, 1942 by the War Department. This very early manual devotes only a paragraph the handguns. It does not refer to the Type 94 or any of the earlier Nambu pistols at all.

Page 93 shows cutaway views of the Type 26 revolver and Type14 pistol. These appear to be from Japanese instruction manuals.

This is page 94 with the rest of the above paragraph. The Type 14 is not named and the ballistics for the 8mm Nambu cartridge are wildly inaccurate. Actual muzzle velocity is around 1050 feet per second, and the bullet is jacketed, not lead; can you imagine the leading a lead bullet traveling 2100 feet per second would cause! It seems odd to give the weight of a projectile in pounds, which may be why they didn’t notice an obvious typo—it should be .02 pounds (i.e. 1/50 of a pound), not .002 (1/500 of a pound). The profile of the pistol is vaguely Luger-like, but of course the mechanism is completely different.

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