JAPANESE "TYPE I" CARCANO
Pic courtesy of J. Anderson
The Japanese referred to the "Type I" differently in different documents and reports. The most common are the “Italian Type Rifle” (イ式小銃), the “Italian Rifle” (伊式小銃), or the “Italian-made modified rifle” (伊太利製改造小銃).
You can often find it on the collector market as "Carcano-Arisaka", "Italian Arisaka" or "Japanese Carcano".
This gun has been a weird mystery for decades: it was an Italian gun, produced on Japanese request, in order to be shipped across the world to arm very few units during the second world war, being found mostly in the hands of IJN units in the 1941-45 period.
Recent dives into the Japanese Archives (freely accessible through their Internet database) intiated by fellow gun collectors J. Anderson and Aaron Zou, along with some collaborators, offered finally some answers to this oriental conundrum.
You can often find it on the collector market as "Carcano-Arisaka", "Italian Arisaka" or "Japanese Carcano".
This gun has been a weird mystery for decades: it was an Italian gun, produced on Japanese request, in order to be shipped across the world to arm very few units during the second world war, being found mostly in the hands of IJN units in the 1941-45 period.
Recent dives into the Japanese Archives (freely accessible through their Internet database) intiated by fellow gun collectors J. Anderson and Aaron Zou, along with some collaborators, offered finally some answers to this oriental conundrum.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The history of the Type I begins around 1937, when Italian and Japanese diplomats were looking for stronger ties with Germany.
Up until 1936 and the Italo-Ethiopian war, mussolini saw hitler as a possible issue for the European chessboard, especially since hitler wanted to expand the german borders annexing Austria (they tried already in 1934 and only mussolini's intervention, deploying armies to the border prevented it) and accessing the Danube basin, while getting menacingly close diplomatically to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, main anthagonist of Italy's desires in the Balkans.
Italy on the other hand was getting closer to France after October 9th 1934, when the king of Yugoslavia Alexander the 1st got assassinated in Marseille, along with the anti-italian french foreign minister Barthou.
The new French foreign minister, Laval, wanted to have Italy on its side in an anti-german diplomatic coalition, but when mussolini decided to invade Ethiopia to boost its popularity, France had no other choice than to join England and the rest of the diplomatic world in sanctioning Italy's aggression of a free country who was a member of the League of Nations.
This diplomatic isolation drew mussolini straight into hitler's embrace, and thus slowly aligned Italy's policies to that of Germany.
Germany ricognized Italian annexation of Ethiopia on October 24th 1936, and the following day the two countries signed the Berlin Protocols, a traty of friendship and cooperation, laying the fundation of the Axis.
Japan instead was fearing a diplomatic isolation on its own: After its internationally criticised invasion of Manchuria in 1931 (sparked by its semi-autonomous Kwantung Army), Japan had to find a way to justify its expansionism in Asia, and thus in 1932 they created the State of Manchukuo, putting former Chinese Emperor PuYi at his head, in a way to further justify this entity.
Of course Manchukuo was just a puppet state, completely in the hands of Japan and of the Kwantung Army.
When Germany signed in 1935 a naval pact with Britain, in a vague hope to ward off the UK from its alliance with France, Japanese fear of international isolation grew even stronger. Relationships within Germany and Japan were never really great, especially since Germany had huge interests and military ties with Japan's main anthagonist, China, but the fear of an anglo-german entente was absolutely the worst possible nightmare for Japanese diplomatics hopes.
Luckily, Japan found a strong ally in this venture with Joachim Von Ribbentropp, who, despite not being Foreign minister - yet- was really influential with hitler's foreign policies.
Ribbentrop managed to push hitler and the old prussian ministers and generals to work for stronger ties with japan, by claiming that they needed to form an anti-soviet alliance. He had practical evidences to convince them, since the Soviet Union in 1936 had their first big international intervention since the 1920s, openly helping Republican spain with tanks, men and guns.
This diplomatic exchange between Germany and Japan culminated in the Anti-comintern pact, signed on November 25th 1936, with Ribbentropp and hitler claiming that Italy would have soon joined it too.
Up until 1936 and the Italo-Ethiopian war, mussolini saw hitler as a possible issue for the European chessboard, especially since hitler wanted to expand the german borders annexing Austria (they tried already in 1934 and only mussolini's intervention, deploying armies to the border prevented it) and accessing the Danube basin, while getting menacingly close diplomatically to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, main anthagonist of Italy's desires in the Balkans.
Italy on the other hand was getting closer to France after October 9th 1934, when the king of Yugoslavia Alexander the 1st got assassinated in Marseille, along with the anti-italian french foreign minister Barthou.
The new French foreign minister, Laval, wanted to have Italy on its side in an anti-german diplomatic coalition, but when mussolini decided to invade Ethiopia to boost its popularity, France had no other choice than to join England and the rest of the diplomatic world in sanctioning Italy's aggression of a free country who was a member of the League of Nations.
This diplomatic isolation drew mussolini straight into hitler's embrace, and thus slowly aligned Italy's policies to that of Germany.
Germany ricognized Italian annexation of Ethiopia on October 24th 1936, and the following day the two countries signed the Berlin Protocols, a traty of friendship and cooperation, laying the fundation of the Axis.
Japan instead was fearing a diplomatic isolation on its own: After its internationally criticised invasion of Manchuria in 1931 (sparked by its semi-autonomous Kwantung Army), Japan had to find a way to justify its expansionism in Asia, and thus in 1932 they created the State of Manchukuo, putting former Chinese Emperor PuYi at his head, in a way to further justify this entity.
Of course Manchukuo was just a puppet state, completely in the hands of Japan and of the Kwantung Army.
When Germany signed in 1935 a naval pact with Britain, in a vague hope to ward off the UK from its alliance with France, Japanese fear of international isolation grew even stronger. Relationships within Germany and Japan were never really great, especially since Germany had huge interests and military ties with Japan's main anthagonist, China, but the fear of an anglo-german entente was absolutely the worst possible nightmare for Japanese diplomatics hopes.
Luckily, Japan found a strong ally in this venture with Joachim Von Ribbentropp, who, despite not being Foreign minister - yet- was really influential with hitler's foreign policies.
Ribbentrop managed to push hitler and the old prussian ministers and generals to work for stronger ties with japan, by claiming that they needed to form an anti-soviet alliance. He had practical evidences to convince them, since the Soviet Union in 1936 had their first big international intervention since the 1920s, openly helping Republican spain with tanks, men and guns.
This diplomatic exchange between Germany and Japan culminated in the Anti-comintern pact, signed on November 25th 1936, with Ribbentropp and hitler claiming that Italy would have soon joined it too.
So Japan started moving towards Italy too, for reasons really similar to the ones tying it to Germany: creating a stronger international relationship, obtaining Italian technological expertise (especially related to airplanes) and hoping that Italy would cut its long lasting trade deals for military supplies with China.
Another important goal of these stronger ties with Italy was the dire need of Japan to have its Manchukuo puppet state recognised internationally. In order to tempt Italy into recognizing sooner the Manchukuo state and join the Anti-comintern pact, in February 1937 the Japan Defense Ministry solicited the foreign minister to open up negotiations, while in June-July of the same year, it opened up direct negotiations to open commercial treaties in the name of the Manchukuo state, while completing other orders for the Japanese state itself (72 ultra-modern Fiat BR.20 "Cigogna" airplanes, with spare engines, guns and parts). |
Fiat BR 20 "Cicogna" bomber
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Italy gladly accepted these propositions, dropped its previous deals with China (along with Germany, that recalled military attaches and whatever military supply to China after the Japanese invasion in July 1937) and joined the Anti-Comintern pact on November 7th 1937, while recognizing Manchukuo on November 29th and shipping the first airplane parts on November 30th.
The "Type I" order was one of the upstated commercial treaties.
The "Type I" order was one of the upstated commercial treaties.
DEVELOPMENT
In early 1938 the Japanese defense Ministry offered the Italian government a contract to produce about 130k rifles, officially for the "Manchukuo Government for Training purposes".
The request was for a brand new gun, preferibly with a similar manual of arms to the Japanese type 38, back then the standard issued rifle of the Japanese Empire. It was expressly requested that the gun had to be in 6.5x50 Arisaka and that it should have been compatible with the type 38 bayonet, other features could have been discussed. Total amout allocated for this project was 10 million yens, and the initial request was for these guns to be delivered starting december 1938. The Terni Arsenal projected a rifle built around the Carcano action, using a proprietary stock and metal furnitures, almost identical to the one used in the type 38, included the notorious split buttstock, and started the setup to produce the 6.5x50 barrels. In May/June 1938 the Japanese defense ministry and Italian government (through the Italian military attachees) started to exchange a series of telegrams to settle the details of the final production. The Terni Arsenal offered two possibilities: - A rifle with a standard Carcano Magazine and to be used with Mannlicher clips, costing 65yen (350 liras) and ready to be delivered after 9 months. - A rifle with a type 38 Mauser style magazine, to be fed with stripper clips, costing 75 yen (400 liras) and ready to be delivered after 12 months. Final details were settled within September 1938, with the Japanese ordering 130k guns with the type 38 style magazine, spending a grand total of about 9.6 million yen of the 10million allocated. the 400k yen advanced were used to buy some more anti aircraft ammunitions. |
Japanese center for Asian historical recordsCopyright Ugo Venturoli |
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Pics courtesy of J. Anderson
PRODUCTION AND USE
Once Terni finished to produce all the barrels, they sent them to three different facilities to produce the other parts and assemble the guns.
These were
- SFARE GARDONE VAL TROMPIA, assemblying half of the guns, serial prefix A-F
- Fabbrica Nazionale d'Armi - Brescia, assemblying a quarter of the guns, serial prefix G-I
- Fabbrica d'Armi Pietro Beretta - Gardone v.t., assemblying the last quarter of the guns, serial prefix J-L
All the guns produced got tested by SFARE Gardone V.T. with ammo procured by the Japanese government: they sent 650k testing rounds of 6.5 arisaka, the Italians used about 390k of these and sent the rest back with the last shipment of guns.
The Gardone Arsenal fire tested the guns produced by all factories, controlled measurements, tolerances, and prepared them to be shipped, usually with the help of the Japanese Ordnance Commission.
The guns were shipped in 6 different shipments of about 20k guns each between december 1938 and december 1939.
Contract was finalised in March 1940, when the last payment was done by the Japanese.
Being logistically very similar to Type 38 rifles, but different in terms of spare parts, Type I rifles were usually sent all around the Japanese empire in small batches, in order to have them in order and arming specific units, to ease spare parts logistics. Both the Japanese NAvy and Japanese Army got these rifles, with no evident differences among them. These were just spare rifle aquired through diplomatic deals, ready to be used efficiently by second line units who didn't need a constant flow of replacements and that weren't suppose to get any kind of war attrition.
Some of these rifles show a shortened stock, about 1 inch removed from the buttplate side, in order to be more comfortable for some Japanese units.
These were
- SFARE GARDONE VAL TROMPIA, assemblying half of the guns, serial prefix A-F
- Fabbrica Nazionale d'Armi - Brescia, assemblying a quarter of the guns, serial prefix G-I
- Fabbrica d'Armi Pietro Beretta - Gardone v.t., assemblying the last quarter of the guns, serial prefix J-L
All the guns produced got tested by SFARE Gardone V.T. with ammo procured by the Japanese government: they sent 650k testing rounds of 6.5 arisaka, the Italians used about 390k of these and sent the rest back with the last shipment of guns.
The Gardone Arsenal fire tested the guns produced by all factories, controlled measurements, tolerances, and prepared them to be shipped, usually with the help of the Japanese Ordnance Commission.
The guns were shipped in 6 different shipments of about 20k guns each between december 1938 and december 1939.
Contract was finalised in March 1940, when the last payment was done by the Japanese.
Being logistically very similar to Type 38 rifles, but different in terms of spare parts, Type I rifles were usually sent all around the Japanese empire in small batches, in order to have them in order and arming specific units, to ease spare parts logistics. Both the Japanese NAvy and Japanese Army got these rifles, with no evident differences among them. These were just spare rifle aquired through diplomatic deals, ready to be used efficiently by second line units who didn't need a constant flow of replacements and that weren't suppose to get any kind of war attrition.
Some of these rifles show a shortened stock, about 1 inch removed from the buttplate side, in order to be more comfortable for some Japanese units.
Documented movings and surrenderings
2000 rifles were sent in march 1940 to the Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China, basically a puppet regime installed in Nanjing by the Japanese.
1000 rifles were sent in march 1940 to the Mengjang Autonomous government, basically a puppet regime installed in the Inner Mongolian region by the Japanese, that it will be absorbed into the RNG Republic of China later that year. 100 rifles went to the Nagoya Arsenal, for security and allegedly in anti aircraft use. Several units of the Imperial Japanese Navy received these rifles, both for training use 1700 were captured from the Marines forces in Shanghai 224 were captured from the Zhoushan Guard units (Naval unit in Shanghai) 563 were captured from the Hario Naval Corp |
Japanese center for Asian historical records, with notes by Anderson and collaborators |