Did you know that Japan had a paratroop corps during World War Two? They trained and equipped this group in the late 1930s—with technical assistance from Germany, in fact. During their first combat drop onto Sumatra, the troops followed the standard German technique of dropping armed with handguns and grenades only, with their rifles and machine guns dropped alongside in parachute-equipped weapons containers. Unfortunately for the Japanese troops, this resulted in the same problem the Germans had in their major paratroop assault on Crete—the weapons containers often landed far from the troops, who were then left heavily out-gunned.

In the aftermath of this attack, the Japanese military decided the weapons container idea maybe wasn't so great, and began looking into alternatives —compact guns that could be carried by paratroops right out the door of the airplane. This would ultimately result in a take-down version of the Type 99 Arisaka rifle and a folding-stock version of the the Type 99 Nambu light machine gun, both of which were well-thought-out guns. However, the first proposed solution was…not quite so good.

Are those cabinet door hinges on the rifles? Well…pretty much, yes.

The first proposed (and manufactured) paratroop rifle was called the Type 1, and it was a Type 38 Arisaka carbine with the stock basically sawed off just behind the trigger and made to fold by the addition of a great big hinge screwed into the side.

With the stock unlocked, it could be folded to the side, making the rifle short enough to easily carry strapped to a paratrooper.

Several hundred of these rifles were made from existing inventory of Type 38 carbines for troop trials. What could go wrong? Well…all the obvious things, really. The hinge used a latch and wing nut on the left side of the rifle to hold the stock in place, and the system was not very tight. The stocks would wobble around, and the threaded stud and wing nut were susceptible to catching on things and being damaged.

For more detail on identifying authentic examples from fakes and to see the full details on the stock mechanism, check out the video I did on two of these rifles:

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Ian McCollum is the founder of ForgottenWeapons.com, a website and YouTube channel dedicated preserving the history of rare and obscure guns from around the world.

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