Type 1 heavy machine gun

The Type 1 heavy machine gun was a heavy machine gun used by the Imperial Japanese Army during the later stages of the Second World War. Though seemingly intended to replace the older Type 92 heavy machine gun, the weapon never underwent the same level of mass production as its predecessor due to either material shortages or the fact that the Type 92 heavy machine gun was deemed as acceptable.

Description

The Type 1 is essentially a smaller, lighter version of the Type 92 heavy machine gun. It employs the same principles of operation, simply with scaled down components. The barrel is designed to be rapidly changed in the field to prevent overheating, as a result the barrel cooling rings were reduced in size and the barrel jacket was done away with entirely. It was fed from 30-round brass feed strips. The overall rate of fire was higher than that of the Type 92 heavy machine gun. Like previous Japanese heavy machine gun models, the Type 1 was strip fed with 30 round strips. It was mounted in the same way as previous Japanese machine guns and issued to machine gun companies at the battalion level.