The Fate of VM was: Baby MVS 4425

Never run across that one. I'm tolerably familiar with the Nambu, the "Type 94" and a .32 Browning copy whose name I can't remember. They were ok-ish pistols that suffered from poor materials and workmanship but the only major fault I rmember was the striker spring on the Nambu was prone to weaken with age resulting in misfires. IIRC there was a compartment in the holster for a spare spring, so they knew about the fault, but didn't fix it - they just issued a work-around :-)

Pistols, however, are an officers weapon mainly, and the Japs only made about half a million handguns, civilain and military, from 1875 to 1945 so they weren't a major factor in the War.

The Japanese rifles were mostly simple bolt-action designs, but again as the war went on, later ones were poorly made. Bolt failures were fairly common, with bane results to the the man holding the gun who got the bolt through his eye :-( You wouldn't get me firing one!

-- Cheers, Stan Barr stanb .at. dial .dot. pipex .dot. com (Remove any digits from the addresses when mailing me.)

The future was never like this!