Meiji 26 Shiki Revolver

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Hauptgefreiter_Muller
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Meiji 26 Shiki Revolver

Post by Hauptgefreiter_Muller »

Saw a de-ac one of these last summer and did some reading-up on it:

Introduced in 1894, the Type 26 Revolver was a crude copy of a Smith & Wesson break-top pattern revolver, and saw much action as the primary officers and NCO’s sidearm during the Russo-Japanese war and the First World War.

Production had largely ended by the early 1920’s but was briefly revived in the early 1930’s to use up spare parts. Due to the continual shortage of weapons, the Japanese never officially withdrew it from service. However, as newer and better weapons emerged, it was relegated to second-line usage. Considerable numbers of Type 26 revolvers were also passed on to the Burmese puppet army set up by the Japanese during the Occupation.

The pistol had an extremely heavy trigger pull, adversely effecting the users’ aim and rate of fire, and the cylinder rotates freely except at the moment of firing. This means that if it brushes up against something an empty chamber can inadvertently get rotated into firing position, resulting in a disappointing (and possibly fatal) failure to fire when the trigger is pulled. As a double-action only gun it is usually considered hard to shoot accurately.

A pic:
http://www.hansenguns.com/images/jap26rightfull.JPG
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Tanaka
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Post by Tanaka »

thanks for that mate, never done much reading up on the revolvers actually, but its good to see that they had just as many flews as the pistols did. Seems the Japanese just couldn't do hand guns at the time.
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