Type 92 machine gun

The Type 92 7.7mm machine gun (九二式七粍七機銃, Kyūni-shiki nana-miri-nana kijū) was developed for aerial use for the Imperial Japanese Navy before World War II. It was the standard hand-held machine gun in multi-place IJN aircraft during the most part of the Pacific War. It proved to be seriously inadequate. Aircraft produced in the later part of the conflict often were equipped with weapons such as Type 1 and Type 2 machine guns or Type 99 cannon.

Essentially a copy of the shroudless post-World War I aircraft-mounted version of the British Lewis gun, the Type 92 was fed with a drum magazine and used in a flexible mount. It was chambered in a Japanese copy of the .303 British cartridge. The main external difference between the two models was the trigger guard, and cooling fins around the barrel and gas piston tube. Neither the post World War I British aircraft Lewis nor the Japanese copy featured the distinctive thick barrel shroud of the original gun (although ground based versions generally retained it). It was deleted as it was found that the airflow past the aircraft was sufficient for cooling the barrel and a few pounds could be saved by simply eliminating the shroud.

Installations

• Aichi D1A
• Aichi D3A
• Kawanishi E7K2^[1]
• Kawanishi H6K
• Kawanishi H8K
• Kyūshū Q1W
• Mitsubishi F1M2^[2]
• Mitsubishi G3M
• Mitsubishi G4M
• Nakajima B5N
• Nakajima B6N
• Yokosuka B4Y
• Yokosuka K5Y
• Various others

Specifications

• Caliber: 7.7x56R
• Length: 99 cm (39 in)
• Weight: 8 kg (19 lb)
• Rate of fire: 600 rounds/min
• Muzzle velocity: 760 m/s (2,500 ft/s)

See also

• Lewis machine gun
• Type 89 machine gun (the Imperial Japanese Army equivalent to the Type 92))
• MG 15 machine gun
• MG 81 machine gun
• Vickers VGO

Notes

References

• Tagaya, Osamu. Imperial Japanese Naval Aviator 1937-45 ISBN 978-1-84176-385-9
• McNab, Chris. Twentieth-century Small Arms ISBN 1-84013-381-3

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