NOTE: Although this rifle is fully functional, it’s very crudely made and we cannot assume any responsibility for it being safe to fire. This is a very representative example of the crumbling Japanese industry’s efforts to equip their soldiers with weapons until the very end of WWI! The number on the bolt does not match the receiver, but it is of the correct type and in the same great condition as the rest of the rifle so we assume that this is a factory mix-up. The barrel is extremely poorly turned, showing obvious signs of totally worn out factory tooling. As opposed to earlier production, the bore is not chrome lined and shows some slight corrosion in front of the chamber. This rifle was made by the Nagoya Arsenal and shows most of the characteristics of very late production, such as fixed sights, wooden butt plate, welded safety knob, no provisions for a cleaning rod and a non removable front stock band. Towards the end of WWII they were very crudely made, and are commonly referred to as “Last Ditch” rifles.
In the words of our Gunny, “If they could see you they could kill you.” That’s all that counts in combat.The Japanese Type 99 rifle was produced 1935-1945, and underwent several design changes through the years to simplify and speed up the production. The original scopes were lacking in comparative quality but these rifles, in the hands of a veteran of protracted combat, were deadly. After qualification with it, I repeated the course out to 500+ meters with my early-era Type 99 (Chrome-lined barrel, anti-aircraft sights and mono-pod) equipped with a modern Weaver 3-9X variable in the original stock shooting precision hand-loads and was only 3 points behind the M-40X equipped with its Fecker scope. It was accurate out to about 1500 meters. My last qualification in the Marines was with the Rem. I do not like the original scopes but with an altered bolt handle and a modern scope they are unbeatable as originals and as sporterized hunting rifles. Ackley tested all the various military rifles from that era and concluded that the Type 99 action was the strongest of the lot. It is definitely old news that the Type 99 Arisaka is my favorite WWII rifle bar none. The utility of the weapon in Japanese practice came not from it being mechanically more accurate than any other issue rifle, but rather from the optical sight allowing better exploitation of that standard rifle’s inherent accuracy. The rifles made into snipers were given no special selection criteria simply taken at random from normal production.
#Type 99 arisaka sale serial number#
My question revolves around a serial number stamped on the left side of the receiver in arabic numbers.
#Type 99 arisaka sale serial numbers#
Nagoya would produce approximately 10,000 of these rifles, with 4x scopes except for a period between serial numbers 5,000 and 7,000 with 2.5x scopes (most likely the remainder stored at Kokura when that plant ceased production). I was just given an Arisaka Type 99 rifle by my son, who picked it up at a garage sale. About 1,000 of the scoped 99s were manufactured by the Kokura Arsenal using the same 2.5x scope as on the Type 97 sniper, while the Nagoya Arsenal instead used a 4x scope, offering more magnification at the expense of a narrower field of view. Testing through 1941 determined that there was almost no practical difference in accuracy between scoped examples of the Type 99 long and short rifles, and so the short rifle was chosen to be the basis for the Type 99 sniper (the Type 99 long rifles would drop from production altogether pretty quickly anyway). In 1941, shortly after the adoption of the new 7.7mm rifle cartridge, it was decided that a sniper rifle variant of the Type 99 should be made in addition to the Type 97 (which was basically a scoped Type 38). The Japanese Army made significant use of snipers (or in today’s terminology, designated marksmen) as part of its infantry combined arms doctrine, and produced about 22,000 Type 97 sniper rifles for use in WWII and the Sino-Japanese War.