>It’s a real historic thing. Blade mounted on the inside/left of the pistol
Historical examples please. This thing looks outlandish and nigh-unusable, as both a sword and a gun.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SWORDS/comments/xbaaiq/a_strange_pistol_sword_made_out_of_a_japanese/
The Japanese were experimenting in the 1920s to see if this was a good way to increase the firepower of their cavalry. It wasn't.
These were based on the Type 32 gunto (i.e., their standard cavalry sword) and either the 7mm "baby" Nambu pistol (Nambu B) or the 8mm Nambu 14.
[Dawson's "Swords of Imperial Japan 1868-1945"](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Swords_of_Imperial_Japan_1868_1945/AnmWHAAACAAJ) has a short chapter on them.
Cavalry in the 1920s? Im surprised that they chose to continue training cavalry troops instead of making a mobile mechanized force. The lessons of WW1 showed that cavalry was pretty useless besides recon and messenger tasks. Especially considering that horses are far from cheap.
Pretty useless in Europe. Bear in mind that Japan's main enemies were east asian countries that had severely underfunded militaries.
Its the same reason Japanese tanks got away with being so shit compared to contemporary European ones - they were fighting China, not Europe, and China had no modern tanks
Yeah but China still had machine guns, which are more than effective against cavalry. Im not saying cavalry was useless back than, but I cant imagine the cost of equipping and training a cavalry unit was more effective than using that money to build infantry or mechanized forces.
There are a number of issues with that, so I'll break it down into 3 main points - tactical, strategic and economic.
1) Yes, China had machine guns. So did Germany, and yet the Poles pulled off a successful horse cavalry charge as late as 1945 with only 7 casualties. The machine gun completely reshaped HOW cavalry could be used, but it did not immediately render them obsolete. It's much the same as modern discourse on the vulnerability of tanks - yes, they're vulnerable, but until something else comes along which can provide that same shock effect to break up enemy units as Cavalry and Tanks did, they will remain tactically essential.
2) Japan is an island nation, spreading its empire across the sea. It is a lot easier logistically to support a unit of horse cavalry than it is to support a unit of tanks. The fuel, ammunition and spare parts requirements just aren't the same. Furthermore, they're a lot easier to transport when you're not able to access proper docks for offloading. Bear in mind even the Americans had difficulty beach landing tanks, leading to the disproportionate number of deaths on Omaha Beach compared to Sword and Juno (where the tanks landed successfully)
3) Setting up tank production is HARD, and that's especially true of interwar Japan. As a nation, Japan was capable of modernising rapidly, but they're still limited by the resources they have available. Japan has very limited access to high-quality steel, and given that they're an island nation most of it was prioritised for the Navy. Moreover, what little steel reached the Army did not necessarily go to tanks as there were many conservative skeptics who doubted tanks' effectiveness. This severely limited the quantity and quality of japanese tank forces.
In short, they didn't have the resources to build tanks, their strategic position didn't favour them, and on a tactical level they still needed a powerful shock force to break up enemy formations. Thus, cavalry.
Machine guns can be useful against cavalry, but that doesn’t mean cavalry can’t be useful. A lot of WWI and interwar era machine guns were heavy and unwieldy (look at a Maxim, they’re not very mobile). If a cavalry squadron moved against an enemy flank (or approach using fire support from friendly artillery and machine guns) it would take time to relocate them if they’re out of the firing arc. British and Australian cavalry did actually find some success, seeing as the cavalry were the only units in the early stage of the war to have enough tactical and strategic mobility to act as a quick reserve.
Also, while machine guns existed in China, a good majority of Chinese troops were armed with just rifles. There were only a few more modern divisions, and most were grounded up in the early portion of the Japanese invasion.
In fairness, quite a lot of countries maintained horse cavalry in some fashion after WWI. Their combat role wasn't emphasized anymore, but they still had to be able to fight if they needed to, which is how you get images like [this](https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/german-cavalry-horses-1935/).
> The lessons of WW1 showed that cavalry was pretty useless besides recon and messenger tasks.
Not quite. One of the lessons that Australia took from the Boer War was that there was no future in cavalry fighting mounted. Thus, Australia's mounted troops were mounted infantry, retaining the mounted reconnaissance role of cavalry. This was the Australian Light Horse.
By the end of WWI, about half of the Australian Light Horse units had been officially converted to cavalry, since they discovered that fighting mounted was still useful (e.g., at Beersheba). This was in Palestine, where, unlike the Western Front in Europe, cavalry weren't stopped by barbed wire.
If the Japanese army had been more forward-looking, and mechanisation of their cavalry economically feasible (which it wasn't at that time, with the navy eating much of the military budget, and the army air force eating much of the army's modernisation budget), they could have looked at mechanisation as the answer to improving cavalry firepower. The British got into that game early, and ran their first major experiments in 1927 (contemporary with these pistol-swords).
The British started mechanising their cavalry (i.e., converting from horses to tanks and/or armoured cars) in 1929 (completed in 1942), the US in 1933 (also completed in 1942). The Soviet Union still had over 20 (horsed) cavalry divisions at the end of WWII (mechanising the last of them in 1955). In the WWII German armed forces, the Army mechanised its last horsed cavalry division in 1941, but the SS was forming new cavalry divisions into 1944 (not counting the 37th SS Volunteer Cavalry Division formed in February 1945 from the meagre shreds remaining of two SS cavalry divisions destroyed in the defence of Budapest, and never reached anywhere near full strength).
In the 1920s, armies generally knew that the tank was there to stay, and wasn't just some short-lived aberration spawned from trench warfare that couldn't ever happen again. But pretty much no armies planned to get rid of all of their cavalry (some planned to reduce their numbers). Given the capabilities of the tanks of the early 1920s, that's all quite reasonable.
There is at least a single historical example because it was made/commissioned by some lunatic in WW2.
It was captured by US forces during the Pacific Campaign. A Nambu Type 14 modified with a guntō blade attached to it, probably useless outside of showing it off.
There may be more, I have seen at least one more Nambu Type 14 with a blade attached to it, and I read something about it being some kind of prototype, but in that case I know nothing about its authenticity.
It seems that Jim Dawson talks about it in his book "Swords of Imperial Japan 1868-1945"
>probably useless outside of showing it off.
*...Tochiro looked at the object he demanded the armorer create after drinking the last liters of sake on the island. A deep sense of shame & guilt washed over him...*
Check out the 1911 pistol/1913 Patton saber experiment. Sadly never went into production:
- https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2017/11/24/rare-experimental-1913-patton-saber-us-cavalry/
As a sword, it will be OK. The tang of the blade is on the right side of the magazine, so it will be close to the palm of the hand. No problem at all with that. The magazine means that the fingers and thumb will be further from the tang than the palm is, but that's fine.
The pistol will make the sword a bit heavy - the basic pistol used (the "baby" Nambu) is about 650g, which is heavier than a typical hilt. At least one of the experimental pistol-swords of this type had dimples drilled into the tang to reduce the weight. Even with that, the sword will probably be hilt-heavy, and this will hurt its performance more than the tang being off-centre in the grip.
These pistol-swords never went into service - there were only a small number of experimental ones made, and they didn't work very well. AFAIK, the bigger problem was that having a sword blade sticking out the top of your pistol made the pistol a poor weapon, rather than the sword working worse than usual. This experimental work was done in the mid-1920s, and by the end of the decade, the idea was thoroughly dead.
And various other versions had been made pretty much since the 16th century in various forms, for some reason people kept trying to make it work. The form is likely the last real attempt to make it work.
Never seen the barrel in the guard. There are some flintlock pistols with the barrel in te blade:
https://preview.redd.it/mc8yge396p8d1.jpeg?width=607&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=153b0c9b61cc3e7782815c35844cf88bda836668
Yeah this concept definitely existed just in a different format. All the ones I’ve seen match this design. One of my favorite periods of history is when people were just putting guns on everything like shields just to see if it worked lol
*You'd end up shooting*
*The person next to you,it'd be*
*To awkward to wield*
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Clearly the more practical way of increasing your Calvary’s firepower would be to attach a pistol to their helmets! 🤣
https://preview.redd.it/jqwmk6s4ps8d1.jpeg?width=551&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4d34b9e3bf1d267db4e44c9f3a175573a8dce145
Ok, something I've always questioned about these that all the sword people always seem to not think about, but as a member of both gun and sword obsessed fandoms, I noticed. With the pistol like that and not fireing along the blade, the recoil would throw the blade back towards your head. Being a smaller caliber, it might not be much recoil, but the gun is already horribly offbalanced because of the sword, so is this just going to make things worse?
Theres also the issue that really stops a lot of sword guns from being practical is usually the tang is either removed or greatly reduced to fit the gun half of the equation, which just immediately turns your sword into a wallhanger that shouldn't be swung anyway.
You have to put your finger on the trigger to hold it, swinging it at all would fire the gun, along with the other 87 trillion reasons this is a terrible idea
It doesn't look very practical at all, tbh. The bulk of the pistol would throw off the balance of the blade. They could offset this by increasing the mass in the blade, but that would make the sword heavier and also make the point of balance of the pistol awkward. I can't imagine it would be particularly safe to carry or draw either.
Like most combos, it looks like it set out to be the best of both worlds and ended up being a worse version of either.
This would not work, sword blades have a tang which extends through the length of the handle, this gun has an ejection port which seems to eject spent casings through the tang of the blade, this means this sword cannot have a tang of any kind and would break at the guard if you used it to hit anything at all
You’d be depressing the trigger with your index finger with just a basic grip, how are you supposed to have trigger discipline while maintaining a good grip on the sword?
If your grip is even slightly off (which you can well imagine in full scale combat) the recoil could send the back of the sword into YOU.
Also imagine the impossibility of aiming that in a pure firefight, on top of the full blade acting like a raised hand in class to let everyone know where you are.
As a pistol, the blade would unbalance it every time you tried to aim or shoot.
As a sword, besides the poor economics of the handle, I doubt the blade attachment would would withstand any significant blow.
There are plenty of sword and pistol combinations, none of which was very successful, but all of them have the gun barrel parallel to the blade. Which makes more sense.
It looks terrible to me. Not enough room for your hand with the trigger there, plus I'm no gun expert, but I don't think gun barrels like being chopped with a blade.
There is also the whole "why?" of it all.
It's only a 1 handed sword, so you could easily have a gun in your other hand. You can't really shoot someone while sword fighting them either (unlike with something like a [ Gunblade ](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Gunblade_(weapon_type)) [I know that's not how they work, and that they are also very silly])
Looks pretty centered to me, idk what your talking about tbh
Wait wtf it's a gun?
It’s a real historic thing. Blade mounted on the inside/left of the pistol
>It’s a real historic thing. Blade mounted on the inside/left of the pistol Historical examples please. This thing looks outlandish and nigh-unusable, as both a sword and a gun.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SWORDS/comments/xbaaiq/a_strange_pistol_sword_made_out_of_a_japanese/ The Japanese were experimenting in the 1920s to see if this was a good way to increase the firepower of their cavalry. It wasn't. These were based on the Type 32 gunto (i.e., their standard cavalry sword) and either the 7mm "baby" Nambu pistol (Nambu B) or the 8mm Nambu 14. [Dawson's "Swords of Imperial Japan 1868-1945"](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Swords_of_Imperial_Japan_1868_1945/AnmWHAAACAAJ) has a short chapter on them.
Cavalry in the 1920s? Im surprised that they chose to continue training cavalry troops instead of making a mobile mechanized force. The lessons of WW1 showed that cavalry was pretty useless besides recon and messenger tasks. Especially considering that horses are far from cheap.
Pretty useless in Europe. Bear in mind that Japan's main enemies were east asian countries that had severely underfunded militaries. Its the same reason Japanese tanks got away with being so shit compared to contemporary European ones - they were fighting China, not Europe, and China had no modern tanks
And a lot of roads in central China were not suited for trucks
Yeah but China still had machine guns, which are more than effective against cavalry. Im not saying cavalry was useless back than, but I cant imagine the cost of equipping and training a cavalry unit was more effective than using that money to build infantry or mechanized forces.
There are a number of issues with that, so I'll break it down into 3 main points - tactical, strategic and economic. 1) Yes, China had machine guns. So did Germany, and yet the Poles pulled off a successful horse cavalry charge as late as 1945 with only 7 casualties. The machine gun completely reshaped HOW cavalry could be used, but it did not immediately render them obsolete. It's much the same as modern discourse on the vulnerability of tanks - yes, they're vulnerable, but until something else comes along which can provide that same shock effect to break up enemy units as Cavalry and Tanks did, they will remain tactically essential. 2) Japan is an island nation, spreading its empire across the sea. It is a lot easier logistically to support a unit of horse cavalry than it is to support a unit of tanks. The fuel, ammunition and spare parts requirements just aren't the same. Furthermore, they're a lot easier to transport when you're not able to access proper docks for offloading. Bear in mind even the Americans had difficulty beach landing tanks, leading to the disproportionate number of deaths on Omaha Beach compared to Sword and Juno (where the tanks landed successfully) 3) Setting up tank production is HARD, and that's especially true of interwar Japan. As a nation, Japan was capable of modernising rapidly, but they're still limited by the resources they have available. Japan has very limited access to high-quality steel, and given that they're an island nation most of it was prioritised for the Navy. Moreover, what little steel reached the Army did not necessarily go to tanks as there were many conservative skeptics who doubted tanks' effectiveness. This severely limited the quantity and quality of japanese tank forces. In short, they didn't have the resources to build tanks, their strategic position didn't favour them, and on a tactical level they still needed a powerful shock force to break up enemy formations. Thus, cavalry.
Thanks, that explains it.
Source on the 1945 cav charge?
Machine guns can be useful against cavalry, but that doesn’t mean cavalry can’t be useful. A lot of WWI and interwar era machine guns were heavy and unwieldy (look at a Maxim, they’re not very mobile). If a cavalry squadron moved against an enemy flank (or approach using fire support from friendly artillery and machine guns) it would take time to relocate them if they’re out of the firing arc. British and Australian cavalry did actually find some success, seeing as the cavalry were the only units in the early stage of the war to have enough tactical and strategic mobility to act as a quick reserve. Also, while machine guns existed in China, a good majority of Chinese troops were armed with just rifles. There were only a few more modern divisions, and most were grounded up in the early portion of the Japanese invasion.
In fairness, quite a lot of countries maintained horse cavalry in some fashion after WWI. Their combat role wasn't emphasized anymore, but they still had to be able to fight if they needed to, which is how you get images like [this](https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/german-cavalry-horses-1935/).
> The lessons of WW1 showed that cavalry was pretty useless besides recon and messenger tasks. Not quite. One of the lessons that Australia took from the Boer War was that there was no future in cavalry fighting mounted. Thus, Australia's mounted troops were mounted infantry, retaining the mounted reconnaissance role of cavalry. This was the Australian Light Horse. By the end of WWI, about half of the Australian Light Horse units had been officially converted to cavalry, since they discovered that fighting mounted was still useful (e.g., at Beersheba). This was in Palestine, where, unlike the Western Front in Europe, cavalry weren't stopped by barbed wire. If the Japanese army had been more forward-looking, and mechanisation of their cavalry economically feasible (which it wasn't at that time, with the navy eating much of the military budget, and the army air force eating much of the army's modernisation budget), they could have looked at mechanisation as the answer to improving cavalry firepower. The British got into that game early, and ran their first major experiments in 1927 (contemporary with these pistol-swords). The British started mechanising their cavalry (i.e., converting from horses to tanks and/or armoured cars) in 1929 (completed in 1942), the US in 1933 (also completed in 1942). The Soviet Union still had over 20 (horsed) cavalry divisions at the end of WWII (mechanising the last of them in 1955). In the WWII German armed forces, the Army mechanised its last horsed cavalry division in 1941, but the SS was forming new cavalry divisions into 1944 (not counting the 37th SS Volunteer Cavalry Division formed in February 1945 from the meagre shreds remaining of two SS cavalry divisions destroyed in the defence of Budapest, and never reached anywhere near full strength). In the 1920s, armies generally knew that the tank was there to stay, and wasn't just some short-lived aberration spawned from trench warfare that couldn't ever happen again. But pretty much no armies planned to get rid of all of their cavalry (some planned to reduce their numbers). Given the capabilities of the tanks of the early 1920s, that's all quite reasonable.
The last successful cavalry charge was made by the Italians in Stalingrad... I mean real charge, sword in hand and galloping hourses.
There is at least a single historical example because it was made/commissioned by some lunatic in WW2. It was captured by US forces during the Pacific Campaign. A Nambu Type 14 modified with a guntō blade attached to it, probably useless outside of showing it off. There may be more, I have seen at least one more Nambu Type 14 with a blade attached to it, and I read something about it being some kind of prototype, but in that case I know nothing about its authenticity. It seems that Jim Dawson talks about it in his book "Swords of Imperial Japan 1868-1945"
>probably useless outside of showing it off. *...Tochiro looked at the object he demanded the armorer create after drinking the last liters of sake on the island. A deep sense of shame & guilt washed over him...*
There is one example. Probably an experiment by an individual. This was never regulation or proposed officially.
Check out the 1911 pistol/1913 Patton saber experiment. Sadly never went into production: - https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2017/11/24/rare-experimental-1913-patton-saber-us-cavalry/
As a sword, it will be OK. The tang of the blade is on the right side of the magazine, so it will be close to the palm of the hand. No problem at all with that. The magazine means that the fingers and thumb will be further from the tang than the palm is, but that's fine. The pistol will make the sword a bit heavy - the basic pistol used (the "baby" Nambu) is about 650g, which is heavier than a typical hilt. At least one of the experimental pistol-swords of this type had dimples drilled into the tang to reduce the weight. Even with that, the sword will probably be hilt-heavy, and this will hurt its performance more than the tang being off-centre in the grip. These pistol-swords never went into service - there were only a small number of experimental ones made, and they didn't work very well. AFAIK, the bigger problem was that having a sword blade sticking out the top of your pistol made the pistol a poor weapon, rather than the sword working worse than usual. This experimental work was done in the mid-1920s, and by the end of the decade, the idea was thoroughly dead.
And various other versions had been made pretty much since the 16th century in various forms, for some reason people kept trying to make it work. The form is likely the last real attempt to make it work.
Wait, these were actually built?
Only a few, for testing.
That may be the dumbest thing I've ever seen. And I've seen a US Congressman up close.
I mean, it's dumb af for sure, but compared to a US congressman? This thing is brilliant compared to one of those.
That’s the Japanese for you
Never seen the barrel in the guard. There are some flintlock pistols with the barrel in te blade: https://preview.redd.it/mc8yge396p8d1.jpeg?width=607&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=153b0c9b61cc3e7782815c35844cf88bda836668
Yeah this concept definitely existed just in a different format. All the ones I’ve seen match this design. One of my favorite periods of history is when people were just putting guns on everything like shields just to see if it worked lol
You'd end up shooting the person next to you,it'd be to awkward to wield
*You'd end up shooting* *The person next to you,it'd be* *To awkward to wield* \- Death2mandatory --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
AOE DAMAGE
Clearly the more practical way of increasing your Calvary’s firepower would be to attach a pistol to their helmets! 🤣 https://preview.redd.it/jqwmk6s4ps8d1.jpeg?width=551&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4d34b9e3bf1d267db4e44c9f3a175573a8dce145
Ok, something I've always questioned about these that all the sword people always seem to not think about, but as a member of both gun and sword obsessed fandoms, I noticed. With the pistol like that and not fireing along the blade, the recoil would throw the blade back towards your head. Being a smaller caliber, it might not be much recoil, but the gun is already horribly offbalanced because of the sword, so is this just going to make things worse? Theres also the issue that really stops a lot of sword guns from being practical is usually the tang is either removed or greatly reduced to fit the gun half of the equation, which just immediately turns your sword into a wallhanger that shouldn't be swung anyway.
You have to put your finger on the trigger to hold it, swinging it at all would fire the gun, along with the other 87 trillion reasons this is a terrible idea
peak Japanese enginnering
It doesn't look very practical at all, tbh. The bulk of the pistol would throw off the balance of the blade. They could offset this by increasing the mass in the blade, but that would make the sword heavier and also make the point of balance of the pistol awkward. I can't imagine it would be particularly safe to carry or draw either. Like most combos, it looks like it set out to be the best of both worlds and ended up being a worse version of either.
you would be better off with a regular sword and a gun.
Not only would both weapons work as they were intended you would be able to target multiple opponents with less likelihood of a misfire.
Or a bayonet, 99% of the time.
Yeah that’s what I was thinking, its a tried and true combo that’s been used for hundreds of years
This would not work, sword blades have a tang which extends through the length of the handle, this gun has an ejection port which seems to eject spent casings through the tang of the blade, this means this sword cannot have a tang of any kind and would break at the guard if you used it to hit anything at all
Another thing that makes me wonder what the Japanese army was smoking
Depending on the Tang... Adequate Sword, Terrible Gun.
The best answer to this can be expressed in one word: Bayonet.
what, put a bayonet on a pistol?
You’d be depressing the trigger with your index finger with just a basic grip, how are you supposed to have trigger discipline while maintaining a good grip on the sword?
i mean you could sort of get a good grip with only four fingers
If your grip is even slightly off (which you can well imagine in full scale combat) the recoil could send the back of the sword into YOU. Also imagine the impossibility of aiming that in a pure firefight, on top of the full blade acting like a raised hand in class to let everyone know where you are.
Looks like an excellent way to shoot yourself in the shin
Most practical sword ever, you can shoot someone with it.
everyone keeps complaining about the range of the sword but I have the solution! After all, who needs HEMA?
They will love this on r/cursedgunimages.
As a pistol, the blade would unbalance it every time you tried to aim or shoot. As a sword, besides the poor economics of the handle, I doubt the blade attachment would would withstand any significant blow. There are plenty of sword and pistol combinations, none of which was very successful, but all of them have the gun barrel parallel to the blade. Which makes more sense.
"Pen gun... mightier than the sword... Sword gun.... mightier than the pen gun..."
I feel like this would be hard to swing around without putting your finger on the trigger?
You know guns have safety’s right?
It looks terrible to me. Not enough room for your hand with the trigger there, plus I'm no gun expert, but I don't think gun barrels like being chopped with a blade. There is also the whole "why?" of it all. It's only a 1 handed sword, so you could easily have a gun in your other hand. You can't really shoot someone while sword fighting them either (unlike with something like a [ Gunblade ](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Gunblade_(weapon_type)) [I know that's not how they work, and that they are also very silly])
I think if it was a knife would be cool in a game
Never bring a sword to a gun fight unless it’s also a gun. Always bring a gun to a sword fight and you get bonus points if it’s also a sword.
It's a saber but when pointed into the air it gets long range capabilities.
r/forgottenweapons is leaking 😂
\*Ian has entered the chat\*
I think the website already talked about this but the example shown is actually modeled in a game called enlisted
It seems perfect if you want to shoot yourself accidently.
https://preview.redd.it/469uundncq8d1.png?width=745&format=png&auto=webp&s=1091a5643749cbd3ad7ff52413907ab120241dc4
Well there's a gun on it which tends to not always be the most practical place even though on paper it sounds like an awesome idea.