Type 04 rifle
| Type 04 rifle | |
|---|---|
| File:Type 04 rifle.png Type 04 rifle, Type 04 carbine, and Gewehr 98 for comparison. | |
| Type | Bolt-action rifle |
| Place of origin |  Menghe |
| Service history | |
| In service | 1905–1964 |
| Used by | Federal Menghean Army Imperial Menghean Army |
| Production history | |
| Produced | 1904-1917 |
| Variants | Type 04 carbine Type 04 sniper rifle |
| Specifications | |
| Weight | 3.89 kg (8.76 lb) |
| Length | 1,272 mm |
| Barrel length | 752 mm |
| Cartridge | 7.5×60mm Menghean |
| Action | bolt-action |
| Rate of fire | ~15 rounds per minute |
| Muzzle velocity | 600 m/s (1,970 ft/s) with early round-nosed ammunition |
| Effective firing range | 100 - 2000 m sight adjustments |
| Feed system | 5-round internal magazine |
| Sights | Iron sights |
The Type 04 rifle (Menghean: 04식 보총 / 〇四式步銃, ryŏng-sal-sik bochong), sometimes translated as Type 04 Infantry Rifle, is a type of bolt-action rifle developed in Menghe in the early 20th century. It was the standard infantry weapon of the Federative Republic of Menghe until 1918, when the Type 17 rifle entered service. Though the Type 17 fully replaced the Type 04 in active service before the beginning of the Pan-Septentrion War, in 1943 the Imperial Menghean Army pulled stockpiled rifles out of service to arm its homeland defense units, and the Type 04 remained in use throughout the Menghean War of Liberation.
Development
When the warring factions of Sinŭi and Namyang reunified into a single state in 1900, they inherited a bewildering array of firearms. Both major factions had imported and domestically produced a variety of service rifles during their on-and-off civil war, and the newly established Federal Army lacked a universal caliber, let alone a universal service rifle. The intervention in Uzeristan, which began in 1901 and lasted until 1902 when the southwestern kingdom was reintegrated into Menghe, laid bare the extent of this problem, as the large but unwieldy Federal Army struggled with basic logistics.
In 1902, the Federal Republic of Menghe formally opened a design competition for a new standard service rifle, which would serve all units of the Federal Army. The winning design had to be on par with the latest service rifles in modern Casaterran militaries, with bolt-action loading, metal-walled cartridges, five-round magazines, accuracy out to 2000 meters, and good reliability. In addition to the long infantry rifle, the requirement also called for a short-barreled carbine, which would serve the Cavalry and Artillery.
A number of foreign companies submitted their own rifles for consideration, and representatives of the Federal Army subjected them to extensive field evaluations while also examining their internal operation. For some time, it looked like Menghe would import its rifles from abroad, a lucrative contract given the size of the Menghean military. Trials and evaluation dragged on until 1904, when the Army's upper leadership abruptly added a requirement that the new rifle be produced in Menghe. This effectively disqualified all competitors except the rifle proposed by Hwasŏng Arsenal, which had been developed its own rifle while the competition was underway. The Hwasŏng design borrowed heavily from the Ostlandian Gewehr 98, one of the leading rifles under consideration, but incorporated a few changes and was chambered in the new 7.5×60mm cartridge.
With no serious competition, the domestic design won the contract, and mass production began in 1904. The Hwasŏng Arsenal took charge of manufacturing and procurement, and managed to establish itself as a major firearms producer in the process, gaining experience that it would apply to the development of the Type 17 ten years later. Production ended in 1915, but the Type 04 would remain in irregular service until the 1960s.
Design
The Type 04 was chambered in the new Menghean 7.5×60mm centerfire cartridge, which had been in development at the Hwasŏng arsenal since at least 1900 and was based on Sinŭi experiments from the late 1890s. This uses a long metal casing with a very slight taper. The projectile itself was round-nosed on early production rounds, but switched to a spitzer bullet in 1911, a change which required replacing the sights to match the new round's flatter trajectory. The rifle itself carries five rounds in a fixed internal magazine with a removable floor plate, and is reloaded from above using a 5-round stripper clip.
The bolt, safety, and other components of the action are essentially direct copies of the Ostlandian Mauser action used in the Gewehr 98, altered only to accommodate the dimensions of the 7.5×60mm cartridge. Early Hwasŏng prototypes in 1902 and 1903 used an indigenous bolt configuration, but the designers adopted the Gewehr bolt in response to its superior reliability and its safety measures in the event of a ruptured cartridge.
In all other respects, the Type 04 was an indigenous design, albeit one heavily influenced by the Gewehr 98. Prominent differences include the buttstock, which lacks a metal disk to aid in bolt disassembly; the bayonet lug, which protrudes from the barrel ahead of the handguard; and the rear sight, which is zeroed at 100 meters and uses an adjustable leaf sight, in contrast to the "roller coaster" Lange Visier on the Gewehr 98. The rear sight is marked out to 2000 meters, reflecting the Federal Menghean Army's anticipation that it would fight at long ranges in mountainous terrain as it had done in Uzeristan.
Variants
Type 04 cavalry rifle
As part of the initial design requirement, the Menghean Army required that the new weapon come with a carbine variant for use by cavalry units. Although Hwasŏng only developed a carbine version in 1905, the weapon retained the Type 04 prefix, as its bolt and action were identical to those on the original. Its full designation was Type 04 cavalry short rifle (04식 기병 소총 / 〇四式騎兵小銃, ryŏng-sal-sik gibyŏng sochong).
The "cavalry rifle" was 1044 millimeters long overall, and had a barrel length of 540 millimeters. Most of the length reduction came from the handguard, though the buttstock was also slightly shortened. Other differences with the infantry variant include vertical guards on either side of the foresight and a bent-down bolt handle, both intended to reduce the risk of the weapon catching on other equipment. Early prototypes of the carbine retained a bayonet lug, but the final production version omitted it, on the basis that mounted troops did not face the threat of charging enemy cavalry and could rely on their sabers for hand-to-hand combat.
Type 04 sniper rifle
In 1912, responding to news of sniper rifle development in the War of the Sylvan Succession, the Menghean Army modified some Type 04 rifles to accept a 3x magnifying scope. A mounting dovetail was cut into the upper receiver at a factory and an imported scope design attached. During this modification, the old bolt was replaced with a new unit incorporating the curved-down handle of the cavalry model, which allowed the operator to cycle the weapon without striking the scope above. As the scope sat centered atop the receiver, new cartridges had to be loaded one at a time. Very few Type 04 rifles were modified to the sniper standard, as the introduction of the Type 17 allowed accurate rifles to be completed with provision for scopes at the factory.
Type 04-ŭl cavalry rifle
A particularly rare weapon, the Type 04-ŭl was a standard cavalry carbine variant with a fixed 10-round magazine that protruded down in front of the trigger guard. Little is known about this weapon, except that it was approved for service in 1911 and cancelled soon afterward. It is believed that fewer than 100 weapons of this type were ever produced.
Service
The Federal Republic of Menghe adopted the Type 04 as its standard service rifle in 1904 and quickly moved it into mass production, with the aim of replacing all other rifles and carbines. The Federal Army achieved this goal in the early 1910s, at least for front-line units, though training teams and local levies continued to use older weapons. The Type 04 first saw combat in the First Mountain War against Siyadagi insurgents, and it would see action again in the Second Mountain War of the early 1920s. When Menghe dispatched troops abroad to fight in the War of the Sylvan Succession, they took their Type 04s with them, earning the weapon its first combat experience overseas.
Overall, the Type 04 was a decent weapon for its time, on par with most other foreign rifles as a result of its Mauser inspiration. Yet it possessed a few shortcomings, most of them related to its relative complexity and its tendency to jam in dusty conditions. In response to the lessons of the First Mountain War and the War of the Sylvan Succession, the Menghean Army placed a request for a new service rifle in 1915, this time on a more generous schedule. The resulting Type 17 rifle, also designed by Hwasŏng, improved on the Type 04's faults, and had fully replaced it in front-line units by the time the Pan-Septentrion War broke out.
During the late 1920s, some surplus Type 04 rifles and carbines were sold to Dzhungestan, where mounted bandits used them against Themiclesian forces in the opening skirmishes of the Prairie War. Menghe also supplied Type 04s to its puppet armies in Khalistan and North Daristan during the Pan-Septentrion War, though later in the war some of these were replaced with surplus Type 17s. As the war dragged on and Menghe fell onto the defensive, the Imperial Menghean Army began pulling old Type 04s out of storage and issuing them to homeland defense units, where they joined last-ditch rifles of rural manufacture. Many of these weapons remained in circulation after Menghe's surrender in 1945, and they soon found their way into the hands of Communist and Nationalist guerillas during the Menghean War of Liberation.