Type 32 light machine gun
| Type 32 light machine gun | |
|---|---|
| File:Type 32 LMG.png Type 32 with bipod stowed and deployed. | |
| Type | Light machine gun |
| Place of origin |  Menghe |
| Service history | |
| In service | 1933–1964 |
| Used by | Imperial Menghean Army Eighth Army Insurgency |
| Production history | |
| Produced | 1932-1945 |
| Variants | Type 41 |
| Specifications | |
| Weight | 9.6 kg (21.2 lb) |
| Length | 1,208 mm |
| Barrel length | 676 mm |
| Cartridge | 7.5×60mm Menghean |
| Action | short recoil-operated |
| Rate of fire | 400 rounds per minute |
| Muzzle velocity | 730 m/s (2,460 ft/s) |
| Effective firing range | 100 - 2000 m sight adjustments |
| Feed system | 20-round magazine |
| Sights | Iron sights |
The Type 32 light machine gun (Menghean: 32식 경 기관총 / 三二式輕機關銃, sam-i-sik gyŏng gigwanchŏng) was a type of light machine gun developed in the Greater Menghean Empire during the 1930s. Designed to allow mass-production despite Menghe's still-developing industrial sector, it was a fairly crude and straightforward design, and made a number of sacrifices in order to drive down costs and streamline logistics. It saw extensive use during the Pan-Septentrion War, where it earned a reputation for poor reliability and an unsatisfactory rate of fire.
Development
Beginning in the early 1920s, the Menghean Army expressed interest in developing a light automatic weapon for squad-level use. After the end of the Sylvan War of Succession, the Federative Republic of Menghe had imported several hundred surplus Madsen machine guns from Tol Galen, and found the concept intriguing. The Madsens were chambered in 7.5×55mm Rajian cartridges as opposed to the standard 7.5×60mm Menghean rifle round, however, creating problems with logistics. Rather than ordering a larger shipment of Madsens and replacing the chambers and barrels, the Menghean Army decided to develop a new light machine gun.
The Hwasŏng Arsenal, Menghe's only major firearms designer at the time, developed a variety of prototypes over the course of the 1920s, mainly as design studies to explore different configurations and operating systems. None of these were produced in large numbers, and most did poorly in firing trials, leading the Army to consider placing the order from a foreign arms company.
After Kwon Chong-hoon came to power and established the Greater Menghean Empire, the Army fell under greater pressure to put an LMG into service. Han Tae-yŏng, the new Vice-Marshal of the Infantry, tightened pressure on Hwasŏng to produce a viable weapon, threatening to dismiss its upper staff if the Army did not have a viable prototype by 1931. As a positive incentive, Vice-Marshal Han also promised to increase the proposed order tenfold.
By this time, the Army's basic requirements for the weapon included the following core qualities:
- The design must be simple enough to produce in large numbers despite Menghe's comparatively small industrial base and its less precise tooling.
- The parts and operation must be fairly rugged, with no clockwork parts or precision-milled components. It should function fine despite having been made with wide tolerance levels, and should be able to endure abuse and regular wear in the field.
- The weapon must be light enough to fire from the hip or shoulder, while still carrying a bipod for prone fire.
- The weapon must be magazine-fed, but with the ability to reload magazines from the standard five-round stripper clips already in service with the Army.
- The weapon must have a quick-change barrel with no sights or bipod attached, allowing easy replacement of the barrel in the field.
The Hwasŏng Arsenal responded by combining elements of its best-functioning prototypes into a single design, which they submitted for field trials in 1932. The Imperial Menghean Army evaluated the weapon favorably, perhaps partly because of the pressure to meet Vice-Marshal Han's deadline, but requested a few minor changes to the production version. Mass-production began in the same year, and the first deliveries to operational units were made in 1933.
Design
The Type 32 relied on short recoil operation and fired from an open bolt. Some of Hwasŏng's initial design studies were gas operated, but these had teething problems in early testing, which the Hwasŏng design team apparently attributed to gas operation systems in general. The Imperial Menghean Army had also spent the 1920s closely following Casaterran arms development efforts, which included unfavorable evaluations of early gas-operated rifles. As Menghean factories already had experience producing long- and short-recoil operated weapons, the Type 32's action was more familiar and Army planners believed it would lend itself better to mass-production.
Rounds are fed from a single-stack, 20-round magazine which fits into a large magazine well on the left side of the receiver. This fires the same 7.5×60mm round as Menghe's standard infantry rifles, and in fact the magazine can be reloaded directly using standard 5-round stripper clips. While the bolt is pulled back, it is also possible to insert a stripper clip into the right side of the receiver and restock the magazine directly. This commonality means that after the machine-gun team runs out of ammunition, other riflemen can give them spare stripper clips, or vice versa. As on a few other side-fed LMGs, the feed lips are actually inside the receiver; the magazine only has a simple flat spring to prevent rounds from falling out when it is not inserted into the weapon.
The 1932 prototype also included an oil reservoir above the feed tray, which released a small quantity of lubricant onto each cartridge as it passed out of the magazine and into the bolt. This was intended to improve reliability by reducing the risk that the barely-tapered 7.5×60mm cartridge would become jammed in the chamber on extraction. Army evaluation staff ordered that this feature be omitted in the production variant, hoping to minimize the number of moving parts and streamline the manufacturing process.
To change the barrel, the gunner or assistant must grasp the barrel firmly, release the under-barrel pin connecting it to the spring mechanism, and pull it forward, without the assistance of an external handle. To minimize weight and bulk on spare barrels, the bipod and foresight are attached to the handguard, which also means that there's no need to re-zero the gun after a barrel change. The iron sights were adjustable for range but not windage, and were marked out to an optimistic indirect-fire range of 2000 meters.
To cycle the heavy bolt, the Type 32 had a long recoil spring which extended over the buttstock inside a steel tube. The handguard was made of steel as well, and reinforced underneath to stabilize the connection to the bipod, foresight, and barrel catch. Most components, including the receiver, were of stamped construction in order to save weight and improve large-scale production. The remaining furniture, including the pistol grip, was predominantly wooden, and was often left unfinished in late-war models.
Evaluation
In the narrowest sense, the Type 32 light machine gun met all of its design goals. It was a standard-cartridge, squad-level weapon capable of laying down automatic fire, and more importantly Menghe was able to manufacture it in enormous numbers - though it never fully proliferated up to its on-paper allocation of one per squad. The heavy bolt assembly and short-recoil, open-bolt operation gave it a modest "chugging" rate of fire, which in combination with the large sights made the weapon easy to control and aim even if its dispersion was relatively wide. Early-war officers were actually quite satisfied with the Type 32's broad beaten zone, as it gave the weapon good suppressive characteristics against area targets.
Unfortunately, the Type 32's simplicity and crude manufacture came with a number of drawbacks. On top of the mediocre accuracy and rate of fire, the Army's decision to rush the weapon through the testing process also meant that designers were unable to correct certain flaws. To reduce moving parts and ease maintenance, the Type 32 was a relatively open weapon, with no moving dust covers over the magazine well, ejection port, and right-side stripper-clip feeding site. The manufacturers also cut holes in the cylinder holding the recoil spring assembly, apparently to save weight and material. This meant that in the conditions Menghean soldiers regularly encountered in Meridia and inland Hemithea, the Type 32 had a noticeable tendency to fill up with sand, mud, and other natural debris.
Most infamous were the early production magazines, which had a large opening on the top, allowing the gunner or loader to easily see how many rounds were left and restock the weapon from the right if necessary. Individual magazines were even stamped with notches and numbers every five rounds along the open top, allowing the operators to easily determine how many rounds were left and how many more could be loaded. During prolonged operations in the field, this large opening could easily become filled with mud, sand, or dirt, which either interfered in feeding or became drawn into the receiver. The single-stack magazines themselves were also long and clumsy despite holding only 20 rounds, and made the weapon difficult to carry while loaded. With the thin steel and broad opening, they also deformed easily if the satchel or protruding magazine struck a hard object, causing cartridges to become stuck.
Adding to magazine problems, the reliance on internal feed lips meant that if a non-empty magazine was removed, any cartridges still in the receiver would spill out onto the ground. Field manuals called for the gunner or assistant gunner to retrieve them and load them back into the magazine, which could introduce still more dirt and sand; in combat, it was common for soldiers to ignore the spare cartridges altogether. On the plus side, extra space in the receiver meant that the Type 32 could be fed a stripper clip of five more rounds once a magazine was loaded and one round chambered, increasing the capacity to 25.
Other loading problems stemmed from the removal of the oil assembly above the feed tray. Had this been retained, it probably would have intensified the weapon's tendency to accumulate dirt and sand inside the receiver, but without it the weapon struggled to perform even in good conditions. Allied evaluation teams found that after about 200 rounds of fire at typical combat intensity, the weapon began to have trouble extracting the nearly straight-walled 7.5×60mm cartridge. Combined with the unreliable quality of Menghean ammunition manufacturing, this frequently resulted in cartridges ripping apart on extraction - with half the spent cartridge jammed in the chamber.
In 1943, the Imperial Menghean Army belatedly introduced a lacquered cartridge with a low-friction coating intended specifically for use with the Type 32. At this point in the war, rushed manufacturing and an effort to move production out of the cities resulted in inconsistent but generally poor lacquering quality, with an unstable formula that was found to melt if stored in direct sunlight at high temperatures - as many shipments to Meridia and Dzhungestan were. Due to logistical confusion and hasty training, lacquered rounds seldom ended up in the right hands, often delivered in bulk to a squad, mixed with other ammunition types, or handed to riflemen rather than machine-gun teams.
The barrel was also a source of complaint among Menghean soldiers and Allied evaluation teams. Because of the loose tolerance levels in production, the barrel sometimes fit too snugly into the handguard, especially after it had expanded from heating or accumulated dirt and mud. Other barrels fit too loosely, worsening the weapon's accuracy. Changing the barrel in combat also required that either the gunner or the assistant have heat-resistant gloves, which were issued inconsistently late in the war; some photos from 1944 and 1945 show Type 32 machine guns with cloth wrapped around a central part of the barrel to allow the gunner to grasp it safely.
Type 41 variant
As combat experience revealed severe shortcomings in the Type 32's reliability in the field, the Imperial Menghean Army attempted to correct its reliability problems by introducing a new variant, the Type 41 light machine gun. This added spring-loaded dust covers over the openings in the Type 32's receiver, and replaced the recoil spring case with a solid-walled one. The manufacturers also improved the machining quality and tolerance levels on certain critical parts, most notably the interface between the barrel and the bearing surfaces around it. The Type 41 spent a long time in testing, however, and did not enter widespread service until late 1942, by which time the Imperial Menghean Army was already in retreat. While generally well-regarded among Menghean soldiers, it attracted less attention from foreign troops, and was not produced in very large numbers.
Development work on the Type 41 also resulted in a fully enclosed magazine with no witness holes or feed markings on top. This was rushed into mass production while the Type 41 was still in testing, and replaced all new-production Type 32 magazines. To save resources, however, the designers also stamped the new magazines from thinner steel, giving them a tendency to bend if handled roughly - creating new problems with reliable feeding.