page_title: Type 96 light machine gun
section_title: Design
hierarchical_section_title: Type 96 light machine gun / Design
caption_attribution_description: English: Marines with a captured Type 96
context_page_description: The Type 96 light machine gun was a light machine gun used by the Imperial Japanese Army in the interwar period and in World War II. It was first introduced in 1936, and fires the 6.5x50mm Arisaka from 30-round top-mounted magazines. A combination of unimpressive ballistic performance and a lack of reliability caused the Imperial Japanese Army to try and replace the Type 96 with the Type 99 Light Machine Gun, though both saw major usage until the end of the war.
context_section_description: The Type 96 light machine gun was almost identical in construction to the Type 11 in that it was an air-cooled, gas-operated design based on the French Hotchkiss M1909 machine gun. As with the Type 11, it continued to use the same 6.5x50mm Arisaka cartridges as the Type 38 rifle infantry rifle, although the more powerful 7.7x58mm Arisaka round had already been adopted and was starting to enter into service with front line combat units. Due to its visual resemblance to the Bren they are often mistakenly regarded as clones.
  The major difference from the Type 11 was the top-mounted curved detachable box magazine holding 30 rounds, which somewhat increased reliability and lessened the weight of the gun. The finned gun barrel could also be rapidly changed to avoid overheating. The Type 96 had a blade front sight and a leaf rear sight, with graduations from 200 to 1,500 meters, with windage adjustment. A 2.5X telescopic sight with a 10 degree field of view could be attached at the right side of the gun.
  The Type 96 also had a folding bipod attached to the gas block, and could be fitted with the standard infantry bayonet, which could be attached to the gas block below the barrel, making it, alongside the later Type 99 the only machine gun used in the Second World War that a bayonet could be attached to. The gun had no select-fire capability.
  Despite the fact it could cause stoppages, designer Kijiro Nambu did nothing to address the dimensional tolerance issue between the bolt and barrel, which would lead to feed failure if casings got stuck in the chamber. In order to ensure reliable feeding (theoretically), Nambu resorted to oiling the cartridges via an oil pump in  the magazine loader. In practice, this tended to worsen the problem instead, as the oiled cartridges tended to become coated with dust and sand. This feature and its inherent faults were dropped with the introduction of the Type 99 light machine gun.
caption: Marines with a captured Type 96
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