"They could shoot ours but we couldn't shoot theirs"

James K wrote:

No, the case is too long (58mm vs 57mm). The 7.7 will feed and go partly into the 8mm chamber but the bolt won't close.

So those German troops supposedly fighting in the Pacific* had to bring ammo for their Mausers.
Click to expand...

OK - Got it.
 
Incredibly, some people really believed the Germans bombed PH and one really bright Congressman wanted to hold hearings to investigate the "German role" in the attack. It was known that the Germans had no aircraft carriers, so one "theory" was that the Germans had secretly built an airfield on the big island (Hawaii) and took off from there. Military personnel "identified" Stukas, JU-88's and BF-109's in the attacking forces. It was supposedly a sailor on one of the U.S. ships who claimed to have spotted the blond pilot mentioned in my previous post.

Jim
 
Getting back to the original post - you guys do realize that the US were not the only ones fighting against the Japanese during WWII, right? ;) Take a look at the 7.7 Japanese cartridge and the .303 British. They are very similar rounds. Also, before the war, the British sold a bunch of Vickers MG's and similar to the Japanese and they just copied the cartridge instead of redesigning/rechambering the guns. The Japanese made the 7.7 in rimless (Type 99), semi-rimmed (Type 92) and rimmed versions, depending on the gun it was to be used in (must have be a logistical nightmare!). As the cartridges are so similar this could be where the confusion/rumours got started (at least form a WWII viewpoint).
 
The three types of 7.7 should have been a supply nightmare, but the Japanese really didn't get confused. 7.7 rifle ammunition was issued in rifle clips. 7.7 semi-rimmed was issued only in feed strips. 7.7 rimmed (.303 British) was issued only by the Navy to aircraft and ground units armed with licensed copies of the Lewis gun.

Jim
 
The real problem came in getting 6.5mm ammo to the troops who were armed with Type 38 rifles, and 7.7mm ammo to the troops armed with Type 99s.

With the 6.5mm there was an additional problem of the Type 11 light machine gun. It was originally designed to use the standard 6.5mm ammunition loaded on stripper clips designed for the Type 38 rifle, but the round was too powerful and caused reliability problems.

Instead of simply redesigning the gun to allow its use with standard rifle ammo, the Japanese developed a downloaded round. Once it was removed from its packaging, it was indistinguishable from the from the ammo for the Type 38.
 
"you guys do realize that the US were not the only ones fighting against the Japanese during WWII, right?"

What?

You mean the British, Australians, New Zealanders, Philippinos, French, and Dutch were involved, too?
 
" Military personnel "identified" Stukas, JU-88's and BF-109's in the attacking forces."

Obviously the same guys who later shot down a number of US carrier aircraft sent to Pearl Harbor from Halsey's task force...
 
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