Japanese Pedersen Rifle

Another rare and exotic Japanese weapon. The Japanese version of the semi automatic “Pedersen Rifle”. It featured a 10 round rotary magazine similar to M1941 Johnson rifle . Apparently some (incomplete?) ones were found in an arsenal near Tokyo and some in the Philippines in 1945, even though the “Pedersen Project” had allegedly been cancelled by the IJA in 1936. I think it has a very cool retro-futuristic look, even though such an overly complicated design made no sense during WW2. Something cheap & simple to produce would have been better suited.

The American experimental Pedersen:

~ by m1pencil on September 3, 2012.