Type 89 machine gun
7.7 mm machine gun aircraft armament
The Type 89 machine gun refers to two unrelated Imperial Japanese Army aircraft machine guns. Its Imperial Japanese Navy counterparts are the Type 97 machine gun (fixed), and Type 92 machine gun.
Type 89 fixed
The first machine gun is a recoil-operated, licensed copy of the Vickers Class E machine gun re-chambered to 7.7x58mmSR Type 89 cartridge, it is referred to as the "fixed type". It was used in synchronized applications in fighter cowls and in wing gun applications. It was belt-fed, using a steel link disintegrating belt. The fixed Type 89 was used in the Nakajima Ki-27, Ki-43, early Ki-44 fighters, the Mitsubishi Ki-30 and Ki-51 light bombers, the Kawasaki Ki-32 light bomber and various others. Communist forces used some ex-Japanese Type 89s during the Korean War. Indonesian Republican forces also used them for ground use during the Indonesian National Revolution.
Type 89 flexible type
The second machine gun is gas-operated, it consists of two modified Type 11 machine guns paired into a single unit, similar to the German MG 81Z. It is commonly referred to as the "flexible type". It was derived from otsu-gou - an experimental machine gun (1922–1929) which was a Type 11 turned on its side and fed from a pan magazine.
“Type 89 machine gun” enters the record as 7.7 mm machine gun aircraft armament. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Type, machine and aircraft can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Type 89 machine gun” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.