How accurate are Japanese rifles?

[Patrick Chadwick]

Good on yer mate! May I suggest that you get a little book called "The Paper Jacket" by Paul Matthews. Although written for BP shooters, it will help you to get a better, more consistent wrap, and that will quite possibly reduce group size without you changing any other parameter. The best BP shooters get down to 2MOA under competition conditions (i.e. prone, sling allowed but no rest or wrist support, limited time).

And weigh the bullets too. Deviation should not be more than +/_ 0.5 gn around a median value. Tighter would be better, of course. Too high could mean that the mould was not quite closed when casting. Too low usually means bad filling and/or voids. Voids in particular will cause an off-axis center of gravity which spoils the flight, so be quite ruthless in putting out-of-tolerance bullets back into the melting pot.

Patrick

[rayg]

Good suggestions Patrick. It looks like the paper wrap is grippng the metford rfling much better then the plain lead bullets did and with a little more care like you suggest, I'm sure the groups will tighten up more, Ray

[jeep]

The first T-99 6th series Nogoya I shot a few weeks ago at 50yds offhand shot one minute of chest kill zone. I put 10 out of 10rds in a 10" by 10" group in 4 minutes including loading with loose rounds not strippers off hand. Not a pretty group but 10 kills.

[Old Joe]

One of the favorite rifles I shoot is an early war Arisaka 6.5. Sombody had sporterized it by cutting down the front of the stock. I had excellent results with the Norma stuff and well..I am working on my reloads..

I like the rifle so much that I am having Lyman sights put on it and a better trigger. just a nice rifle to shoot...

Old Joe

[mike radford]

I shoot mostly snipers and have shot about 15 Japanese snipers. I have used handloads, Norma, Joe at the gunshow?? loads and Hornady. I have used mostly Japanese scopes but have a modern mount to put on the smaller bases found on t-97's, Nagoya cutbacks and Kokura T99 snipers. I get 1.5 MOA five shot groups frequently. Average is more like 2 MOA. Best was 0.84 MOA with a Kokura T99 with a very cloudy T97 scope using Norma factory ammo. I can assure you that at least the Japanese snipers were about as accurate as any fielded in WW2, and I have fired about 50 WW2 snipers. Always wanted to figure out who fielded the best sniper rifle of WW2. Pretty sure they were all pretty similar in accuracy in my years of testing them. Also, pretty sure that the US rifles were not the best either.