Showa 15.11 Type 14 Photos

This Type 14 was the second one I bought. It is a Nagoya Nambu, Kokubunji factory pistol dated Showa 15.11 (November, 1940). When I bought it, it was missing the grips and safety and a previous owner had prepared it for re-bluing by removing almost all the finish, but had not re-blued it. Apart from that, it was in sound mechanical condition and all the serial numbers on the parts matched (except the magazine). I made a set of grips myself and reblued it. Later I was able to get a safety and a set of proper original grips, even if the right one was split and repaired, as you can see if you look closely. The grips have the 17 grooves that were typical of Nagoya Nambu production beginning in January, 1940. Most other Type 14s had 24 or 25 grooves until November, 1944, when they were omitted altogether to expedite production. Note that it has the large trigger guard sometimes referred to as the Manchurian or Kiska model, or the “winter” trigger guard. This was designed so that you could wear a glove in cold weather, but all guns made after it was introduced in late 1939 had this larger trigger guard regardless of season or destination. The magazine retention spring at the front of the grip at the bottom is broken. I have acquired a replacement but haven’t had time to put it in. You have to drill out a couple of rivets and then peen in two new rivets, so it will be a bit of a job. The part of the spring that is left, which is inside the grip, performs just as well as a complete spring, which makes me wonder why they had to put part of it on the front of the grip where it was exposed to breakage. I have fired this gun and it works OK.

The safety is from a 6.6 dated Tokyo Type 14 whose remains I purchased. The barrel and bolt are on my 12.3 dated Type 14, which required much more extensive rebuilding. It fit very, very tight, so I will probably end up doing some more fitting to loosen it up.

Here is a close-up of the markings. The top row has the Nagoya arsenal symbol, the character for south, which is an abbreviation of Nambu, and then the serial number. The Nambu mark indicates the pistol was produced under contract by the company founded by Kijiro Nambu, the designer, after he retired. By the time this gun was made it had merged and become Chuo Kogyo (“Central Industries”), but they kept using the same character as their symbol. The second row has the Sho from “Showa”, which means the date 15 translates to 1940. The 11 indicates the month of manufacture, November. Below the first 1 in the serial number is a small character “higashi”, which is also pronounced as the To in Tokyo. It is an inspection mark and is rather weakly struck, with only the right half and bottom of the character being clear..

This is what the gun looked like when I bought it.

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Last updated: August 21, 2004. All contents are copyright Teri unless otherwise specified and may not be used elsewhere in any form without prior permission.