The Type 79 is an overly-complex submachine gun that uses a scaled-down AK operating system chambered for 7.62x25mm Tokarev. In many ways, this is akin to the H&K MP7 – it’s a miniaturized combat rifle. The locked breech system allows the reciprocating parts to be arather lighter than a simple blowback design would be, but at the cost of cost and complexity. Is this really a good design? Well, you can judge for yourself – but don’t forget that it was replaced only 6 years after its adoption, and it was in development for well over a decade. Today, the Type 79 remains in use by some police forces in China, and there is a significant aftermarket component market for it. Basically, there are a lot of police Type 79s that look they have been dragged mercilessly through the whole Tapco-China catalog.
For the fascinating story of the Type 79’s excruciatingly long development, you should check out Jason Clower’s video that posted today:
Curse of China’s Type 79: The Gun That Blighted Every Life It Touched
“(…)was replaced only 6 years after its adoption, and it was in development for well over a decade.(…)”
Now I think we should compile list of fire-arms which served shorter than they were developed. Other sub-machine gun which would qualify is M2 https://smallarmsreview.com/the-hyde-inland-u-s-m2-submachine-gun/ as it starts life as Hyde 109 (tested October 1939), become Substitute Standard around April 1942, become obsolete in June 1943. Any other contenders?
“(…)locked breech system allows the reciprocating parts to be arather lighter than a simple blowback design would be, but at the cost of cost and complexity(…)”
Peculiarly it was replaced by Type 85 https://modernfirearms.net/en/submachine-guns/china-submachine-guns/tip-85-eng/ which show some similarity to STEN, that is weapon earlier than AK, w.r.t. mass – weight (empty) for Type 79 is 1,75 kg and for Type 85 is 1,9 kg. Observe latter use 30 round magazines rather than 20 round, which might suggest that combination of Type 79 Rate-of-Fire with low capacity (20) was found problematic.
“(…)akin to the H&K MP7(…)”
I would point that it akin to Brøndby Maskinpistol already known to audience https://www.forgottenweapons.com/early-semiauto-rifles/brondby-maskinpistol-model-1933/
as part of family using same principle (gas-operation in both cases) AND having members using cartridge of various sizes.
As far as lesser-known SMGs with relatively short service records, there was also the U.S. United Defense M42 aka Marlin SMG;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Defense_M42
About 15,000 were manufactured by Marlin from 1942 to 1945. They mainly went to the O.S.S. because being 9 x 19mm, they didn’t fit into the U.S. logistics system but were usable by allied forces- and of course were handy for use in German and Italian-occupied areas where 9mm Patronen 08 was obtainable from the opposition with a bit of “persuasion”.
I have noticed that in wartime photo captions, M42s in OSS training are often misidentified as Thompsons, apparently due to the TSMG-like vertical foregrip and cooling fins on the barrel.
According to OSS Special Weapons and Equipment; Spy Devices of World War Two by H. Keith Melton (Sterling pub. 1992), OSS stores held at the Algiers operational base in the spring of 1943 included the following small arms;
(p.118)
The “Luger” (Parabellum P.08) pistols were likely obtained from Stoeger’s in New York City.
The “Martin submachine guns” is of course a misprint for “Marlin”, meaning the M42 9mm weapons.
The .22 caliber Colts were Colt Woodsman automatics, most likely equipped with sound suppressors (“silencers”).
The .32 caliber pistols were probably Colt or other .32 ACP automatics, for which again ammunition would be obtainable in occupied territory.
clear ether
eon
There’s a lot of wisdom out there, laying there for someone to pick up… If they’d only bother.
This entire category of small arms would be one example: In many ways, you have the “desire path” of weapons procurement, wherein the actual people taking said weapons into harm’s way make their desires and will known. That’s how the US frontline combat types wound up carrying the M4 Carbine, instead of the support troops getting it the way they were supposed to. That’s how the M60 wound up serving in the line squads of US infantry during Vietnam, in the role of “automatic rifle’. That’s how the MG32/42 crept back into the German rifle squads that were supposed to have just the wunderwaffen StG44 in them… Reality always gets a vote, and that vote is for “what works”.
This sort of weapon, here? This is the diametric opposite: A weapon that doesn’t work, and which the troopies vote with their feet against.
The results are always the same: Some wonk proposes, reality (or, God; if you like that explanation) disposes.
The key thing here is that you absolutely need to listen to what those whispers are saying, out in Realityville, and then act accordingly. You don’t double-down on stupid, which is what so many of these idiot types do. Why did the US recapitulate the failure-story of the M-14/7.62 NATO in the NGSW program? Were the people involved even self-aware enough to recognize that that was what they were doing?
I once watched a truly gifted swordsman take part in a match; the thing that struck me was what he said before every encounter, and how he mentally approached every opponent: “Instruct me”. I got to talk to him, just a little, and I asked what the hell that phrase meant, where it came from. What he said was that it was something he’d come up with himself, and that he used it as a reminder that every encounter was a chance to learn from his opponent, no matter how humble or how gifted they were. Everyone, every situation, had something to teach. You just had to approach things with an open mind, and allow learning to occur…
The lessons are out there. You just need to pay attention and actually do something with them; the failure of this SMG design is a perfect example of a learning event, and one that should instruct all of us. The gradual evolution of the Western small arm procurement world towards the M16 should be another; it’s very crab-like, the way nature keeps re-evolving the damn crab time and time again from different ancestral lineages. There’s something profound in all that, the subtle perfection of crab-form and M16 alike…
The thing is, the “students” trying to please the Communist overlords with the Type 79 actually got a few things right.
For instance, the bolt. Yes, it works exactly like the AK bolt, but the positions of the machined-in cam and cam path are opposite those on the AK bolt. Which makes perfect sense if you don’t want somebody interchanging one or the other bit of bolt with a Type 56 rifle’s by mistake; it won’t fit, and vice versa.
The buffer at the rear end of the receiver? Again, common sense to prevent excessive stress at that critical point.
The one piece cast front trunnion and gas block? I’m betting Mikhail Timofeyevich thought “Why in the Hell didn’t I think of that?” if he ever saw it.
There were actually several pretty good ideas in the design. But the execution sucked overall.
Typical Ordnance, in other words.
clear ether
eon
The point remains, however: They got it wrong, wrong, wrong in an overall sense.
The question isn’t whether they got elements of the design right, it’s whether or not the synergestic whole actually does what it needs to do for the guys carrying it. You may hand out something like the M16A2 to the troops, a weapon that consists of separate elements that just plain work, and they’re going to reject it in favor of something that works better for them, like the M4 Carbine that even the Marines are glomming on to for their direct-combat personnel. Look at the M27; is it not the antithesis of the M16A2, in terms of size and the other things that make it desirable to an infantryman of discernment and the ability to make that choice for themselves?
The “desire path” of engineering and procurement possesses a bunch of options; you can answer a need many different ways. There’s also a hell of a lot of what we might term “negative space” that includes grass that never gets walked on and things like the M79 and M16A2, which were rejected by the soldiers to varying degrees.
I mean, if you absolutely had to, both the M79 here, the M16A2, and other failed weapons down the years could be made to work… But, when given a choice on the matter, most sane people opt away from all of them, based on need.
I still shake my head at the self-congratulatory BS spouted by all concerned over the M16A2 configuration, and how the troops actively killed that entire program by grabbing the afterthought M4 Carbine up, denying it to the “second-class” positions it was supposedly designed for. I guess you’ve only really got to spend some time humping that big-ass disaster around before you’re willing to compromise basic ballistics for the lighter weight and exponentially handier configuration of the M4… Hell, they didn’t really even bother to do much actual testing of that, for ballistics or lethality, so happy were they to take it up as a “better answer” for their actual needs.
I still think that M4 was as much as anything else a tacit admission that other than Camp Perry (where the targets sit very still in plain sight and don’t shoot back), trying to hit and neutralize anybody or anything with 5.56 beyond about 250 meters is a waste of time and ammunition.
Tweak bullet weights and etc. all you like, you aren’t stretching the kill envelope of that cartridge much beyond that. And once you accept that, you realize (as the PBI did) that a 14″ or so barreled carbine is good enough to get the job done. (16.5″ for “civilian” applications, of course.)
Type 59 reminds me of nothing so much as the Imperial Japanese pistols of 1910-45, and their two (largely failed) attempts at SMGs. The Type Nambu and Taisho 14 pistols were elegant, complex, C/96 “System Mauser” mechanisms wedded to a cartridge, the 8 x 22mm, that could have comfortably been handled by a straight blowback, as the late-1944 Yato prototype proved. The 1934-vintage Type 94 was a complete disaster, and I think even the IJA Ordnance geniuses realized that.
The two SMGs, the Type 2 and Type 100, were again overly complex for their cartridge, especially the Type 2 with its “airlock” type buffer to reduce RoF. Type 79 badly needed something to reduce how fast it emptied the magazine, but there was really no place to put it inside the thing.
What it and the Japaneses developments had in common was a determination by the holders of the purse strings to have a 100% “domestic innovation to show the world”. Not realizing that “the world” really did not GAF.
All joking aside, if the IJA had adopted the 7.63 x 25mm Mauser or 9 x 19mm Parabellum round at the start (around 1910 according to John Walter), things would have been a lot simpler.
As for Type 79, nothing about that mess was ever simple. Which is one major reason it failed.
cheers
eon
“(…)Type 59 reminds me of nothing so much as the Imperial Japanese pistols of 1910-45, and their two (largely failed) attempts at SMGs(…)”
Now I am extremely confused considering that according to https://tank-afv.com/coldwar/China/type-59-medium-tank.php 9500 examples of said entity was made, making it popular.
The various and sundry machinations that went on behind the scenes that led to the M4 are very ill-recorded. The basic idea was “We need to replace the elderly M16A1 weapons in the hands of the support troops, let’s give them something small and handy, but still lethal enough to do some damage…”
The barrel length and gas system came out of “What’s in stock, on the shelf…?” and “What do we need to fit the M203?”
Which is basically where that ballistically inferior 14.5″ length came in, and why they didn’t procure a weapon with a decent mid-length gas system on it. No money… It was all an off-the-shelf hodgepodge meant to save money and do something cool for the support bubbas, so they didn’t have to haul all that excess weight around.
Reality ensued, once the things got into the field. As I understand it, the worm turned when the 7th Infantry Division (Light) got in their first unit sets of the M4 for their support units, the officers of the combat units saw them, and… Well, next thing you knew, all the M4 Carbines were being diverted to the Infantry.
So far as I know, nobody did any real testing of the M4 Carbine/M855 combination before doing any of that. The whole thing was an accumulation of accidents and utter folly; they didn’t actually get decent combat ammo out there for the M4 until the middle of the first decade of the 21st Century, and it should have been tested to death before they ever started handing the things out to the Rangers and all the rest. The whole thing is a testimonial to why the assholes running the show for small arms are due for an accounting, and I hope they get one. Their essential incompetency is legion, and we’re seeing even more of it with the NGSW.
Do note that the entire premise of that program is wrapped around a fantastic “overmatch” issue that doesn’t actually exist, and which was self-created by the procurement of the M4 Carbine as a basic infantry weapon, and the utter failure to put a decent adaptable tripod under the M240.
They’re basically idiots. I can’t be any kinder.
Daweo;
That should have been “Type 79”
Finger malfunction.
cheers
eon
eon, hold your pretty praise horses,
one piece trunnion GB would not work in AK, unless its a pistol type DIY monstrosity with 3 inch barrel.
It may be worth to note that the Type 79 is a common sight on Chinese military parade, where it is carried by female soldiers.
What function these female soldiers have, and if they only use the Type 79 for parading or as an actual issued sidearm, is beyond my knowledge. But in any case, it’s light weight makes it more pleasant to hold during hours-long parades.
I have lived in the PRC for 20+ years. One sees a lot of ceremonial firearms that are not actually used in the field. E.g. sentries at the military academies’ front gate with chrome-plated SKS-56’s. So the female soldiers quite likely are accesorized with what looks snazzy
20 years sounds more like a damnation, then a bragging curio.
We done have fentanyl munchers here. Urban pongoid packs prowling 24/7 neither. No illegal aliens invasion suborned by federal judges. Kids learn math and science in school, not DEI. I can’t have guns? Better that than adult child LARPers who are afraid to use one. The last American died on Whidbey Island on 8 December 1984. The rest of you are playing make believe.
You lived 20 years in China and bemoan the death of a white supremacists who founded an anit-communist militia? Well, whatever floats your boat, I guess.