The Type 38 rifle is a bolt action rifle used by Japan before and during World War II. It is featured in Medal Of Honor: Pacific Assault as a usable weapon, and is seen in Medal Of Honor: Rising Sun as a NPC-only weapon.
Also known as Arisaka Rifle after its designer, Arisaka Nariakira, Type 38 was adopted in 1905 (38th year of Emperor Meiji) by the Imperial Japanese Army, and officially served until the end of WWII. Type 38 uses 6.5 mm rounds, same as Italian Carcano. Use of small caliber ammunition resulted a rifle generally more accurate and controllable than most contemporary bolt-action rifles (e.g. Mauser 98K, Springfield, Mosin-Nagant and SMLE) but as a trade-off, it suffered from reduced stopping power. Due to excellent trajectory characteristics, Type 38 has a theoretical effective range of 1,500 meters, and max range on the sight even suggests 2,400 meters.
During the WWII, Japan intended to replace Type 38 with larger caliber Type 99 7.7 mm Rifles, but due to the outbreak of the Pacific War and shift in military production, the replacement project was never complete.
The Type 97 sniper rifle is based on the Type 38 Arisaka.
Medal of Honor: Rising Sun[]
Type 38 is only available to Japanese forces and is unusable by the player. It deals moderate damage to the player on normal difficulty, and high damage on hard difficulty. Some Type 38s can be seen with a bayonet. Japanese soldiers armed with Type 38s fitted with a bayonet usually banzai charge towards the player. When the player is close, soldiers slash with their bayonet and deal a great amount of damage to the player.
Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault[]
Type 38 is used by the majority of Japanese soldiers and is readily available for capture in the campaign. As a bolt-action rifle, it is the game's counterpart of the USMC M1903 rifle without a scope. True to the reality, the rifle does only moderate damage, but it does have near-perfect accuracy. On average it takes 2 torso shots to take down an enemy, and only a perfect headshot (i.e. hitting part of head not protected by helmet) can manage a one-shot-kill.
Overall the weapon is sub-par in shooting performance. Its true advantage lies in the abundance of ammunition from dead enemies. Also, Type 38 comes with a bayonet that can kill enemies in one hit, making it a great melee weapon.
Similar to that in Rising Sun, Arisaka-armed Japanese NPC will switch to bayonet and attempt to stab the player, dealing severe to fatal damage if not repelled in time.
Trivia[]
- In Pacific Assault, Type 38's sight is always flipped to fully elevated position when aiming down the sight. In reality, it is a practice needed only for shooting distant targets at least 200 meters away, basically by aiming higher to compensate for the gravity's effect on the flying bullet.
- A fatally wounded Thomas Conlin has a chance to be stabbed to death by a passing Japanese soldier using his bayonet-armed Type 38.
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