I believe it was because those nations were still pretending they could use the same cartridge in both infantry and mounted machine guns. Lot of rather weak Italian and Japanese LMGs that simply were not very authoritative from an armored vehicle or aircraft.
Those are good reasons.
From what I have read that is the reason the Italians and the Japanese went from 6.5 to 7.35 and 7.7, to make a more effective long range cartridges base on combat experiences in wide-open largely vegetation-free regions, the Italians the desert, the Japanese in Manchuria. But, for various reasons the Japanese wound up making it in rimless and semi-rimmed versions.
As the US has found in Afghanistan the 223 round simply does not have the range. The book "Shots Fired in Anger", the author was a NRA Highpower competitor prior to shipping out in WW2 to fight the Japanese. The author made statements about long range accuracy not being relevant in 99.99% of combat situations, he carried a 30 caliber Carbine. A full powered round is great for shooting through trees, be they pine trees or palm trees, but in dense foliage, you can't see very far, and thus, you are not going to be shooting at anyone beyond your line of sight. I have been told by Combat veterans they did a lot of tree line shooting, but they had an idea someone was in the tree line.
Our last WW2 Combat Veteran died this year, he was at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, he said the Japanese snipers were making head shots. That statement choked him up when he said it because his buddies who were hit in the head, died instantly. I am only aware of Japanese sniper rifles in 6.5 caliber. I never read about any lack of lethality for the Japanese rounds, the author of Shots fired in Anger wrote about Americans being hit with blasts from Nambu's. He said the Japanese Nambu gunners aimed low, rounds would hit Americans in the legs, knock them down into the rest of the burst, bullets going into the torso would would bleed out the man very quickly.
The long barrel Japanese Arisaka rifles did not give off a muzzle blast which made it very difficult for American's to find the guys. I have seen the fireballs given off by US 30-06 , older stuff is impressive, a guy shooting from a cave entrance is going to give himself away with 30-06. This was a pressing issue and American troops complained that the Japanese had developed a powder that was flashless, whereas when the American's fired, they gave away their position.
This is a Japanese Nambu light machine gun. It used the 6.5 cartridge on stripper clips. They were dropped in the hopper. This gun cannot exist according to the dictates of Hatcherites. It uses an oiler to oil cartridges as they go into the chamber. According to classic Hatcherism, oil and grease "dangerously" raise combustion pressures and "greatly" increase bolt thrust. They claim cartridges must "grip" the chamber walls and lessen the load on the bolt. This is all nonsense, and while these historical firearms confound Hatcherism, nothing confounds Hatcherites.
This Italian machine gun, M30 Breda, also used an oiler.
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